Abstract
Populations of large carnivores can persist in mountainous environments following extensive land use change and the conversion of suitable habitat for agriculture and human habitation in lower lying areas of their range. The significance of these populations is poorly understood, however, and little attention has focussed on why certain mountainous areas can hold high densities of large carnivores and what the conservation implications of such populations might be. Here we use the leopard (Panthera pardus) population in the western Soutpansberg Mountains, South Africa, as a model system and show that montane habitats can support high numbers of leopards. Spatially explicit capture-recapture (SECR) analysis recorded the highest density of leopards reported outside of state-protected areas in sub-Saharan Africa. This density represents a temporally high local abundance of leopards and we explore the explanations for this alongside some of the potential conservation implications.
Highlights
Carnivore density and distribution is limited by a range of ecological and anthropogenic factors
The density estimate obtained with a 20km buffer and unsuitable habitat removed is robust and a Bayesian P value of 0.60 confirmed the adequacy of the model with Z scores from the Geweke diagnostic confirming that chain convergence had been achieved for all parameters (Table 2)
The western Soutpansberg Mountains in South Africa are home to the highest density of leopards recorded outside a state-protected area in sub-Saharan Africa
Summary
Carnivore density and distribution is limited by a range of ecological and anthropogenic factors. Large carnivores require sufficient suitable habitat to provide cover for hunting and females require denning sites for rearing their young [3,4]. Anthropogenic factors limiting carnivore density include habitat loss [5], decline of prey densities due to hunting by humans [6], human persecution [7] and unsustainable harvest levels [8]. Widespread conversion of habitat into land for cultivation and human habitation has resulted in extensive habitat loss for many large carnivores. Populations of felids, such as leopards (Panthera pardus) and pumas (Puma concolor), occur in mountainous areas that are less accessible to humans, where they persist after extirpation from lower lying altitudes of their ranges [9,10,11,12,13,14,15].
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