Abstract
The wide-ranging, cumulative, negative effects of anthropogenic disturbance, including habitat degradation, exotic species, and hunting, on native wildlife has been well documented across a range of habitats worldwide with carnivores potentially being the most vulnerable due to their more extinction prone characteristics. Investigating the effects of anthropogenic pressures on sympatric carnivores is needed to improve our ability to develop targeted, effective management plans for carnivore conservation worldwide. Utilizing photographic, line-transect, and habitat sampling, as well as landscape analyses and village-based bushmeat hunting surveys, we provide the first investigation of how multiple forms of habitat degradation (fragmentation, exotic carnivores, human encroachment, and hunting) affect carnivore occupancy across Madagascar’s largest protected area: the Masoala-Makira landscape. We found that as degradation increased, native carnivore occupancy and encounter rates decreased while exotic carnivore occupancy and encounter rates increased. Feral cats (Felis species) and domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) had higher occupancy than half of the native carnivore species across Madagascar’s largest protected landscape. Bird and small mammal encounter rates were negatively associated with exotic carnivore occupancy, but positively associated with the occupancy of four native carnivore species. Spotted fanaloka (Fossa fossana) occupancy was constrained by the presence of exotic feral cats and exotic small Indian civet (Viverricula indica). Hunting was intense across the four study sites where hunting was studied, with the highest rates for the small Indian civet ( individuals consumed/year), the ring-tailed vontsira (Galidia elegans) ( consumed/year), and the fosa (Cryptoprocta ferox) ( consumed/year). Our modeling results suggest hunters target intact forest where carnivore occupancy, abundance, and species richness, are highest. These various anthropogenic pressures and their effects on carnivore populations, especially increases in exotic carnivores and hunting, have wide-ranging, global implications and demand effective management plans to target the influx of exotic carnivores and unsustainable hunting that is affecting carnivore populations across Madagascar and worldwide.
Highlights
Carnivores are at great risk from anthropogenic disturbance and habitat degradation due to their extinction-prone characteristics such as large body size, wide-ranging behavior, low density, low recruitment, and specialized diet [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
Using Madagascar’s carnivore community as a case study, we provide the first investigation of how multiple forms of anthropogenic pressure, which cumulatively result in habitat degradation but individually include fragmentation, exotic species, human encroachment, and hunting, affect carnivore populations
We found no discernable trend between native carnivore trap success and degradation; exotic carnivores showed higher trap success in degraded sites (S05 to S07) compared to less degraded sites (S01 and S02; Table 2)
Summary
Carnivores are at great risk from anthropogenic disturbance and habitat degradation due to their extinction-prone characteristics such as large body size, wide-ranging behavior, low density, low recruitment, and specialized diet [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Carnivore populations worldwide are known to be negatively affected by a number of anthropogenic pressures, including fragmentation, degradation, exotic species, and hunting. Hunting presents a serious threat to carnivore populations, as has been shown for numerous species across the globe [20,21,22,23,24,25]. While these studies provide important insights into the effects of anthropogenic pressures on carnivore populations, we need a better understanding of how these pressures act both individually and synergistically on carnivores over a gradient of disturbance across a large spatial area
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