Abstract
With a rise in human induced changes to natural habitats, large predators are forced to share space and resources with people to coexist within multiple-use landscapes. Within such shared landscapes, co-occurrence of humans and predators often leads to human-carnivore conflicts and pose a substantial challenge for biodiversity conservation. To better elucidate large carnivore space use within a hotspot of human-wildlife conflicts, we used GPS data for leopards (N = 6) to identify behavioral states and document spatial patterns of resource selection in response to season and human activity periods within a fragmented landscape of North Bengal, eastern India. We identified two major behavioral states (i.e. resting and travelling). From the resource selection models, we found leopards selected habitats with dense to moderate vegetation cover and proximity to water while resting and travelling within the landscape. During the dry season, when risk of human-leopard conflicts is highest, leopards selected tea plantations, forest patches but avoided protected areas. These results suggest a potential for increase in human-carnivore conflicts and a strategy to conserve large predators within multiple-use landscapes of South Asia.
Highlights
With a rise in human induced changes to natural habitats, large predators are forced to share space and resources with people to coexist within multiple-use landscapes
We identified two major behavioral states for the collared leopards
We found the majority of leopard locations occurred within close proximity to tea plantations
Summary
With a rise in human induced changes to natural habitats, large predators are forced to share space and resources with people to coexist within multiple-use landscapes. Within such shared landscapes, co-occurrence of humans and predators often leads to human-carnivore conflicts and pose a substantial challenge for biodiversity conservation. During the dry season, when risk of human-leopard conflicts is highest, leopards selected tea plantations, forest patches but avoided protected areas These results suggest a potential for increase in human-carnivore conflicts and a strategy to conserve large predators within multiple-use landscapes of South Asia. Both intrinsic (age, sex, life stage) and extrinsic
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have