Relative availability of natural prey versus livestock predicts landscape suitability for cheetahs Acinonyx jubatus in Botswana
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Conservation Biology, Ecology, Environmental Sciences, Zoology, Coupled Natural and Human Systems
- Keywords
- cheetah, landscape suitability, prey availability, human-carnivore conflict, Botswana
- Copyright
- © 2015 Winterbach et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2015. Relative availability of natural prey versus livestock predicts landscape suitability for cheetahs Acinonyx jubatus in Botswana. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e823v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.823v1
Abstract
Prey availability and human-carnivore conflict are strong determinants that govern the spatial distribution and abundance of large carnivore species and determine the suitability of areas for their conservation. For wide-ranging large carnivores such as cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) suitable conservation areas beyond protected area boundaries are crucial to effectively conserve them both inside and outside protected areas. Although cheetahs prefer preying on wild prey, they also cause conflict with people by predating on especially small livestock. We investigated whether the distribution of cheetahs’ preferred prey and small livestock biomass can be used to explore the current potential suitability of agricultural areas in Botswana for the long-term persistence of its cheetah population. We found it gave a good point of departure for identifying priority areas for land management, the threat to connectivity between cheetah populations and areas where the reduction and mitigation of human-cheetah conflict is critical. Our analysis showed the existence of a wide prey base for cheetahs across large parts of Botswana’s agricultural areas which provide additional large areas with high conservation potential. Twenty percent wild prey biomass proved to be possibly the critical point to distinguish between high and low predicted levels of human-cheetah conflict. We identified focal areas in the agricultural zones where restoring wild prey numbers in concurrence with effective human-cheetah conflict mitigation efforts are the most immediate conservation strategies needed to maintain Botswana’s still large and contiguous cheetah population.
Author Comment
This is version 1 of a submission to PeerJ.
Supplemental Information
Cheetah wild prey and small stock biomass per agricultural zones and stratums
Cheetah wild prey, small stock and percentage cheetah prey biomass and records of livestock attacks by cheetahs from 1996 to 2006 per aerial survey grid in the different agricultural zones and stratums.
Number and percentage of aerial survey grids with ≤ 20% cheetah wild prey
The number and percentage of aerial survey grids with ≤ 20% cheetah wild prey per substratum with which the current country-wide landscape suitability map for the long-term persistence of cheetahs in Botswana was derived.