Department Endangered Species Management, Wildlife Institute of India, Chandrabani, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India.
Savannah Research Ecology Laboratory, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA.
Sci Rep. 2021 Feb 16;11(1):3862. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-83262-5.
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.
随着人类对自然栖息地的改变日益增多，大型捕食者被迫与人类共享空间和资源，以便在多用途景观中共存。在这种共享的景观中，人类和捕食者的共存常常导致人类-捕食者冲突，对生物多样性保护构成重大挑战。为了更好地阐明热点地区人类-野生动物冲突中的大型食肉动物的空间利用情况，我们使用了 GPS 数据（N=6）来确定行为状态，并记录了在印度东部北孟加拉邦的破碎景观中，对季节和人类活动周期的资源选择的空间模式。我们确定了两种主要的行为状态（即休息和旅行）。从资源选择模型中，我们发现豹子在休息和旅行时会选择植被密度较高或中等、靠近水源的栖息地。在旱季，即人类-豹子冲突风险最高的时候，豹子会选择茶园、森林斑块，但会避开保护区。这些结果表明，南亚多用途景观中，人类-捕食者冲突可能会增加，保护大型捕食者的策略也需要相应调整。
