Understanding the environmental and anthropogenic correlates of tiger presence in a montane conservation landscape
2019
Penjor, Ugyen | Tan, Cedric Kai Wei | Sonam Wangdi, | Macdonald, David W. (David Whyte)
Management of tigers is a response to a global conservation crisis. Range contraction, population decline, habitat fragmentation, prey loss, and poaching cause and aggravate this crisis. There is a debate as to whether conserving source sites or maintaining landscape connectivity is the greater priority. Both approaches rely on understanding environmental and anthropogenic factors. We used a large dataset from a nation-wide camera trapping survey to investigate factors affecting habitat use of tigers across the montane landscape of Bhutan. We tested the effects of environmental and anthropogenic covariates on habitat use while accounting for imperfect detection using a hierarchical occupancy model. Tiger habitat use showed a strong positive association with closeness to protected area, greater distance from human settlement and availability of abundant large prey. Our findings can help to identify the drivers of tiger decline and contribute to the refinement of conservation strategies to combat that decline in this montane conservation landscape. We provide a general approach to tiger conservation by highlighting the importance of understanding the basic ecology of this apex predator, including the relationship between environmental and anthropogenic variables and habitat use. Bhutan, with unusually strong environmental legislation, and a high percentage of its area protected and under contiguous forest cover, set the global standard in large carnivore conservation and is an important component of a wider conservation complex in South Asia.
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