DOI: 10.5061/dryad.8p689
title: Data from: Impact of wild prey availability on livestock predation by snow leopards

description: An increasing proportion of the world's poor is rearing livestock
 today, and the global livestock population is growing. Livestock predation
 by large carnivores and their retaliatory killing is becoming an economic
 and conservation concern. A common recommendation for carnivore
 conservation and for reducing predation on livestock is to increase wild
 prey populations based on the assumption that the carnivores will consume
 this alternative food. Livestock predation, however, could either reduce
 or intensify with increases in wild prey depending on prey choice and
 trends in carnivore abundance. We show that the extent of livestock
 predation by the endangered snow leopard Panthera uncia intensifies with
 increases in the density of wild ungulate prey, and subsequently
 stabilizes. We found that snow leopard density, estimated at seven sites,
 was a positive linear function of the density of wild ungulates—the
 preferred prey—and showed no discernible relationship with livestock
 density. We also found that modelled livestock predation increased with
 livestock density. Our results suggest that snow leopard conservation
 would benefit from an increase in wild ungulates, but that would intensify
 the problem of livestock predation for pastoralists. The potential
 benefits of increased wild prey abundance in reducing livestock predation
 can be overwhelmed by a resultant increase in snow leopard populations.
 Snow leopard conservation efforts aimed at facilitating increases in wild
 prey must be accompanied by greater assistance for better livestock
 protection and offsetting the economic damage caused by carnivores.
description: File with details on
 snow leopard dietThe column
 "Area" numbers the different sites where we worked. The column
 "Block" names the sites. The column "ID" lists the
 unique identification number of each scat sample. Column
 "Primer" indicates whether the sample was positive with the snow
 leopard specific primer "UNC1". The remaining four columns
 indicate the number of hairs of each species occurring in each scat
 sample. Column "Unid" indicates unidentified
 species.Appendix C1
 SLDiet.csvPopulation density of
 snow leopard, wild prey and livestockThe file contains
 information on the area of all study sites and population of snow leopard,
 wild prey and livestock species at each of the seven sites. Column names
 are self explanatory. The file structure is suitable to run the functional
 analysis code.Appendix C2
 SLPrey.csvR code for functional
 response analysisThe file contains the
 entire code required to run the functional response analysis. The file
 structure of snow leopard diet and snow leopard prey files (Appendic C1
 & C2) is ready for this code.Suryawanshi_et_al_Wild_prey_Manuscript__Appendix_B.txtGenotyping data Spiti and LadakhThe file contains the genotype profile of all the snow leopard individuals from our study sites. These data were used to estimate snow leopard abundance at each site. The column names are self explanatory.Wild herbivore prey population dataThis file contains raw data of the wild prey population surveys at the seven sites. Column names are self explanatory.DOS_2010_version1.csvLivestock population census dataThe file contains livestock population census data from all the villages and communities in the seven study sites. Data are given by livestock species by each village. Column names are self explanatory.Livestock census 2010-11.csv