Abstract
Understanding how wildlife interacts with human activities across non-protected areas are critical for conservation. This is especially true for ungulates that inhabit human-dominated landscapes outside the protected area system in Nepal, where wildlife often coexists with livestock. Here we investigated how elevation, agricultural land, distance from roads, and the relative abundance of livestock (goats, sheep, cow and buffalo) influenced wild ungulate chital (Axis axis), nilgai (Boselaphustrago camelus), wild boar (Sus scrofa) and sambar (Rusa unicolor) abundance and occurrence. We counted all individuals of wild ungulates and livestock along 35 transects conducted between November 2017 and March 2018 in community forests of Bara and Rautahat distracts in the lowlands of Nepal. We assessed abundance and occurrence relation to covariates using Generalized Linear Models. We found that livestock outnumbered wild ungulates 6.6 to 1. Wild boar was the most abundant wild ungulate, followed by nilgai, chital, and sambar. Elevation and livestock abundance were the most important covariates affecting the overall abundance of wild ungulates and the distribution of each individual ungulate species. Our results suggest spatial segregation between wild ungulates, which occur mainly on high grounds (> 300 m.a.s.l.), and livestock that concentrate across low ground habitats (< 300 m.a.s.l.). Our results provide a critical first step to inform conservation in community forest areas of Nepal, where wildlife interacts with people and their livestock. Finding better strategies to allow the coexistence of ungulates with people and their livestock is imperative if they are to persist into the future.
Highlights
The global environmental crisis is pushing a myriad of species to the brink of extinction [1,2,3]
We investigated how elevation, agricultural land, distance from roads, and the relative abundance of livestock ((cow (Bostaurus indicus), buffalo (Bubalus arnee), goats (Capra hircus), and sheep (Ovis aries)) influenced the abundance and occurrence of wild ungulates (chital (Axis axis), nilgai (Boselaphustrago camelus), wild boar (Sus scrofa) and sambar (Rusa unicolor)), with the goal of providing information to help design more sustainable practices to ensure the coexistence of wild species and people that are dependent on these ecosystems for survival
Model results indicated that the ungulate assemblage abundance increased with increasing elevation (0.37 [95% confidence intervals (CI): 0.23– 0.51]) and increasing distance from roads (0.23 [95% CI: 0.03–0.42]) but decreased with increasing distance from agricultural areas (-0.42 [95% CI: -0.65 –-0.19]) and increasing relative livestock abundance (-1.60 [95% CI: -2.26 –-0.93]) (Fig 2)
Summary
The global environmental crisis is pushing a myriad of species to the brink of extinction [1,2,3]. Among the most vulnerable species are large terrestrial mammals [4,5,6] herbivores [7], which have experienced sharp population declines due to the ongoing and massive anthropogenic pressure on terrestrial ecosystems. Protected areas tend to concentrate human population density at their edges [10, 15], restricting animal mobility and leading to increased humanwildlife conflict, including increased incidences of poaching, and competition and/or predation of livestock [4, 10, 16,17,18]. Finding solutions that ensure the coexistence of wildlife with humans, especially across areas with no form of environmental protection, is crucial for the future of conservation of these species [5, 17]
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