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Farmers are the most important stakeholders in wildlife conservation in the agricultural landscape. Understanding the farmer's perceptions, attitude, behaviour, and knowledge toward conservation is critical in developing an effective conservation programme in human-dominated landscapes. We conducted semi-structured face-to-face interviews with 373 farmers to understand the farmer's perception of ecosystem services provided by diurnal raptors in the arid region of Rajasthan from July 2020 to February 2021 and from August 2021 to January 2022. We grouped ecosystem services and disservices into larger categories and estimated the correlation between them, finding that disservices are negatively correlated with benefits. Raptors were perceived as beneficial for their role in controlling rodents and pests, but negatively for poultry predation. In addition, we built a binomial generalised linear model with a logit function to better understand the factors that influence farmers' perceptions of raptors (positive or negative). We observed that males and females have different attitudes toward the ecosystem services provided by raptors. It is critical to understand social perceptions in order to conserve species that are rare on a global scale but may face negative perceptions on a local scale. Our study connects ecological information with socio-demographic factors, which can be useful in developing policy measures for raptor conservation., Competing Interests: Randeep Singh is an Academic Editor for PeerJ. Rahul Kaul is employed by the Wildlife Trust of India. Puneet Pandey is employed by the Conservation Genome Resource Bank for Korean Wildlife (CGRB), Research Institute for Veterinary Science and College of Veterinary Medicine, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea, and is an affiliate of Enprotec India Foundation., (© 2023 Tiwari et al.)

The leopard, Panthera pardus , is a threatened species in its range throughout the world. Although, historically, the Korean Peninsula had a high population density of leopards, they were extirpated from South Korea by 1970, leaving almost no genetic specimens. Traditionally, Korean leopards are classified as Panthera pardus orientalis ; however, their classification is based only on locality and morphology. Therefore, there is a need for genetic studies to identify the phylogenetic status of Korean leopards at the subspecies level. Presently, no extant wild specimen is available from South Korea; therefore, we extracted genetic material from the old skin of a leopard captured in Jirisan, South Korea in the 1930s and conducted the first phylogenetic study of the South Korean leopard. A total of 726 bp of mitochondrial DNA, including segments of the NADH5 and control region, were amplified by PCR. A phylogenetic analysis of the fragment, along with sequences of nine leopard subspecies from GenBank revealed that the extinct South Korean leopard belonged to the Asian leopard group and in the same clade as the Amur leopard ( Panthera pardus orientalis ). Thus, the leopard that inhabited South Korea in the past was of the same subspecies as the Amur leopard population currently inhabiting the transboundary region of Russia, China, and North Korea. These results emphasize the importance of conserving the endangered wild Amur leopard population (estimated to be about 60-80 individuals) in Russia and China, for future restoration of leopards in the Korean Peninsula., Competing Interests: Tiger and Leopard Conservation Fund in Korea (KTLCF) is a nonprofit, non-governmental organization that started as a small civic gathering to help conserve Amur tigers and leopards. All the fund of KTLCF is donations from members and all of the authors affiliated with KTLCF, Jee Yun Hyun, Jang Hyuk Cho, Puneet Pandey, and Hang Lee, are not employed by KTLCF, but are volunteers who serves for KTLCF but receives no compensation from KTLCF. KTLCF is supporting the conservation of Amur leopard and tiger in Russia, doing research on history of relationship between tigers/leopards and Korean people, and educating people to conserve wildlife., (© 2020 Hyun et al.)