Roads to the Hills: Potential Space Use Patterns of Sloth Bears and Leopards in Semiarid Landscape of Western India

Abstract

Large carnivores utilize human areas, resulting in frequent conflict with humans. We aimed to identify the factors affecting the habitat use of leopards and sloth bears in human-dominated areas of the proposed Jawai Leopard Community Conservation Reserve, Rajasthan, western India. Within the 1 km2 grid framework, the presence of species was recorded (84 events - leopards and 71- sloth bears) and modeled using the maximum entropy algorithm concerning terrain and land-use pattern-related covariates. Also, we modeled the potential movement areas using the least-cost pathway approach. Outcomes informed that suitable habitats for leopards (126.1 km2; 40.8% of study area) were more widely distributed than sloth bears (103.7 km2; 33.5%). Models suggested that elevated-rugged hillocks were positively related to both species' habitat use, followed by scrub and water resources. Leopards showed more adaptability towards human settlements than sloth bears. Thirty potential movement pathways (between 15 core habitats) for leopards and 19 for sloth bears (between 11 core habitat nodes) were identified; out of these, 45% and 48% of pathways for leopards and sloth bears, respectively, are facing threats by the movement barriers such as railway tracks and human settlements. Conserving highly and moderately centralized pathways can be a better approach for sustainable landscape conservation in parallel.