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Braczkowski, A.; Gopalaswamy, A.M.; Fattebert, J.; Isoke, S.; Bezzina, A.; Maron, M.
Spatially explicit population estimates of African leopards and spotted hyenas in the Queen Elizabeth Conservation Area of southwestern Uganda
2022  Mammalian Biology (102): 1199-1213

African leopards (_Panthera pardus pardus_) and spotted hyenas (_Crocuta crocuta_) are data deficient across much of Africa, and there are only a handful of recent population estimates for these species from Uganda. This has conservation ramifications, as both species are important for wildlife tourism, and leopards are hunted for sport in several regions adjacent to national parks as part of a government-led revenue-sharing scheme to foster increased tolerance of wildlife. We ran a single-season camera-trap survey in each of the northern and southern sections of the Queen Elizabeth Conservation Area (2400 km2), Uganda's second largest national park. We applied spatially explicit capture-recapture (SECR) models to estimate the population density and abundance of leopards and spotted hyenas in the northern Mweya and Kasenyi plains area, and the southern Ishasha sector. Leopard densities were estimated to be 5.03 (95% Highest Posterior Density, HPD = 2.80-7.63) and 4.31 (95% HPD = 1.95-6.88) individuals/100 km2 for the north and south of the conservation area, respectively, while spotted hyena densities were 13.44 (95% HPD = 9.01-18.81) and 14.07 individuals/100 km2 (95% HPD = 8.52-18.54) for the north and south, respectively. Leopard densities were in the middle range of those recorded in the literature, while sex ratios were what would be expected for this polygamous felid. Spotted hyena densities were on the higher end of those recorded for the species using spatially explicit capture-recapture (SECR) methods. Our work provides the first robust population estimate of leopards and spotted hyenas in the Queen Elizabeth Conservation Area of western Uganda.

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