DOI: 10.5061/dryad.zgmsbcc8c
title: Data from: Long-term persistence of wildlife populations in a pastoral area

description: Facilitating coexistence between people and wildlife is a major
 conservation challenge in East Africa. Some conservation models aim to
 balance the needs of people and wildlife, but the effectiveness of these
 models is rarely assessed. Using a case-study approach, we assessed the
 ecological performance of a pastoral area in northern Tanzania (Manyara
 Ranch) and established a long-term wildlife population monitoring
 programme (carried out intermittently from 2003-2008 and regularly from
 2011-2019) embedded in a distance sampling framework. By comparing density
 estimates of the road-transect based long-term monitoring to estimates
 derived from systematically distributed transects, we found that the bias
 associated with non-random placement of transects was non-significant.
 Overall, cattle, and sheep and goat reached the greatest densities and
 several wildlife species occurred at densities similar (zebra, wildebeest,
 waterbuck, Kirk’s dik-dik) or possibly even greater (giraffe, eland,
 lesser kudu, Grant’s gazelle, Thomson’s gazelle) than in adjacent national
 parks in the same ecosystem. Generalized linear mixed models suggested
 that most wildlife species (8 out of 14) reached greatest densities during
 the dry season, that wildlife population densities either remained
 constant or increased over the 17-year period, that herbivorous livestock
 species remained constant, while domestic dog population decreased over
 time. Cross-species correlations did not provide evidence for interference
 competition between grazing or mixed livestock species and wildlife
 species but indicate possible negative relationships between domestic dog
 and warthog populations. Overall, wildlife and livestock populations in
 Manyara Ranch appear to coexist over the 17-year span. Most likely, this
 is facilitated by existing connectivity to adjacent protected areas,
 effective anti-poaching efforts, spatio-temporal grazing restrictions,
 favourable environmental conditions of the ranch and spatial heterogeneity
 of surface water and habitats. This long-term case study illustrates the
 potential of rangelands to simultaneously support wildlife conservation
 and human livelihood goals if livestock grazing is restricted in space,
 time and numbers.
description: line transects driven along routes; same routes were
 used each season conventional distance sampling was
 used to estimate season-specific densities detection
 functions were estimaetd based on pooled observations
description: Densities_MR: contains seasonal density estimates of
 livestock and wildlife secies from 2003-2019; from 2003-2008 livestock
 species were not consistently recorded (therefore do not treat as zero but
 as NA) Dspecies is the point estimate of the
 species; Lspecies is the lower 95% confidence interval of this estimate,
 and Uspecies the upper 95% confidence interval 
 Densities_TME: contains density estimates and associated 95%
 confidence intervals (notation as above) of 12 wildlife species in four
 study areas of the Tarangire-Manyara ecosystem (MR: Manyara Ranch; CA: Mto
 wa Mbu Game Controlled Area; LMNP: Lake Manyara National Park; TNP:
 Tarangire National Park). Estimates and confidence intervals are based on
 point estimates from seasonal surveys carried out between
 2011-2019.