Carrying capacity of large African predators: Predictions and tests

Abstract

Successful conservation initiatives often lead to rapid increases in large carnivore densities to the extent that overpopulation occurs. Yet conservation managers have no way of knowing the carrying capacity of their reserves. Here we derived relationships between the preferred prey (species and weight range) of Africa’s large predator guild and their population densities to predict their carrying capacity in ten South African conservation areas. Conservation managers intervened at several of these sites because of evidence of predator overpopulation and these provided independent tests of our predictions. Highly significant linear relationships were found between the biomass of the preferred prey species of lion, leopard, spotted hyaena and African wild dog, and the biomass of prey in the preferred weight range of cheetah. These relationships are more robust than previous work for lion, cheetah and leopard, and novel for spotted hyaena and African wild dog. These relationships predicted that several predators exceeded carrying capacity at four sites, two where managers expressed concerns about overpopulation due to a decline in wildlife abundance and two where carnivores were actively removed. The ability to predict the carrying capacity of large predators is fundamental to their conservation, particularly in small enclosed reserves. Every predator that preys on large, readily surveyed wildlife can have its carrying capacity predicted in this manner based on the abundance of its preferred prey. This will be beneficial for reintroduction attempts, threatened species management, overpopulation estimation, detecting poaching and in investigating intra-guild competition.