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dc.contributor.authorCurveira-Santos, Gonçalo
dc.contributor.authorSutherland, Chris
dc.contributor.authorSantos-Reis, Margarida
dc.contributor.authorSwanepoel, Lourens H
dc.date.accessioned2021-11-02T15:30:02Z
dc.date.available2021-11-02T15:30:02Z
dc.date.issued2021-01
dc.identifier272468496
dc.identifier761eba70-be66-4be0-bc33-c46a1dfb7787
dc.identifier85089785645
dc.identifier.citationCurveira-Santos , G , Sutherland , C , Santos-Reis , M & Swanepoel , L H 2021 , ' Responses of carnivore assemblages to decentralized conservation approaches in a South African landscape ' , Journal of Applied Ecology , vol. 58 , no. 1 , pp. 92-103 . https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.13726en
dc.identifier.issn0021-8901
dc.identifier.otherBibtex: curveira2021responses
dc.identifier.otherORCID: /0000-0003-2073-1751/work/87404648
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10023/24246
dc.descriptionFunding: African Institute for Conservation Ecology; Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. Grant Numbers: PD/BD/114037/2015, UID/BIA/00329/2019; National Geographic Society. Grant Number: EC-314R-18; Wild Tomorrow Fund; South African Agency for Science and Technology Advancement. Grant Number: UID: 107099&115040.en
dc.description.abstract1 Conservation efforts in South Africa play out across multi-use landscapes where formal protected areas coexist with private wildlife business (ecotourism and/or hunting) in a human-dominated matrix. Despite the persistence of highly diverse carnivore guilds, management idiosyncrasies are often orientated towards charismatic large predators and assemblage-level patterns remain largely unexplored. 2. We conducted an extensive camera-trap survey in a natural quasi-experimental setting in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. We sampled across a protection gradient characterized by a provincial protected area (highest and formal protection status), a private ecotourism reserve, game ranches and traditional communal areas (lowest protected status). We evaluated assemblage-level and species-specific responses of free-ranging carnivores to the varying management contexts and associated environmental gradients. 3. Despite similar assemblage composition between management contexts, site-scale carnivore richness and occupancy rates were greater in the formal protected area than adjacent private reserve and game ranches. Carnivore occupancy was more similar between these private wildlife areas, although putative problem species were more common in the private reserve, and contrasted with depauperate assemblages in least protected communal lands. Variation in carnivore occupancy probabilities was largely driven by land use contexts, that is, the level and nature of protection, relative to underlying fine-scale landscape attributes (e.g. distance to conservation fences) or apex predator populations. 4. Synthesis and applications. Our findings provide convincing empirical support for the added value of multi-tenure conservation estates augmenting and connecting South Africa's protected areas. However, our emphasis on free-ranging carnivores exemplifies the importance of maintaining areas under long-term formal protection and the risks with viewing lucrative wildlife business as a conservation panacea. We suggest that unmanaged carnivore species be the formal components of carnivore reintroduction and recovery programmes to better gauge the complementary conservation role of South Africa's private land.
dc.format.extent12
dc.format.extent953788
dc.language.isoeng
dc.relation.ispartofJournal of Applied Ecologyen
dc.subjectCamera-trapen
dc.subjectCommunity occupancy modelen
dc.subjectConservation planningen
dc.subjectHierarchical Bayesian modelsen
dc.subjectMulti-species modellingen
dc.subjectNatural resource managementen
dc.subjectPredatoren
dc.subjectProtected areasen
dc.subjectQA Mathematicsen
dc.subjectQH301 Biologyen
dc.subjectDASen
dc.subjectSDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growthen
dc.subjectSDG 15 - Life on Landen
dc.subject.lccQAen
dc.subject.lccQH301en
dc.titleResponses of carnivore assemblages to decentralized conservation approaches in a South African landscapeen
dc.typeJournal articleen
dc.contributor.institutionUniversity of St Andrews. Statisticsen
dc.contributor.institutionUniversity of St Andrews. Centre for Research into Ecological & Environmental Modellingen
dc.identifier.doi10.1111/1365-2664.13726
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden
dc.date.embargoedUntil2021-08-25


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