Abstract
The snow leopard Panthera uncia is an elusive species inhabiting some of the most remote and inaccessible tracts of Central and South Asia. It is difficult to determine its distribution and density pattern, which are crucial for developing conservation strategies. Several techniques for species detection combining camera traps with remote sensing and geographic information systems have been developed to model the habitat of such cryptic and low-density species in challenging terrains. Utilising presence-only data from camera traps and direct observations, alongside six environmental variables (elevation, aspect, ruggedness, distance to water, land cover, and prey habitat suitability), we assessed snow leopard habitat suitability across Ladakh in northern India. This is the first study to model snow leopard distribution both in India and utilising direct observation data. Results suggested that elevation and ruggedness are the two most influential environmental variables for snow leopard habitat suitability, with highly suitable habitat having an elevation range of 2,800 m to 4,600 m and ruggedness of 450 m to 1,800 m. Our habitat suitability map estimated approximately 12% of Ladakh's geographical area (c. 90,000 km2) as highly suitable and 18% as medium suitability. We found that 62.5% of recorded livestock depredation along with over half of all livestock corrals (54%) and homestays (58%) occurred within highly suitable snow leopard habitat. Our habitat suitability model can be used to assist in allocation of conservation resources by targeting construction of livestock corrals to areas of high habitat suitability and promoting ecotourism programs in villages in highly suitable snow leopard habitat.
Highlights
Conservation of threatened species requires accurate knowledge of their distributions so that conservationists and managers can delineate and optimise protected areas on a priority basis [1]
Elevation is negatively correlated with annual mean temperature, and is thought to influence habitat suitability indirectly through the altitudinal temperature gradient [41]; it could be inferred that annual mean temperature was most important for snow leopard habitat suitability [41] as such available snow leopard habitat will likely reduce under future climate change scenario [41,61]
We identified ruggedness as the second most important factor in snow leopard habitat suitability, which is consistent with regional models for SNNR [4,42] and QNNR [44]
Summary
Conservation of threatened species requires accurate knowledge of their distributions so that conservationists and managers can delineate and optimise protected areas on a priority basis [1]. Determining distributions is crucial for long-term survival of threatened species in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressure on natural areas [2] This is important when considering the conservation of apex predators as they are often considered keystone, umbrella, or flagship species, and their protection can benefit the entire ecosystem [3]. Retaliatory killing following livestock depredation, and poaching to fuel the illegal trade in fur and bones [5] Due to their elusiveness and low density in the landscape, snow leopards’ distribution and abundance have been preferentially assessed through non-invasive techniques such as interviews, sign surveys (scats, rock scents, scrapes and pugmarks), and snow tracking [6,7,8,9,10,11]; methods that can be deployed over a large area at relatively low field cost and effort [12]. Species distribution models (SDM) and habitat suitability (HS; a measure of the ability of a habitat to sustain a species [1,21]) index models in conservation biology and wildlife management [18,22,23,24,25] play a critical role in conservation decision-making [20]
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