Relationships between humans and ungulate prey shape Amur tiger occurrence in a core protected area along the Sino‐Russian border

Abstract

Large carnivore populations are globally threatened by human impacts. Better protection could benefit carnivores, co‐occurring species, and the ecosystems they inhabit. The relationship between carnivores and humans, however, is not always consistent in areas of high human activities and is often mediated through the effects of humans on their ungulate prey. To test assumptions regarding how prey abundance and humans affect carnivore occurrence, density, and daily activity patterns, we assessed tiger–prey–human spatiotemporal patterns based on camera‐trapping data in Hunchun Nature Reserve, a promising core area for tiger restoration in China. Our study area contained seasonally varying levels of human disturbance in summer and winter. We used N‐mixture models to predict the relative abundance of ungulate prey considering human and environmental covariates. We estimated tiger spatial distribution using occupancy models and models of prey relative abundance from N‐mixture models. Finally, we estimated temporal activity patterns of tigers and prey using kernel density estimates to test for temporal avoidance between tigers, prey, and humans. Our results show that human‐related activities depressed the relative abundance of prey at different scales and in different ways, but across species, the relative abundance of prey directly increased tiger occupancy. Tiger occupancy was strongly positively associated with the relative abundance of sika deer in summer and winter. The crepuscular and nocturnal tigers also apparently synchronized their activity with that of wild boar and roe deer. However, tigers temporally avoided human activity without direct spatial avoidance. Our study supports the effects of humans on tigers through human impacts on prey populations. Conservation efforts may not only target human disturbance on predators, but also on prey to alleviate human–carnivore conflict.

Assessing mammal species richness and occupancy in a Northeast Asian temperate forest shared by cattle

“…We examined a suite of natural and anthropogenic covariates that could potentially influence the community-, group-or species-level space use by animals observed in this area. Based on previous studies (Hebblewhite et al, 2014;Li et al, 2017;Wang et al, 2018;Xiao et al, 2018;Yang et al, 2019), we explored whether weather, vegetation, elevation, ruggedness, cattle encounter rates, and the distance to the Russian border, river, as well as settlements and roads, might affect species occupancy. Distance from the Russian border was recorded to measure the potential that Russia serves as a source population location.…”

“…For example, top predators such as tigers (Panthera tigris), leopards (P. pardus) and Asiatic lions (P. leo persica) have suffered significant contractions of their numbers and ranges (Dinerstein et al, 2007;Singh & Gibson, 2011;Wolf & Ripple, 2017). Attempts to recover threatened populations of Asian mammals often involve incorporating areas that are utilized by livestock and people (Carter et al, 2012;Soofi et al, 2018;Xiao et al, 2018); thus, there is a need to reconcile conservation and development. Accordingly, managers require reliable information on species assemblages to guide conservation efforts in multi-use areas in Asia (Tilker et al, 2020).…”

Potentiality and limitations of N‐mixture and Royle‐Nichols models to estimate animal abundance based on noninstantaneous point surveys

“…To make matters worse, it might not be possible to detect the violation of the assumption, even by using goodness‐of‐fit tests in posteriori (Link et al, ). Yet, an increasing number of studies are applying this model, often without systematic consideration of this issue (e.g., Brodie & Giordano, ; Curveira‐Santos, Marques, Björklund, & Santos‐Reis, ; Froese, Contasti, Mustari, & Brodie, ; Furnas, Landers, Hill, Itoga, & Sacks, ; Keever et al, ; Ribeiro, Nichols, Morato, Metzger, & Pardini, ; Tack et al, ; Xiao et al, ). As suggested by Kéry and Royle (), the PB model could be easily modified to accommodate false‐positive errors by assuming that the number of detections per individual follow the Poisson distribution (the Poisson‐Poisson mixtures, hereafter PP model).…”

Humans disrupt access to prey for large African carnivores

“…As a result, large carnivores are predominantly nocturnal while ungulates often exhibit more diurnal behavior, although neither exclusively so. However, pervasive human pressures disrupt individual behaviors that facilitate coexistence of predator and prey populations alike ( Wolf and Ripple, 2016 ; Shamoon et al, 2018 ; Xiao et al, 2018 ; Sévêque et al, 2020 ). How human-induced responses of many species cascade to alter the dynamics of predation and other ecological interactions at the community level remains understudied ( Guiden et al, 2019 ).…”