Search

Conserving large carnivores that live in close proximity to people depends on a variety of socio‐economic, political and biological factors. These include local tolerance toward potentially dangerous animals, efficacy of human–carnivore conflict mitigation schemes, and identifying and then addressing the underlying causes of conflict. The Leuser Ecosystem is the largest contiguous forest habitat for the critically endangered Sumatran tiger. Its extensive forest edge is abutted by farming communities and we predict that spatial variation in human–tiger conflict (HTC) would be a function of habitat conversion, livestock abundance, and poaching of tiger and its wild prey. To investigate which of these potential drivers of conflict, as well as other biophysical factors, best explain the observed patterns, we used resource selection function (RSF) technique to develop a predictive spatially explicit model of HTC. From 148 conflict incidences recorded from 2008 to 2018 across the Leuser Ecosystem, the areas that were closer to villages and with lower occurrence of wild prey were most susceptible to tiger attacks. From 18 districts monitored, 6 stood out for having disproportionately high levels of HTC. We recommend that these areas be prioritized with increased support from conflict mitigation teams to prevent further injuries to people, livestock or tigers; district governments address one underlying cause of HTC by supporting improved animal husbandry practices, such as tiger‐proof livestock pen construction; and, an increase in ranger patrol effort to recover wild prey populations. This type of priority setting approach has wide application for better determining the required management response to reduce conflicts between people and large carnivores in both tropical and temporal landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large carnivores living in tropical rainforests are under immense pressure from the rapid conversion of their habitat. In response, millions of dollars are spent on conserving these species. However, the cost-effectiveness of such investments is poorly understood and this is largely because the requisite population estimates are difficult to achieve at appropriate spatial scales for these secretive species. Here, we apply a robust detection/non-detection sampling technique to produce the first reliable population metric (occupancy) for a critically endangered large carnivore; the Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae). From 2007-2009, seven landscapes were surveyed through 13,511 km of transects in 394 grid cells (17 x 17 km). Tiger sign was detected in 206 cells, producing a naive estimate of 0.52. However, after controlling for an unequal detection probability (where p = 0.13±0.017; ±S.E.), the estimated tiger occupancy was 0.72±0.048. Whilst the Sumatra-wide survey results gives cause for optimism, a significant negative correlation between occupancy and recent deforestation was found. For example, the Northern Riau landscape had an average deforestation rate of 9.8%/yr and by far the lowest occupancy (0.33±0.055). Our results highlight the key tiger areas in need of protection and have led to one area (Leuser-Ulu Masen) being upgraded as a 'global priority' for wild tiger conservation. However, Sumatra has one of the highest global deforestation rates and the two largest tiger landscapes identified in this study will become highly fragmented if their respective proposed roads networks are approved. Thus, it is vital that the Indonesian government tackles these threats, e.g. through improved land-use planning, if it is to succeed in meeting its ambitious National Tiger Recovery Plan targets of doubling the number of Sumatran tigers by 2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Niche partitioning is a result of interspecific competition between closely-related species to allow co-existence. Multiple species of small carnivores co-occur throughout their ranges in Sumatra, but they are among the lesser studied group of mammal species. This study aimed to collate occurrence records of small carnivores, model their island-wide spatial distribution, and assess their spatio-temporal niche partitioning in Sumatra. We collated camera trap records of small carnivores that were mainly bycatch data from widespread tiger surveys. We used Maxent to predict suitable habitat for nine small carnivore species in response to environmental variables, calculated pairwise spatial niche overlap, and then assessed temporal overlap using Kernel density estimation. In total, we detected 16 of the 21 small carnivore species known to occur in Sumatra. We predicted the suitable habitat of nine species that were found in ≥ 20 locations. Species with the smallest extent of predicted suitable habitat were the Malay civet (Viverra tangalunga) and short-tailed mongoose (Herpestes brachyurus). Of 36 pairwise comparisons, five species pairs had high overlaps and four species pairs had low overlap on spatiotemporal niche. High overlaps did not necessarily indicate high competition pressure because these species have different behaviour to allow coexistence, such as food preference and arboreality. Camera trap surveys are commonly conducted for species-specific studies, yet they also yield abundant records of non-target species. We therefore encouraged collaboration among institutions working in the same region to use bycatch data to fill the knowledge gaps in the ecology of other lesser known species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Destruction of tropical rainforests reduces many unprotected habitats to small fragments of remnant forests within agricultural matrices. To date, these remnant forest fragments have been largely disregarded as wildlife habitat, and little is known about mammalian use of these areas in Sumatra. Here, we conducted camera trap surveys (2285 trap-nights) within Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park and five surrounding remnant forest fragments during 2010–2013 and used species composition metrics to compare use. We found 28 mammal species in the protected forest and 21 in the fragments. The fragments harboured a subset of species found in the protected forest and several species not observed in the protected forest. Critically endangered species such as Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica) and Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) were found in the forest fragments, along with species of conservation concern such as marbled cat (Pardofelis marmorata) and Asiatic golden cat (Pardofelis temminckii). The biodiversity found within the fragments suggests that these small patches of remnant forest may have conservation value to certain mammal species and indicates the importance of further research into the role these habitats may play in landscape-level, multispecies conservation planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]