Assessing the Conservation Status of African lions, leopards and hyenas in Uganda

The camera-trapping component of this study will be used to account for lower detection and habituation of carnivores. We will use 50 paired camera-trap stations to obtain images of individually recognizable spotted hyena, lions (whisker spots and scars) and leopards (eg. Marnewick et al. 2014). We will focus camera placement along roads, smaller dirt trails and marking trees (Karanth and Nichols 1998). We will use the same camera-trapping protocol of previous authors (eg. Gopalaswamy et al. 2012; Du Preez et al. 2014) and limit our sampling period to a maximum of 90 days to ensure assumptions regarding population closure are not violated (Broekhuis and Gopalaswamy 2016). Camera spacing will be made according to the home-range and detection probability assumptions for female African leopards as these are likely to have the smallest home ranges of the large carnivore guild members in the study area. We plan to implement the camera-trap sampling session in the dry season of 2016.