Assessing carnivore distribution from local knowledge across a human‐dominated landscape in central‐southeastern Madagascar

Abstract

Carnivores are often sensitive to habitat loss and fragmentation, both of which are widespread in Madagascar. Clearing of forests has led to a dramatic increase in highly disturbed, open vegetation communities dominated by humans. In Madagascar's increasingly disturbed landscape, long-term persistence of native carnivores may be tied to their ability to occupy or traverse these disturbed areas. However, how Malagasy carnivores are distributed in this landscape and how they interact with humans are unknown, as past research has concentrated on populations within continuous and fragmented forests. We investigated local ecological knowledge of carnivores using semi-structured interviews in communities 0 to 20 km from the western edge of continuous rainforest in central-southeastern Madagascar. Responses from 182 interviews in 17 different communities indicated distinct distribution patterns for two native and two exotic carnivore species, suggesting a range of tolerances to the human-dominated landscape. The largest extant native carnivore, the fossa Cryptoprocta ferox, does not persist in much of this landscape; they were only observed in communities < 5 km from the continuous forest within the last five years. In contrast, the ring-tailed mongoose Galidia elegans was observed by most communities (82%), but was observed by a higher proportion of interviewees from communities in close proximity to continuous forest. The exotic small Indian civet Viverricula indica was ubiquitous, while the exotic/feral cat (Felis sp.) was observed by a higher proportion of interviewees in communities farther from continuous forest. Over 20% of interviewees had experienced loss of poultry to wild carnivores in the last year and negative perceptions of carnivores were common. We found the human-dominated landscape to provide little conservation value to native carnivores, emphasizing the need for adequate protected areas and increased engagement of local communities to sustain Madagascar's carnivore species. This information is critical to multitaxon conservation planning in Madagascar.Some carnivores, however, are able to sustain populations in highly disturbed, human-dominated landscapes (Gehrt, Riley & Cypher, 2010;Athreya et al., 2013). These areas may hold greater carnivore conservation value than previously thought, but the capacity for human-dominated landscapes to sustain carnivore populations is likely highly variable and dependent on the types of interactions between carnivores and people. Sustaining carnivore populations is important because of their considerable influence on ecosystems (Letnic et al., 2009;Terborgh & Estes, 2010), making them an integral part of conservation planning. As such, bs_bs_banner Animal Conservation. Print ISSN 1367-9430 Animal Conservation 18 (2015) 82-91

Activity patterns of sympatric living exotic and endemic carnivores (the fosa) in Western Madagascar's deciduous forests

“…Occupying much of forested Madagascar, fosas are the country's most widely distributed carnivore and are currently listed as 'vulnerable' by the IUCN Red List (Hawkins, 2016). Fosas are threatened by deforestation (Hawkins & Racey, 2005;Gerber, Karpanty & Randrianantenaina, 2012b), bushmeat consumption (Golden, 2009;Farris et al, 2015b), retaliatory killing (Kotschwar Logan et al, 2014) and exotic carnivores (Gerber et al, 2012c;Farris et al, 2015b).…”

Assessment of the threatened carnivore community in the recently expanded rainforest protected area Anjanaharibe-Sud Special Reserve, Madagascar

“…Surveys across other protected areas have shown G. elegans to have wide-ranging occupancy estimates, including ψ = 0.48 at Masoala-Makira (Farris et al 2015b), ψ = 0.62 ± 0.12 at Betampona (Rasambainarivo et al 2017), and ψ = 1.0 at Ranomafana National Park (Gerber et al 2012). This native carnivore demonstrates highly plastic, generalist behavior (Goodman 2012) and is known to occupy both degraded/fragmented and contiguous forests (Gerber et al 2012, Farris et al 2015a, Kotschwar-Logan et al 2015. These traits likely help explain the wide-spread distribution of G. elegans across the ASSR, given that our study took place in established transects and sampled across areas near forest edge and near a highly active established trail.…”

Modeling co-occurrence between toxic prey and naïve predators in an incipient invasion

“…The spatial and temporal overlap among native carnivores and a burgeoning exotic carnivore population suggests increased interactions across the landscape (Farris et al 2015c;Farris et al In press). In addition, these exotic carnivores are a nuisance and threat to Malagasy people as they consume domestic poultry and spread disease to native wildlife, domestic pets, livestock, and potentially humans (Brockman et al 2008;Gerber et al 2012b;Goodman 2012;Kotschwar et al 2014;Farris et al 2015a). It is possible that the toxic D. melanostictus may help control exotic carnivore populations occupying degraded and non-forested areas across the Toamasina region (S. Goodman, pers.…”