Protected areas are fundamental for conservation, yet are constantly threatened by illegal activities, such as cattle encroachment and wildlife poaching, which reduce biodiversity. Law enforcement is an essential component of reducing illegal activities. Although necessary, law enforcement is costly and its effectiveness in the field is rarely monitored. Improving ranger patrol efficiency is likely to decrease illegal activity occurrence and benefit biodiversity conservation, without additional resource implications. Using ranger-collected data, we develop a method to improve ranger patrol allocation, targeting different combinations of conservation priorities, and predict that detections of illegal activities can be greatly improved. In a field test in Queen Elizabeth Protected Area, Uganda, we increased detections of illegal activities in some cases by over 250% without a change in ranger resources. This easily implemented method can be used in any protected area where data on the distribution of illegal activities are collected, and improve law-enforcement efficiency in resource-limited settings.
1. African lions are declining across much of their range, yet robust measures of population densities remain rare. The Queen Elizabeth Conservation Area (QECA; 2,400 km 2 ) in East Africa's Albertine Rift has potential to support a significant lion population. However, QECA lions are threatened, and information on the status of lions in the region is lacking.2. Here, we use a spatially explicit search encounter approach to estimate key population parameters of lions in the QECA. We then compare home range sizes estimated from our models to those from a radio-collaring study implemented a decade earlier.3. We recorded 8,243.5 km of search effort over 93 days, detecting 30 individual lions (16 female and 14 male) on 165 occasions at a rate of 2 lion detections/100 km 2 .Lion density in the QECA was 2.70 adult lions/100 km 2 (SD = 0.47), while mean abundance was 71 individuals (SD = 11.05).4. Worryingly, the movement parameter for male lions was 3.27 km and 2.22 km for females, suggesting > 400%, and > 100% increases in home range size, respectively, compared to a decade earlier. Sex ratio of lions in the QECA was lower (1 male: 0.75 females), when compared to a previously published review (mean = 1:2.33).
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