Habitat destruction threatens jaguars in a mixed land use region of eastern Bolivia

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. The published version of this Preprint is available: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605322001570. This is version 1 of this Preprint.

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Authors

René Meißner, Moritz Blumer, Merlin Weiß, Maya Beukes, Gabriel Aramayo-Ledezma, Yannet Condori, José Luis Aramayo-Bejarano, Martin Jansen

Abstract

Large carnivores such as the jaguar (Panthera onca) are particularly susceptible to population decline and local extinction as a result of habitat loss. Here, we report on the long-term monitoring of a local jaguar population in a mixed land use area in the eastern lowlands of Bolivia from March 2017 to December 2019. We recorded 15 jaguar individuals and four reproduction events (five offspring from three females), suggesting that our study area harbors a resident breeding population. Seven iterations of spatially explicit capture-recapture models provided density estimates ranging from 1.32 to 3.57 jaguars per 100 km². Jaguar capture rates were highest in forested areas, with few to no jaguar captures occurring in pastures used for livestock. Massive deforestation after the survey period reduced the proportion of dense forest cover by 33%, shrinking the availability of suitable jaguar habitat and placing the resident jaguar population at risk. We use the jaguar as an indicator species to highlight the threat of habitat destruction in the Chiquitano region and to emphasize the importance of intact forest patches for jaguar conservation.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.32942/X20W2B

Subjects

Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Zoology

Keywords

Biodiversity loss, camera trapping, Chiquitano Dry Forest, conservation, deforestation, NDVI, Panthera onca, spatially explicit capture-recapture, camera trapping, Chiquitano Dry Forest, conservation, deforestation, NDVI, Panthera onca, spatially explicit capture-recapture

Dates

Published: 2022-12-14 03:05

Last Updated: 2022-12-14 11:05

License

CC-BY Attribution-No Derivatives 4.0 International

Additional Metadata

Conflict of interest statement:
None