Spatial variation in population-density, movement and detectability of snow leopards in a multiple use landscape in Spiti Valley, Trans-Himalaya

The endangered snow leopard Panthera uncia occurs in human use landscapes
in the mountains of South and Central Asia. Conservationists generally
agree that snow leopards must be conserved through a land-sharing
approach, rather than land-sparing in the form of strictly protected
areas. Effective conservation through land-sharing requires a good
understanding of how snow leopards respond to human use of the landscape.
Snow leopard density is expected to show spatial variation within a
landscape because of variation in the intensity of human use and the
quality of habitat. However, snow leopards have been difficult to
enumerate and monitor. Variation in the density of snow leopards remains
undocumented, and the impact of human use on their populations is poorly
understood. We examined spatial variation in snow leopard density in Spiti
Valley, an important snow leopard landscape in India, via spatially
explicit capture recapture analysis of camera trap data. We camera trapped
an area encompassing a minimum convex polygon of 953 km2. We estimated an
overall density of 0.49 (95% CI: 0.39-0.73) adult snow leopards per 100
km2. Using AIC, our best model showed the density of snow leopards to
depend on wild prey density, movement about activity centres to depend on
altitude, and the expected number of encounters at the activity centre to
depend on topography. Models that also used livestock biomass as a density
covariate ranked second, but the effect of livestock was weak. Our results
highlight the importance of maintaining high density pockets of wild prey
populations in multiple use landscapes to enhance snow leopard
conservation.