Mapping the connectivity-conflict interface to inform conservation.

Balancing the competing, and often conflicting, needs of people and wildlife in shared landscapes is a major challenge for conservation science and policy worldwide. Connectivity is critical for wildlife persistence, but dispersing animals may come into conflict with people, leading to severe costs for humans and animals and impeding connectivity. Thus, conflict mitigation and connectivity present an apparent dilemma for conservation. We present a framework to address this dilemma and disentangle the effects of barriers to animal movement and conflict-induced mortality of dispersers on connectivity. We extend random-walk theory to map the connectivity-conflict interface, or areas where frequent animal movement may lead to conflict and conflict in turn impedes connectivity. We illustrate this framework with the endangered Asian elephant Elephas maximus, a species that frequently disperses out of protected areas and comes into conflict with humans. We mapped expected movement across a human-dominated landscape over the short- and long-term, accounting for conflict mortality. Natural and conflict-induced mortality together reduced expected movement and connectivity among populations. Based on model validation, our conflict predictions that explicitly captured animal movement better explained observed conflict than a model that considered distribution alone. Our work highlights the interaction between connectivity and conflict and enables identification of location-specific conflict mitigation strategies that minimize losses to people, while ensuring critical wildlife movement between habitats. By predicting where animal movement and humans collide, we provide a basis to plan for broad-scale conservation and the mutual well-being of wildlife and people in shared landscapes.

Coupled effects of climatic forcing and the human footprint on wildlife movement and space use in a dynamic floodplain landscape.

With climate change, terrestrial fauna in riparian floodplain ecosystems must adapt to a predicted increase in frequency and magnitude of fluvial perturbations. Seasonal migration to seek refuge from floodwaters represents a central adaptation strategy, but may entail risky navigation of anthropogenic spaces in heterogeneous landscapes. Here, we demonstrate the opportunities and constraints large-bodied mammalian herbivores face during an adaptive response of obligatory flood-driven refuge migration, across a human-dominated environment. Our study system, centred around a productive protected area--Kaziranga National Park in Assam, Northeast India--on the floodplains of the Brahmaputra River, is home to an abundance of large herbivores that undertake seasonal migrations in response to floods. We contrast species distribution data during a major flood event with those from the dry season to illustrate season-specific movement and space use decisions of large herbivores ranging in body mass from the 3000-kg Asian elephant Elephas maximus to the 20-kg muntjac Muntiacus muntjak. In the dry season, most large herbivores--a majority of which are endangered and threatened by anthropogenic pressures--avoided areas with a strong human footprint, while preferring spaces with high land-use diversity. During the floods, such species were pushed out of inundated habitats within the protected area, and they chose to move through woodlands and areas under bamboo cover on private lands, as they migrated to forested refugia on higher ground. Our results show how seasonal environmental constraints shaped by floods determine the internal motivation of animals to risk traversing a human-dominated space to seek refuge, which contextually defines how animals view and navigate the landscape. Such insights underscore the importance of dynamic and adaptive planning, and participatory conservation efforts, to facilitate connectivity in the changing environment and climate of the present Anthropocene.

A Bayesian hierarchical approach to quantifying stakeholder attitudes toward conservation in the presence of reporting error.

Stakeholder support is vital for achieving conservation success, yet there are few reliable mechanisms to monitor stakeholder attitudes toward conservation. Approaches used to assess attitudes rarely account for bias arising from reporting error, which can lead to falsely reporting a positive attitude toward conservation (false-positive error) or not reporting a positive attitude when the respondent has a positive attitude toward conservation (false-negative error). Borrowing from developments in applied conservation science, we used a Bayesian hierarchical model to quantify stakeholder attitudes as the probability of having a positive attitude toward wildlife notionally (or in abstract terms) and at localized scales while accounting for reporting error. We compared estimates from our model, Likert scores, and naïve estimates (i.e., proportion of respondents reporting a positive attitude in at least 1 question that was only susceptible to false-negative error) with true stakeholder attitudes through simulations. We then applied the model in a survey of tea estate staff on their attitudes toward Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) in the Kaziranga-Karbi Anglong landscape of northeast India. In simulations, Bayesian model estimates of stakeholder attitudes toward wildlife were less biased than naïve estimates or Likert scores. After accounting for reporting errors, we estimated the probability of having a positive attitude toward elephants notionally as 0.85 in the Kaziranga landscape, whereas the proportion of respondents who had positive attitudes toward elephants at a localized scale was 0.50. In comparison, without accounting for reporting errors, naïve estimates of proportions of respondents with positive attitudes toward elephants were 0.69 and 0.23 notionally and at local scales, respectively. False (positive and negative) reporting probabilities were consistently not 0 (0.22-0.68). Regular and reliable assessment of stakeholder attitudes-combined with inference on drivers of positive attitudes-can help assess the success of initiatives aimed at facilitating human behavioral change and inform conservation decision making.

Una Estrategia de Jerarquía Bayesiana para Cuantificar las Actitudes de Grupos de Interés hacia la Conservación en Presencia de Errores de Información Resumen El apoyo de los grupos de interés es vital para alcanzar el éxito en la conservación, sin embargo, existen pocos mecanismos confiables para monitorear la actitud de los grupos de interés hacia la conservación. Las estrategias que se usan para valorar las actitudes de los grupos de interés pocas veces toman en cuenta el sesgo que surge de errores en la información, lo cual puede resultar en un falso reporte de actitudes positivas hacia la conservación (error falso positivo) o en que no se reporte una actitud positiva cuando el respondiente tiene una actitud positiva hacia la conservación (error falso negativo). Usamos un modelo de jerarquía bayesiana, construido a partir del desarrollo aplicado en la ciencia de la conservación, para cuantificar las actitudes de los grupos de interés como la probabilidad de tener, teóricamente (o en términos abstractos) y a escalas locales, una actitud positiva hacia la vida silvestre mientras se compensa el error de información. Comparamos mediante simulaciones las estimaciones de nuestro modelo, los puntajes de Likert y las estimaciones ingenuas (es decir, la proporción de los respondientes que reportaron una actitud positiva en al menos una pregunta que se encontraba solamente susceptible al error falso negativo) con las verdaderas actitudes de los grupos de interés. Después aplicamos el modelo al censo realizado al personal de una finca de té sobre sus actitudes hacia los elefantes asiáticos (Elephas maximus) en el paisaje de Kaziranga-Karbi Anglong al noreste de la India. En las simulaciones, las estimaciones de las actitudes de los grupos de interés hacia la vida silvestre generados por el modelo bayesiano estuvieron menos sesgados que las estimaciones ingenuas o los puntajes de Likert. Después de considerar los errores de información, estimamos una probabilidad de 0.85 de que los respondientes teóricamente tuvieran una actitud positiva ante los elefantes en el paisaje de Kaziranga, mientras que la proporción de respondientes con actitudes positivas hacia los elefantes a escalas locales fue de 0.50. Como contraste, sin considerar los errores de información, las estimaciones ingenuas de la proporción de los respondientes con actitud positiva hacia los elefantes fueron de 0.69 y 0.23 teóricamente y a escalas locales, respectivamente. El reporte de falsos (positivos y negativos) en las probabilidades constantemente no fue 0 (0.22 - 0.68). La valoración regular y confiable de las actitudes de los grupos de interés - combinada con la inferencia sobre los conductores de estas actitudes positivas - puede ayudar a evaluar el éxito de las iniciativas enfocadas en facilitar cambios en el comportamiento humano y en informar a las decisiones de conservación.

Author Correction: Towards a reliable assessment of Asian elephant population parameters: the application of photographic spatial capture-recapture sampling in a priority floodplain ecosystem.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Towards a reliable assessment of Asian elephant population parameters: the application of photographic spatial capture-recapture sampling in a priority floodplain ecosystem.

The hitherto difficult task of reliably estimating populations of wide-ranging megafauna has been enabled by advances in capture-recapture methodology. Here we combine photographic sampling with a Bayesian spatially-explicit capture-recapture (SCR) model to estimate population parameters for the endangered Asian elephant Elephas maximus in the productive floodplain ecosystem of Kaziranga National Park, India. Posterior density estimates of herd-living adult females and sub-adult males and females (herd-adults) was 0.68 elephants/km2 (95% Credible Intervals, CrI = 0.56-0.81) while that of adult males was 0.24 elephants/km2 (95% CrI = 0.18-0.30), with posterior density estimates highlighting spatial heterogeneity in elephant distribution. Estimates of the space-usage parameter suggested that herd-adults ([Formula: see text] = 5.91 km, 95% CrI = 5.18-6.81) moved around considerably more than adult males ([Formula: see text] = 3.64 km, 95% CrI = 3.09-4.34). Based on elephant movement and age-sex composition, we derived the population that contributed individuals sampled in Kaziranga to be 908 herd-adults, 228 adult males and 610 young (density = 0.46 young/km2, SD = 0.06). Our study demonstrates how SCR is suited to estimating geographically open populations, characterising spatial heterogeneity in fine-scale density, and facilitating reliable monitoring to assess population status and dynamics for science and conservation.

"In a tree by the brook, there's a songbird who sings": Woodlands in an agricultural matrix maintain functionality of a wintering bird community.

The agricultural matrix has increasingly been recognized for its potential to supplement Protected Areas (PAs) in biodiversity conservation. This potential is highly contextual, depending on composition and spatial configuration of matrix elements and their mechanistic relationship with biological communities. We investigate the effects of local vegetation structure, and proximity to a PA on the site-use of different guilds in a wintering bird community within the PA, and in wooded land-use types in the surrounding matrix. We used occupancy models to estimate covariate-guild relationships and predict site-use. We also compared species richness (estimated through capture-recapture models) and species naïve site-use between the PA and the matrix to evaluate taxonomic changes. We found that tree cover did not limit the site-use of most guilds of the community, probably due to high canopy cover across all chosen sites. Exceptions to this were guilds comprising generalist species. Shrub cover and bamboo cover had important effects on some woodland-associated guilds, suggesting a change in limiting factors for site-use under adequate tree cover. Site-use across the matrix was high for all analyzed guilds. This was found to be due to three non-exclusive reasons: (i) presence of one or more ubiquitous species (found all across the landscape) within some guilds, (ii) redundancy of species within guilds that buffered against a decrease in site-use, and (iii) turnover in guild composition/abundances to more generalist species from PA to matrix. Estimated species richness was higher in the matrix (107± 11; mean ± SE) than in the PA (90± 7), which may have been in part due to the addition of generalist species in the matrix. Understanding factors that limit biological communities is crucial to better managing the ever-increasing matrix for biodiversity conservation. Our study provides insights into the effects of different components of vegetation structure on the bird community in wooded land-use types in the matrix. We highlight the value of woodlands surrounding PAs in maintaining multiple guilds, and hence, the functionality of a wintering bird community. However, we caution that the matrix may fall short in retaining some specialized species of the community.

Spatio-temporal interactions facilitate large carnivore sympatry across a resource gradient.

Species within a guild vary their use of time, space and resources, thereby enabling sympatry. As intra-guild competition intensifies, such behavioural adaptations may become prominent. We assessed mechanisms of facilitating sympatry among dhole (Cuon alpinus), leopard (Panthera pardus) and tiger (Panthera tigris) in tropical forests of India using camera-trap surveys. We examined population-level temporal, spatial and spatio-temporal segregation among them across four reserves representing a gradient of carnivore and prey densities. Temporal and spatial overlaps were higher at lower prey densities. Combined spatio-temporal overlap was minimal, possibly due to chance. We found fine-scale avoidance behaviours at one high-density reserve. Our results suggest that: (i) patterns of spatial, temporal and spatio-temporal segregation in sympatric carnivores do not necessarily mirror each other; (ii) carnivores are likely to adopt temporal, spatial, and spatio-temporal segregation as alternative mechanisms to facilitate sympatry; and (iii) carnivores show adaptability across a gradient of resource availability, a driver of inter-species competition. We discuss behavioural mechanisms that permit carnivores to co-occupy rather than dominate functional niches, and adaptations to varying intensities of competition that are likely to shape structure and dynamics of carnivore guilds.

Resource distribution and group size in the common langur Semnopithecus entellus in southern India.

We investigated the influence of resource abundance and distribution on the group size and composition of the common langur Semnopithecus entellus in the contiguous forests of Bandipur National Park, Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary and Nagarahole National Park in southern India. We also explored any additional effect of predator pressure and the risk of take-over on the same attributes. Data on group composition and vegetation were collected from January to May 2006. The size and composition of 94 bisexual groups were obtained. The group size varied from 7 to 40 and the groups included unimale and multimale groups. Thirty-five all-male groups were encountered. Vegetation was sampled from 17 grids of dimension 1 km x 1 km, each containing twelve 25 m x 25 m plots. The list of food species was compiled from previous studies and observations made during the study period. The mean basal area of all the food trees within each plot and its coefficient of variation at the level of the grid were used to represent resource abundance and distribution, respectively. The number of adult females and males within groups were analyzed separately to test for differential effects on age-sex categories. Group size increased as resources became spatially more heterogeneous. The abundance of resources had a negative effect on group size. This study did not find evidence supporting the direct effect of predator presence or of the risk of take-over. Contrary to what were expected, adult males reacted more strongly and predictably to resources than did adult females. The group attributes and their relationship with food resource abundance and distribution differed between two sites in the study area possibly owing to langur subspecies differences.