African Lion (Panthera leo) Space Use in the Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area

Large carnivores are key drivers of ecosystem structure and function, yet their populations are declining worldwide. African lion (Panthera leo) populations have decreased significantly in recent decades with an estimated 23 000 lions left in Africa. Successful conservation efforts rely on a sound understanding of how animals utilize their surrounding habitat. We used movement data from GPS collars to investigate patterns and drivers of seasonal space use by free-roaming lions in the Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area (GM-TFCA). We developed individual and population-level resource utilization functions (RUF) from 2008 to 2015. RUFs relate non-uniform space use within a home range to landscape metrics in a multiple regression framework. We identified six landscape features hypothesized a priori to be good predictors of lion space use: land use, land cover, elevation, terrain ruggedness, distance to human settlements and rivers. Only elevation during the dry season was a significant factor ...