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201709Sep12:42

Frag­mented habi­tats best con­nected by multi-​species cor­ri­dors to safe­guard endan­gered carnivores

Infor­ma­tion
pub­lished 09 Sep­tem­ber 2017 | mod­i­fied 09 Sep­tem­ber 2017
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Scat-​sniffing research dogs are help­ing sci­en­tists map out a plan to save reclu­sive jaguars, pumas, bush dogs and other endan­gered car­ni­vores in the increas­ingly frag­mented forests of north-​eastern Argentina, accord­ing to a new study from Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity in St. Louis.

Train the dog on theTrailTrain, the scat-​sniffing dog, scouts for drop­pings along a rural road in Misiones, Argentina.
Photo: Cour­tesy of Karen DeMatteo

Pub­lished on 25 August in the online jour­nal PLoS ONE, the study explores options for mit­i­gat­ing the impact of human encroach­ment on five preda­tors who cling to sur­vival in iso­lated pock­ets of pro­tected for­est sur­rounded by a mosaic of road­ways, unpro­tected for­est, plan­ta­tions and pastures.

The find­ings illus­trate the ben­e­fit of using mul­ti­ple species ver­sus a sin­gle species to develop cor­ri­dors, because using only the highly restricted jaguar to develop the cor­ri­dor would mean that the poten­tial dis­tri­b­u­tions of the other four car­ni­vores would be restricted and decreased by as much as 30 percent.

Karen DeMat­teo, lead author, Depart­ment of Biol­ogy & Envi­ron­men­tal Stud­ies, Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity, and Wild­Care Insti­tute, St. Louis, USA

The study details a least-​cost plan for the devel­op­ment of a multi-​species bio­log­i­cal cor­ri­dor that con­nects pro­tected areas in the Upper Parana Atlantic For­est Region of Misiones, Argentina,” said DeMat­teo, a biol­ogy research sci­en­tist and lec­turer in envi­ron­men­tal stud­ies in Arts & Sciences.

DeMat­teo, who has spent 10 years work­ing on the project, said com­ple­tion of the cor­ri­dor model will allow researchers and com­mu­nity lead­ers to begin work­ing with prop­erty own­ers to estab­lish the habi­tat corridors.

This plan is excit­ing not only for the future of the local bio­di­ver­sity, but also because it involved a lot of col­lab­o­ra­tion from the local gov­ern­ment and uni­ver­si­ties to make it hap­pen,” she said.

Recent stud­ies have argued that estab­lish­ing small, pro­tected reserves for endan­gered species, even in the best of habi­tats, is not enough to ensure long-​term sur­vival because species must move across their range to breed with other scat­tered pop­u­la­tions and main­tain genetic diversity.

Using dogs trained to detect the scat of spe­cific species, DeMatteo’s team searched for evi­dence of the car­ni­vores’ pres­ence across a broad swath of north-​eastern Argentina, includ­ing pub­lic and pri­vate wildlife reserves, pri­vately owned plan­ta­tions, farms and pas­tures, and along roads and path­ways lead­ing to scat­tered communities.

DNA analy­sis of more than 900 scat sam­ples col­lected over sev­eral sum­mers allowed researchers to develop detailed maps of the species fre­quent­ing these habi­tats, includ­ing a sense of how their move­ments were influ­enced by habi­tat qual­ity, topog­ra­phy, road­ways and other human disturbances.

For species such as the jaguar, which rarely crosses into ter­ri­tory dis­turbed by humans, sur­vival may hinge on the cre­ation of habi­tat cor­ri­dors link­ing iso­lated pop­u­la­tion pock­ets. Because the jaguar is so averse to human inter­ac­tion, some stud­ies have sug­gested that habi­tat cor­ri­dors designed for it also would cover the needs of other predators.

DeMatteo’s study, which exam­ined the habi­tat needs of jaguars, pumas, ocelots, oncil­las and bush dogs, offers a more nuanced approach, sug­gest­ing that the opti­mal foot­print for habi­tat cor­ri­dors should be drawn with the over­lap­ping needs of many species in mind.

While some species were less intim­i­dated by the pres­ence of humans, each had its own unique require­ments in terms of what con­sti­tutes a suit­able habi­tat and the length and width of pos­si­ble cor­ri­dor connections.

Despite vari­a­tion in body size, the jaguar, puma, ocelot, oncilla and bush dog over­lap in their eco­log­i­cal require­ments,” the study said. “How­ever, this is not with­out vari­a­tion in the degree of habi­tat flex­i­bil­ity. Puma, oncilla, and bush dog have com­par­a­tively higher lev­els of mod­i­fied habi­tats in their poten­tial dis­tri­b­u­tions com­pared to the jaguar and ocelot.”

By com­bin­ing data on all five of these species, researchers devel­oped a model that pro­vides max­i­mum habi­tat con­nec­tiv­ity for all species while min­i­miz­ing the cost of estab­lish­ing these cor­ri­dors through pri­vately owned lands and communities.

The find­ings illus­trate the ben­e­fit of using mul­ti­ple species ver­sus a sin­gle species to develop cor­ri­dors, because using only the highly restricted jaguar to develop the cor­ri­dor would mean that the poten­tial dis­tri­b­u­tions of the other four car­ni­vores would be restricted and decreased by as much as 30 per­cent,” DeMat­teo said. “So, it appears that, at least in the Misiones province, the jaguar should not be mod­elled as an umbrella species because the results fail to cap­ture the var­ied require­ments of coex­ist­ing species across the breadth of poten­tial habitats.”

north-eastern argentina PLOS2017north eastern argentina corridors PLOS2017

Map of the study area in north-​eastern Argentina shows sur­vey routes (yel­low) rel­a­tive to pro­tected areas, roads, and the land-​use pat­tern exist­ing in Misiones in 2009. Exist­ing pro­tected areas (shown in dark green with idi­ag­o­nal cross lines) in the north­ern and south­ern regions of the area are sep­a­rated by three roads of con­cern (pur­ple) and privately-​held land areas (labeled RP17, RP20, and RN14 ) where habi­tat con­ver­sion is ongo­ing, rural pop­u­la­tions are expand­ing, and the roads them­selves are being widen and con­verted from dirt to paved asphalt.

The habi­tat study’s pro­posed multi-​species habi­tat cor­ri­dors would link pro­tected areas in the northern-​central zones of Misiones, Argentina. The cor­ri­dor was nar­rowed and divided into two lev­els that could be used to set con­ser­va­tion pri­or­i­ties: a 1° (7 km width) and a 2° (14 km width) corridor.

DeMat­teo and col­leagues hope the study pro­vides a method­ol­ogy for iden­ti­fy­ing the opti­mal foot­print for pro­posed habi­tat con­nec­tion cor­ri­dors, while incor­po­rat­ing enough flex­i­bil­ity to ensure that the needs and desires of pri­vate land­hold­ers can be incor­po­rated into the process.

The approach in mak­ing a cor­ri­dor a real­ity is multi-​pronged and involves a strong invest­ment from the local com­mu­nity, espe­cially when devel­op­ing cor­ri­dors that use exist­ing pro­tected areas as ‘step­ping stones,’ as pri­vate land will inevitably be involved to vary­ing degrees in and around the cor­ri­dor,” the study concludes.

(Source: Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity in St. Louis — the Source news release, 05.09.2017)


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