Human disturbance and the activity patterns and temporal overlap of tapirs and jaguars in reserves of NW Belize.

Human disturbance from tourism and other non-consumptive activities in protected areas may be stressful to wildlife. Animals may move away in space or time to avoid human interaction. For species of particular conservation concern, such as Baird’s tapirs (Tapirus bairdii) and jaguars (Panthera onca), a better understanding of how they respond to different levels and types of disturbance is needed in order to manage human visitation to parks in ways that minimize negative outcomes for wildlife. We describe the overlap of activity patterns of tapirs, jaguars, and humans at logged and unlogged sites and at places with low versus high human visitation using camera survey data from protected areas of northwest Belize, 2013-2016. Tapirs were nocturnal in all study sites, with >80 percent of all tapir detections occurring between 1900 h and 0500 h. Their activity patterns were not different in unlogged versus logged sites and did not change with increased human traffic. Jaguars were catheme...