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Do conservation strategies that increase tiger populations have consequences for other wild carnivores like leopards?

Most large carnivore populations are declining across their global range except in some well managed protected areas (PA’s). Investments for conserving charismatic apex carnivores are often justified due to their umbrella effect on biodiversity. We evaluate population trends of two large sympatric c...

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Autores principales: Kumar, Ujjwal, Awasthi, Neha, Qureshi, Qamar, Jhala, Yadvendradev
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6789119/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31604995
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-51213-w
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author Kumar, Ujjwal
Awasthi, Neha
Qureshi, Qamar
Jhala, Yadvendradev
author_facet Kumar, Ujjwal
Awasthi, Neha
Qureshi, Qamar
Jhala, Yadvendradev
author_sort Kumar, Ujjwal
collection PubMed
description Most large carnivore populations are declining across their global range except in some well managed protected areas (PA’s). Investments for conserving charismatic apex carnivores are often justified due to their umbrella effect on biodiversity. We evaluate population trends of two large sympatric carnivores, the tiger and leopard through spatially-explicit-capture-recapture models from camera trap data in Kanha PA, India, from 2011 to 2016. Our results show that the overall density (100 km(−2)) of tigers ranged between 4.82 ± 0.33 to 5.21 ± 0.55SE and of leopards between 6.63 ± 0.71 to 8.64 ± 0.75SE, with no detectable trends at the PA scale. When evaluated at the catchment scale, Banjar catchment that had higher prey density and higher conservation investments, recorded significant growth of both carnivores. While Halon catchment, that had lower prey and conservation investments, populations of both carnivores remained stable. Sex ratio of both carnivores was female biased. As is typical with large carnivores, movement parameter sigma (an index for range size), was larger for males than for females. However, sigma was surprisingly similar for the same genders in both carnivores. At home-range scale, leopards achieved high densities and positive growth rates in areas that had low, medium or declining tiger density. Our results suggest that umbrella-species conservation value of tigers is likely to be compromised at very high densities and therefore should not be artificially inflated through targeted management.
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spelling pubmed-67891192019-10-17 Do conservation strategies that increase tiger populations have consequences for other wild carnivores like leopards? Kumar, Ujjwal Awasthi, Neha Qureshi, Qamar Jhala, Yadvendradev Sci Rep Article Most large carnivore populations are declining across their global range except in some well managed protected areas (PA’s). Investments for conserving charismatic apex carnivores are often justified due to their umbrella effect on biodiversity. We evaluate population trends of two large sympatric carnivores, the tiger and leopard through spatially-explicit-capture-recapture models from camera trap data in Kanha PA, India, from 2011 to 2016. Our results show that the overall density (100 km(−2)) of tigers ranged between 4.82 ± 0.33 to 5.21 ± 0.55SE and of leopards between 6.63 ± 0.71 to 8.64 ± 0.75SE, with no detectable trends at the PA scale. When evaluated at the catchment scale, Banjar catchment that had higher prey density and higher conservation investments, recorded significant growth of both carnivores. While Halon catchment, that had lower prey and conservation investments, populations of both carnivores remained stable. Sex ratio of both carnivores was female biased. As is typical with large carnivores, movement parameter sigma (an index for range size), was larger for males than for females. However, sigma was surprisingly similar for the same genders in both carnivores. At home-range scale, leopards achieved high densities and positive growth rates in areas that had low, medium or declining tiger density. Our results suggest that umbrella-species conservation value of tigers is likely to be compromised at very high densities and therefore should not be artificially inflated through targeted management. Nature Publishing Group UK 2019-10-11 /pmc/articles/PMC6789119/ /pubmed/31604995 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-51213-w Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Kumar, Ujjwal
Awasthi, Neha
Qureshi, Qamar
Jhala, Yadvendradev
Do conservation strategies that increase tiger populations have consequences for other wild carnivores like leopards?
title Do conservation strategies that increase tiger populations have consequences for other wild carnivores like leopards?
title_full Do conservation strategies that increase tiger populations have consequences for other wild carnivores like leopards?
title_fullStr Do conservation strategies that increase tiger populations have consequences for other wild carnivores like leopards?
title_full_unstemmed Do conservation strategies that increase tiger populations have consequences for other wild carnivores like leopards?
title_short Do conservation strategies that increase tiger populations have consequences for other wild carnivores like leopards?
title_sort do conservation strategies that increase tiger populations have consequences for other wild carnivores like leopards?
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6789119/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31604995
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-51213-w
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