Evidence of a high density population of harvested leopards in a montane environment

Chase Grey, J.N.; Kent, V.T.; Hill, R.A.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0082832

Evidence of a high density population of harvested leopards in a montane environment

Chase Grey, J.N.; Kent, V.T.; Hill, R.A.

Authors

J.N. Chase Grey

V.T. Kent

Professor Russell Hill r.a.hill@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

Populations of large carnivores can persist in mountainous environments following extensive land use change and the conversion of suitable habitat for agriculture and human habitation in lower lying areas of their range. The significance of these populations is poorly understood, however, and little attention has focussed on why certain mountainous areas can hold high densities of large carnivores and what the conservation implications of such populations might be. Here we use the leopard (Panthera pardus) population in the western Soutpansberg Mountains, South Africa, as a model system and show that montane habitats can support high numbers of leopards. Spatially explicit capture-recapture (SECR) analysis recorded the highest density of leopards reported outside of state-protected areas in sub-Saharan Africa. This density represents a temporally high local abundance of leopards and we explore the explanations for this alongside some of the potential conservation implications.

Citation

Chase Grey, J., Kent, V., & Hill, R. (2013). Evidence of a high density population of harvested leopards in a montane environment. PLoS ONE, 8(12), Article e82832. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0082832

Journal Article Type	Article
Publication Date	Dec 1, 2013
Deposit Date	May 10, 2013
Publicly Available Date	Dec 22, 2013
Journal	PLoS ONE
Publisher	Public Library of Science
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	8
Issue	12
Article Number	e82832
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0082832

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Copyright Statement
Copyright: © 2013 Chase Grey et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.