Assessing the Role of Livestock in Big Cat Prey Choice Using Spatiotemporal Availability Patterns

Livestock is represented in big cat diets throughout the world. Husbandry approaches aim to reduce depredation, which may influence patterns of prey choice, but whether felids have a preference for livestock or not often remains unclear as most studies ignore livestock availability. We assessed prey choice of the endangered Persian leopard (Panthera pardus saxicolor) in Golestan National Park, Iran, where conflict over livestock depredation occurs. We analyzed leopard diet (77 scats) and assessed wild and domestic prey abundance by line transect sampling (186 km), camera-trapping (2777 camera days), double-observer point-counts (64 scans) and questionnaire surveys (136 respondents). Based on interviews with 18 shepherds, we estimated monthly grazing time outside six villages with 96 conflict cases to obtain a small livestock (domestic sheep and goat) availability coefficient. Using this coefficient, which ranged between 0.40 and 0.63 for different villages, we estimated the numbers of sheep and goats available to leopard depredation. Leopard diet consisted mainly of wild boar (Sus scrofa) (50.2% biomass consumed), but bezoar goat (Capra aegagrus) was the most preferred prey species (I_j = 0.73), whereas sheep and goats were avoided (I_j = -0.54). When absolute sheep and goat numbers (~11250) were used instead of the corrected ones (~6392), avoidance of small livestock appeared to be even stronger (I_j = -0.71). We suggest that future assessments of livestock choice by felids should incorporate such case-specific corrections for spatiotemporal patterns of availability, which may vary with husbandry methods. Such an approach increases our understanding of human-felid conflict dynamics and the role of livestock in felid diets.