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 times higher
than bharal density. Bharal were found to prefer utilizing more rugged
habitats at higher elevations with lower grass forage conditions, whereas
livestock dominated in flat valleys at lower elevations with higher
productivity, especially during the resource-scarce season. These findings
suggest that the spatial niche separation between bharal and livestock,
together with snow leopards’ specialized bharal diet, minimized conflicts
and allowed snow leopards and bharal to coexist in landscapes dominated by
livestock grazing. In recent years, reduced hunting and nomadic herder’s
lifestyle changes towards permanent residence may have further reinforced
this spatial separation. Our results indicated that, for developing
conservation strategies for large carnivores, the niche of their prey in
relation to human land-use is a key variable that needs to be evaluated.