Spatial variation in population-density of snow leopards in a multiple use landscape in Spiti Valley, Trans-Himalaya.

Rishi Kumar Sharma,Yash Veer Bhatnagar,Kulbhushansingh R Suryawanshi,Koustubh Sharma,Charudutt Mishra,David Borchers,Stephanie S Romanach

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0250900

Rishi Kumar Sharma, Yash Veer Bhatnagar + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250900

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Abstract

The endangered snow leopard Panthera uncia occurs in human use landscapes in the mountains of South and Central Asia. Conservationists generally agree that snow leopards must be conserved through a land-sharing approach, rather than land-sparing in the form of strictly protected areas. Effective conservation through land-sharing requires a good understanding of how snow leopards respond to human use of the landscape. Snow leopard density is expected to show spatial variation within a landscape because of variation in the intensity of human use and the quality of habitat. However, snow leopards have been difficult to enumerate and monitor. Variation in the density of snow leopards remains undocumented, and the impact of human use on their populations is poorly understood. We examined spatial variation in snow leopard density in Spiti Valley, an important snow leopard landscape in India, via spatially explicit capture-recapture analysis of camera trap data. We camera trapped an area encompassing a minimum convex polygon of 953 km2. Our best model estimated an overall density of 0.5 (95% CI: 0.31–0.82) mature snow leopards per 100 km2. Using AIC, our best model showed the density of snow leopards to depend on estimated wild prey density, movement about activity centres to depend on altitude, and the expected number of encounters at the activity centre to depend on topography. Models that also used livestock biomass as a density covariate ranked second, but the effect of livestock was weak. Our results highlight the importance of maintaining high density pockets of wild prey populations in multiple-use landscapes to enhance snow leopard conservation.

Highlights

Large carnivores typically range over large areas [1], occur naturally at low densities [2] and exhibit elusive behaviour
Our study established the first baseline estimate of the population and density of the snow leopard in Spiti Valley, an important snow leopard habitat in India that has been identified by the Indian Government as a priority landscape under the Global Snow Leopard and Ecosystem
The difference between the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) and the minimum AIC for the given candidate model set is denoted by dAIC, while the associated weight is denoted by AICwt

Summary

Introduction

Large carnivores typically range over large areas [1], occur naturally at low densities [2] and exhibit elusive behaviour. The threatened snow leopard Panthera uncia is a typical example of a difficult to sample elusive carnivore that is reported to occur at relatively low population densities (0.15–3.88/100 km2) even in ideal habitats [5,6,7]. Conservationists generally agree that snow leopards must be conserved amidst people, following a land-sharing approach, rather than overemphasising creation of strictly protected areas [8]. Such an approach, requires a good understanding of the impact of land use on snow leopard populations. Snow leopard population abundances have been challenging to estimate, and spatial variation in their density remains undocumented and poorly understood. We used the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) to select spatial capture-recapture (SCR) models that explain spatial variation in density, encounter rate and habitat use

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