Abstract:
The population size and conservation status of wildlife in post-conflict areas is
often uncertain. In Mozambique, decades of armed conflict resulted in largescale wildlife population depletion with limited conservation and research
opportunities. The African leopard (Panthera pardus) is a large carnivore with
great ecological and economic significance, yet their population status is
largely unknown within Mozambique. Using camera trapping in conjunction
with robust spatially explicit capture-recapture modeling, we estimated leopard density in 2021 for Coutada 11, a wildlife management area in the postwar
Zambezi Delta landscape of central Mozambique. Leopard density was relatively low (1.57 ± 0.37 SE [latent-mixture-model] and 1.84 ± 0.41 [sex-mixture-model] leopards/100 km2
), occurring in the bottom fourth of 161 range wide leopard densities, and similar to those from semiarid and human dominated landscapes. Prey-based carrying capacity estimates suggested that
leopard density should be at least twice as large. Despite a recent and substantial reduction in poaching activity, evidence of snared leopards indicates that
sustained bushmeat poaching, combined with sustainable, but additional legal
offtake is suppressing leopard population recovery. This study provides important baseline insight into leopard population density in Mozambique and joins
mounting evidence indicating that anthropogenic pressures limit large carnivore populations which is of major national and global concern. We suggest
long-term monitoring of this leopard population to determine trends over time
and implement effective conservation interventions in response to population
changes. This population clearly has the capacity to recover if hunting quotas
are reduced to account for illegal offtake and, more importantly, if antipoaching efforts are redoubled to reduce unsustainable anthropogenic mortality of leopards.
