Leopard population and home range estimates in north‐central Namibia

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Protected areas are commonly assumed to (and most do)harbour higher densities of wildlife than adjacent, human-modified landscapes (Woodroffe & Ginsberg, 1998; Melville& Bothma, 2006; Gaston et al., 2008; Newmark, 2008;Kiner et al., 2009). In north-central Namibia, farmersbelieved that leopard (Panthera pardus) densities weregrowing on farmland areas adjacent to Waterberg PlateauPark and that the Park was a source population for leop-ards venturing beyond park boundaries during the night tofeed on the livestock in the farmlands (Stein, 2008).Leopard densities elsewhere have been correlated withungulate abundance (Stander et al., 1997; Marker D Henschel & Ray,2003; Silver et al., 2004; Jackson et al., 2006) combinedwith home range sizes estimated from telemetry data.