Spatial separation of prey from livestock facilitates coexistence of a specialized large carnivore with human land use

There is an increasing emphasis in conservation strategies for large carnivores on facilitating their coexistence with humans. Justification for coexistence strategies should be based on a quantitative assessment of currently remaining large carnivores in human-dominated landscapes. An essential part of a carnivore’s coexistence strategy has to rely on its prey. In this research, we studied snow leopards Panthera uncia whose habitat mainly comprises human-dominated, unprotected areas, to understand how a large carnivore and its primary prey, the bharal Pseudois nayaur, could coexist with human land use activities in a large proportion of its range. Using a combination of livestock census, camera trapping and wildlife surveys, across a broad gradient of livestock grazing intensity in a 363,000 km2 landscape on the Tibetan Plateau, we found no evidence of livestock grazing impacts on snow leopard habitat use, bharal density and spatial distribution, even though livestock density was 13 ti...