Summary
Within the Mongolian Altai Mountains, most of the 14 species of wild animals and farmed animals included in the study were often found in the same areas at the same time. When considering the interactions between species, the farmed animal categories had the highest number of interactions with wild animals. This suggests that farmed animals have a significant influence on the wildlife in the region, which is attributed to their widespread presence. The snow leopard had the most interactions with the beech marten and the Siberian ibex, and had very few interactions with farmed animals. A strength of this study is that the researchers used cameras with three different trigger speeds instead of one, which increased the number of sightings they recorded. A limitation of this study is that multiple sightings of the same species in one day only counted as one sighting, and despite this being standard practice for occupancy modeling, it could underestimate the number of species interactions. The findings suggest that farm animals contribute to shaping community dynamics along with wild species. More specifically, snow leopards are being driven out of regions where farmed animal production has expanded. Additionally, snow leopards are also facing pressures due to reduced populations of Siberian ibex, who are also facing pressure from the farmed animal sector.
Mammalian communities inhabiting temperate grasslands are of conservation concern globally, especially in Central Asia, where livestock numbers have dramatically increased in recent decades, leading to overgrazing and land-use change. Yet, how this pervasive presence of livestock herds affects the community of wild mammals remains largely unstudied. We used systematic camera trapping at 216 sites across remote, mountainous areas of the Mongolian Altai Mountains to assess the spatial and temporal patterns of occurrence and the interspecific relationships within a mammalian community that includes different categories of livestock. By adopting a recently proposed multispecies occupancy model that incorporates interspecific correlation in occupancy, we found several statistically strong correlations in occupancy among species pairs, with the majority involving livestock. The sign of such associations was markedly species-dependent, with larger wild species of conservation concern, namely, snow leopard and Siberian ibex, avoiding livestock presence. As predicted, we found evidence of a positive correlation in occupancy between predators and their respective main prey. Contrary to our expectations, a number of intraguild species pairs also showed positive co-occurrence, with no evidence of spatiotemporal niche partitioning. Overall, our study suggests that livestock encroaching into protected areas influences the whole local community of wild mammals. Though pastoralism has coexisted with wildlife for millennia in central Asian grasslands, our findings suggest that policies and practices to decrease the pressure of livestock husbandry on wildlife are needed, with special attention on large species, such as the snow leopard and its wild prey, which seem to be particularly sensitive to this pervasive livestock presence.