Responses of snow leopards, wolves and wild ungulates to livestock grazing in the Zorkul Strictly Protected Area, Tajikistan
Long recognized as a threat to wildlife, livestock grazing in protected areas has the potential to undermine conservation goals, via competition, habitat degradation, human-carnivore conflict and disruption of predator-prey relationships. In the Strictly Protected Area Zorkul in Tajikistan (Zorkul R...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:6269086 2023-05-15T15:51:00+02:00 Responses of snow leopards, wolves and wild ungulates to livestock grazing in the Zorkul Strictly Protected Area, Tajikistan Karimov, Khalil Kachel, Shannon M. Hackländer, Klaus 2018-11-30 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6269086/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30500847 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0208329 en eng Public Library of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6269086/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30500847 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0208329 © 2018 Karimov et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. CC-BY Research Article Text 2018 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0208329 2018-12-23T01:12:59Z Long recognized as a threat to wildlife, livestock grazing in protected areas has the potential to undermine conservation goals, via competition, habitat degradation, human-carnivore conflict and disruption of predator-prey relationships. In the Strictly Protected Area Zorkul in Tajikistan (Zorkul Reserve), grazing is commonplace despite official prohibition, with potentially detrimental effects on local fauna, in particular, snow leopard Panthera uncia, wolf Canis lupus, brown bear Ursus arctos, argali sheep Ovis ammon, Asiatic ibex Capra sibirica, and long-tailed marmot Marmota caudata. To understand the impacts of grazing and associated human pastoralism on the large mammal community in Zorkul Reserve we used data from camera traps to build models of ungulate and carnivore site use intensity, and we investigated carnivore summer diets using microscopic scat analysis. While sample sizes limited our inference for several species, we found that site use of the most common ungulate, argali, decreased with proximity to herder’s camps, indicating possible displacement into sub-optimal habitats. However, no such pattern was present in carnivore site use. For wolf and snow leopard, the most frequently encountered prey items were argali and marmot, while bear depended almost exclusively on marmot. While current pastoralist practices in the reserve may not be incompatible with wildlife presence, our findings suggest that pastoralism may negatively impact ungulates by displacing them from otherwise suitable habitats, with unknown fitness consequences for ungulates or the predators that depend upon them. Managing Zorkul Reserve and other actively grazed protected areas to meet potentially competing demands of local pastoralist communities and conservation will require careful consideration of such interactions to minimize the risk of cascading negative impacts on wildlife. Text Canis lupus Ursus arctos PubMed Central (PMC) PLOS ONE 13 11 e0208329 |
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Research Article Karimov, Khalil Kachel, Shannon M. Hackländer, Klaus Responses of snow leopards, wolves and wild ungulates to livestock grazing in the Zorkul Strictly Protected Area, Tajikistan |
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Research Article |
description |
Long recognized as a threat to wildlife, livestock grazing in protected areas has the potential to undermine conservation goals, via competition, habitat degradation, human-carnivore conflict and disruption of predator-prey relationships. In the Strictly Protected Area Zorkul in Tajikistan (Zorkul Reserve), grazing is commonplace despite official prohibition, with potentially detrimental effects on local fauna, in particular, snow leopard Panthera uncia, wolf Canis lupus, brown bear Ursus arctos, argali sheep Ovis ammon, Asiatic ibex Capra sibirica, and long-tailed marmot Marmota caudata. To understand the impacts of grazing and associated human pastoralism on the large mammal community in Zorkul Reserve we used data from camera traps to build models of ungulate and carnivore site use intensity, and we investigated carnivore summer diets using microscopic scat analysis. While sample sizes limited our inference for several species, we found that site use of the most common ungulate, argali, decreased with proximity to herder’s camps, indicating possible displacement into sub-optimal habitats. However, no such pattern was present in carnivore site use. For wolf and snow leopard, the most frequently encountered prey items were argali and marmot, while bear depended almost exclusively on marmot. While current pastoralist practices in the reserve may not be incompatible with wildlife presence, our findings suggest that pastoralism may negatively impact ungulates by displacing them from otherwise suitable habitats, with unknown fitness consequences for ungulates or the predators that depend upon them. Managing Zorkul Reserve and other actively grazed protected areas to meet potentially competing demands of local pastoralist communities and conservation will require careful consideration of such interactions to minimize the risk of cascading negative impacts on wildlife. |
format |
Text |
author |
Karimov, Khalil Kachel, Shannon M. Hackländer, Klaus |
author_facet |
Karimov, Khalil Kachel, Shannon M. Hackländer, Klaus |
author_sort |
Karimov, Khalil |
title |
Responses of snow leopards, wolves and wild ungulates to livestock grazing in the Zorkul Strictly Protected Area, Tajikistan |
title_short |
Responses of snow leopards, wolves and wild ungulates to livestock grazing in the Zorkul Strictly Protected Area, Tajikistan |
title_full |
Responses of snow leopards, wolves and wild ungulates to livestock grazing in the Zorkul Strictly Protected Area, Tajikistan |
title_fullStr |
Responses of snow leopards, wolves and wild ungulates to livestock grazing in the Zorkul Strictly Protected Area, Tajikistan |
title_full_unstemmed |
Responses of snow leopards, wolves and wild ungulates to livestock grazing in the Zorkul Strictly Protected Area, Tajikistan |
title_sort |
responses of snow leopards, wolves and wild ungulates to livestock grazing in the zorkul strictly protected area, tajikistan |
publisher |
Public Library of Science |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6269086/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30500847 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0208329 |
genre |
Canis lupus Ursus arctos |
genre_facet |
Canis lupus Ursus arctos |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6269086/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30500847 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0208329 |
op_rights |
© 2018 Karimov et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
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CC-BY |
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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0208329 |
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PLOS ONE |
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13 |
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11 |
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e0208329 |
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