Ecology of the leopard (Panthera pardus fusca) in Satpura National Park and Bori Wildlife Sanctuary

Abstract

The leopard study was undertaken in Satpura Tiger Reserve to study ecology of species in relatively conflict free area. Even basic information on leopard is poor, except for food habits. Leopards have been in the news in popular media in India largely because of instances of human conflict that have occurred in many places. . There is a perception that attacks on humans have increased in the last few years. It is speculated that the probable causes have been decrease in habitat, decline in leopard prey populations or increase in leopard densities close to human populations. Historical data on leopard or prey abundances in any of the conflict areas are lacking, and therefore the reasons given remain speculative. Management of the conflict would be easier if the reasons were reliably known. The study was conducted from 2001 to 2OO7.The objective of this study were a) habitat use and preference, b) prey preference and food habits, c) validate methods for leopard population estimation and d) territoriality and ranging pattern. We achieved all the objectives except ranging pattern due to problems in radio collaring permissions. By the time we got permission it got too late to capture leopards and meaningfully execute this objective and was thus dropped. The vegetation map of the study area was prepared based on remotely sensed data. Thirteen vegetation and landuse classes were identified. The spatial layer for habitat quality, climate and topographic feature were used for occupancy mapping. The prey occupancy maps with topographic data was in turn used to model predator occupancy. Most of the species were 80% correctly classified. The presence only modeling was used to estimate the area occupied by leopard in the 13 districts of south-central Madhya Pradesh. 'Optimal* habitat was 5.2% of the study area, ranging from 0.5 to 8 percent of each district. As an absolute measure it can be said that approximately 11500 sq km of habitat is likely to support leopard populations. The districts with the most optimal habitat are Betul, Hoshangabad and Chhindwara. Leopard as most diverse diet, the frequency of occurrence of prey was ordered as sambar>chital>hare>langur>birds>rodents>porcupine>wild pig>cattle. The diets of the tiger, leopard and dhole overlap to a great extent. The tiger diet overlaps more with that of the leopard than the dhole because of shared inclusion of wild pig, cattle, rodents and birds in their diet. The dhole-leopard overlap is more than the dhole-tiger overlap because the former species-pair hunt in open areas also and both thus take a significant amount of chital, unlike the tiger. Chital comprises about 20 % of leopard's biomass intake. Along with chital, sambar is a preferred prey for the dhole. Tigers seem to prefer large prey species that are more easily available, the mean size of prey being 115 kg. The leopard and dhole tend to take medium sized prey. The leopard being a solitary animal takes a mean prey size of 27 kg, while the pack living dhole takes larger prey of more than 25 kg. The leopard also has the largest range of prey size, taking small prey like hare, birds, rodents and porcupines that dhole did not kill in this study. There has recently been increased attention to the need for reliable estimates of carnivore density in India, but most of the work has been done on tigers scanty information is available for leopards. Camera trapping has been used in conjunction iii with the mark-recapture technique to estimate the densities of species in which individuals can be uniquely identified based on the coat patterns or other external marks. Large felid populations are difficult to estimate because the species are generally low in abundance, nocturnal or crepuscular and have large home ranges. The mean of the four estimates of density in Satpura Tiger Reserve is 8.87 (S.E. 0.9) per 100 sq km. It is recommended that an index of density calculated using the area of the minimum convex polygon (MCP) be used to compare different sites, and half MMDM used to estimate absolute density until further data are available on movement patterns of leopards. The sex ratios are female biased in all areas except Kamti. The average ratio is 1.68 (S.E. 0.38) females per male. For 4 estimates the capture success for males is higher than for females, and in one estimate they are the same. .The larger spatial area model had a higher predictive accuracy than the smaller scale one as quantified by the higher continuous Boyce Index. This is possibly because the Satpura Tiger Reserve has fewer disturbances and is a less heterogeneous area given its smaller size. Given the high density of leopards in the area and requiring large tracts of contiguous habitat they probably move through and live in habitats that are not highly preferred, but are still inhabitable. Very few areas in the Reserve are likely to be completely unsuitable for leopards. Proportion of dhole tracks found per sampling occasion per section declined from 24 percent to 7 percent over the three years. The decline was continuous for the first two years, before recovering in the last year. Mean proportion of leopard tracks were less variable between years, except for second year summer, where they declined drastically. C-scores were higher than expected only in winter for the four large carnivores, which suggests that competitive structuring and subtle patterns of avoidance, if present, are more likely to break down in summer. In summer habitat selection for all carnivores is likely to be more influenced by the presence of water and shade than by the presence of competitors. The understanding how these carnivore species coexist could be important in managing large carnivores in areas where more than one species is found in sympatry. Interspecific competition is a major process in the structuring of many communities and seems that resource partitioning along a combination of temporal, spatial and dietary axes has structured the large carnivore community.