Reducing persecution is more effective for restoring large carnivores than restoring their prey

作者：Benjamin Bleyhl, Arash Ghoddousi, Elshad Askerov, Greta Bocedi, Urs Breitenmoser, Karen Manvelyan, Stephen C. F. Palmer, Mahmood Soofi, Paul Weinberg, Nugzar Zazanashvili, Valerii Shmunk, Damaris Zurell, Tobias Kuemmerle · 发表于：Ecological Applications · 年份：2021 · DOI：10.1002/eap.2338 · 被引用次数：38 · 研究领域：Wildlife Ecology and Conservation、Species Distribution and Climate Change、Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology

Abstract Large carnivores are currently disappearing from many world regions because of habitat loss, prey depletion, and persecution. Ensuring large carnivore persistence requires safeguarding and sometimes facilitating the expansion of their populations. Understanding which conservation strategies, such as reducing persecution or restoring prey, are most effective to help carnivores to reclaim their former ranges is therefore important. Here, we systematically explored such alternative strategies for the endangered Persian leopard ( Panthera pardus saxicolor ) in the Caucasus. We combined a rule‐based habitat suitability map and a spatially explicit leopard population model to identify potential leopard subpopulations (i.e., breeding patches), and to test the effect of different levels of persecution reduction and prey restoration on leopard population viability across the entire Caucasus ecoregion and northern Iran (about 737,000 km 2 ). We identified substantial areas of potentially suitable leopard habitat (~120,000 km 2 ), most of which is currently unoccupied. Our model revealed that leopards could potentially recolonize these patches and increase to a population of >1,000 individuals in 100 yr, but only in scenarios of medium to high persecution reduction and prey restoration. Overall, reducing persecution had a more pronounced effect on leopard metapopulation viability than prey restoration: Without conservation strategies to reduce persecution, leopards went exti...