Prioritizing core areas, corridors and conflict hotspots for lion conservation in southern Africa

Abstract

Conservation of large carnivores, such as the African lion, requires preservation of extensive core habitat areas, linkages between them, and mitigation of human-wildlife conflict. However, there are few rigorous examples of efforts that prioritized conservation actions for all three of these critical components. We used an empirically optimized resistance surface to calculate resistant kernel and factorial least cost path predictions of population connectivity and conflict risk for lions across the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA) and surrounding landscape. We mapped and ranked the relative importance of (1) lion dispersal areas outside National Parks, (2) corridors between the key areas, and (3) areas of highest human-lion conflict risk. Spatial prioritization of conservation actions is critical given extensive land use redesignations that are reducing the extent and increasing the fragmentation of lion populations. While our example focuses on lions in southern Africa, it provides a general approach for rigorous, empirically based comprehensive conservation planning based on spatial prioritization.

Multi‐scale habitat modelling identifies spatial conservation priorities for mainland clouded leopards (Neofelis nebulosa)

“…Neofelis nebulosa does occur in higher elevations (e.g., Bhutan, Nepal, China); however, these coincide with range edges. Declining detections in lower CTI regions may be due to both habitat preference and population dynamics typical of marginal populations (e.g., smaller effective population sizes, lower dispersal and mating potential) (Bothwell et al., ; Cushman et al., ; Eckert, Samis, & Lougheed, ). Divergence in optimal CTI may also reflect greater deforestation intensity in Borneo and Sumatra.…”

Operationalizing Ecological Resilience Concepts for Managing Species and Ecosystems at Risk

“…A reduction in landscape connectivity can be considered an early-warning indicator of shifts among stable or metastable states of systems (Zurlini et al, 2014). Landscape connectivity has been used as a surrogate for spatial resilience in ecoregional planning for wildlife (Cushman and Landguth, 2012;Cushman et al, 2016Cushman et al, , 2018, forest (Theobald et al, 2011) and invasive species management (Alistair et al, 2013). It has also been used to evaluate the loss of individual wetlands in wetland complexes (Uden et al, 2014) and ecosystem provisioning for humans (Wu, 2013).…”

Simulating the impact of Belt and Road initiative and other major developments in Myanmar on an ambassador felid, the clouded leopard, Neofelis nebulosa

“…This dispersal threshold represents a cumulative cost per map unit (in this case-a meter) of an animal traversing a distance of 250 km through a uniform landscape of resistance equal 1. We chose a cost unit threshold value of 1,250,000 for least-cost paths to model long-distance connections beyond the extent of locally connected populations to prioritize conservation of stepping stones and linkage areas that are beyond the dispersal ability of most individual animals but are important for long-term connectivity of metapopulations (e.g., Cushman et al 2018;Elliot et al 2014b).…”