Reducing persecution is more effective for restoring large carnivores than restoring their prey

Abstract

Large carnivores are currently disappearing from many world regions because of habitat loss, prey depletion, and persecution. Ensuring large carnivore persistence requires safeguarding and sometimes facilitating the expansion of their populations. Understanding which conservation strategies, such as reducing persecution or restoring prey, are most effective to help carnivores to reclaim their former ranges is therefore important. Here, we systematically explored such alternative strategies for the endangered Persian leopard (Panthera pardus saxicolor) in the Caucasus. We combined a rule‐based habitat suitability map and a spatially explicit leopard population model to identify potential leopard subpopulations (i.e., breeding patches), and to test the effect of different levels of persecution reduction and prey restoration on leopard population viability across the entire Caucasus ecoregion and northern Iran (about 737,000 km2). We identified substantial areas of potentially suitable leopard habitat (~120,000 km2), most of which is currently unoccupied. Our model revealed that leopards could potentially recolonize these patches and increase to a population of >1,000 individuals in 100 yr, but only in scenarios of medium to high persecution reduction and prey restoration. Overall, reducing persecution had a more pronounced effect on leopard metapopulation viability than prey restoration: Without conservation strategies to reduce persecution, leopards went extinct from the Caucasus in all scenarios tested. Our study highlights the importance of persecution reduction in small populations, which should hence be prioritized when resources for conservation are limited. We show how individual‐based, spatially explicit metapopulation models can help in quantifying the recolonization potential of large carnivores in unoccupied habitat, designing adequate conservation strategies to foster such recolonizations, and anticipating the long‐term prospects of carnivore populations under alternative scenarios. Our study also outlines how data scarcity, which is typical for threatened range‐expanding species, can be overcome with a rule‐based habitat map. For Persian leopards, our projections clearly suggest that there is a large potential for a viable metapopulation in the Caucasus, but only if major conservation actions are taken towards reducing persecution and restoring prey.

Orangutan movement and population dynamics across human-modified landscapes: implications of policy and management

“…Ensuring sufficient habitat remains or is restored in agricultural landscapes will be vital to promote functional connectivity, but this is only half the battle. Connectivity may be overestimated if negative human-wildlife interactions (such as crop foraging or hunting) are not considered (Day et al 2020;Ghoddousi et al 2020;Bleyhl et al 2021). Our sensitivity analysis suggests changes in mortality risk during dispersal are likely to have a large effect on the ability of the agricultural landscape to support orangutan and allow movement between patches.…”

Quantifying the relationship between prey density, livestock and illegal killing of leopards

“…Therefore, mitigation of human–leopard conflict should be a conservation priority (Ghoddousi et al, 2020). A recent analysis of metapopulation dynamics of Persian leopard found that reducing levels of persecution is the principal requirement to enable recolonization of the leopard population in the Caucasus ecoregion (Bleyhl et al, 2021).…”

“…Our Kernel density analysis showed that female leopards were vulnerable to illegal killing at younger ages (1–6 years), whereas males showed a relatively similar mortality pattern in all age groups (0–10 years) (Figure 5a–d). This may indicate a potentially serious threat of leopard killing to species survival in Iran as the survival of adult females is a vital determinant of population self‐maintenance in big cats (Bleyhl et al, 2021).…”

Spatially explicit models for decision‐making in animal conservation and restoration

“…Similarly, habitat degradation and climate change may put the native fauna at a competitive disadvantage against potential and already‐established invasive species (Foley 2005, Bellard et al 2013). Likewise, rewilding apex predators may be unsuccessful in a policy context that does not regulate poaching (Bleyhl et al 2021), and riparian habitat restoration may be inefficient when pollution sources are not eliminated first. Quantifying whether stressors affect biodiversity additively or synergistically requires improved environmental data, including past time series when studying legacy effects (Semper‐Pascual et al 2021) and future scenarios to inform decision‐making.…”

“…Typically, spatiotemporal data are particularly scarce for rare species that often are of high conservation concern. Recent studies show promise for using habitat and demographic proxies in such cases (Bleyhl et al 2021). Additionally, we see great potential for extending available time-series data through emerging new sensor and genetic techniques and approaches that will improve our ability to document biodiversity dynamics and patterns but will also provide a more complete, holistic picture of ecosystem restoration (Pimm et al 2015).…”