Leopard population and home range estimates in northcentral Namibia

Protected areas are commonly assumed to (and most do) harbour higher densities of wildlife than adjacent, humanmodified landscapes (Woodroffe & Ginsberg, 1998; Melville & Bothma, 2006; Gaston et al., 2008; Newmark, 2008; Kiner et al., 2009). In north-central Namibia, farmers believed that leopard (Panthera pardus) densities were growing on farmland areas adjacent to Waterberg Plateau Park and that the Park was a source population for leopards venturing beyond park boundaries during the night to feed on the livestock in the farmlands (Stein, 2008). Leopard densities elsewhere have been correlated with ungulate abundance (Stander et al., 1997; Marker & Dickman, 2005), but our camera surveys (Stein, Fuller & Marker, 2008) indicated that leopard prey was more abundant outside of versus inside the Park. Thus, we predicted that leopard density was higher outside of the Park and thus not a population ‘sink’ for leopards. To test this hypothesis, we estimated leopard density for both areas via capture–mark–recapture techniques using camera-trapping (e.g., Karanth & Nichols, 1998; Henschel & Ray, 2003; Silver et al., 2004; Jackson et al., 2006) combined with home range sizes estimated from telemetry data.