National Parks Influence Habitat Use of Lowland Tapirs in Adjacent Private Lands in the Southern Yungas of Argentina

National parks influence habitat use of lowland tapirs in adjacent private lands in the Southern Yungas of Argentina L UIS O SVALDO R IVERA,SEBASTIAN M ARTINUZZI,NATALIA P OLITI S OFIA B ARDAVID,SOLEDAD DE B USTOS,SILVIA C HALUKIAN L EONIDAS L IZÁRRAGA,VOLKER R ADELOFF and A NNA P IDGEON Abstract Protected areas are cornerstones of conservation in the persistence of lowland tapir populations on adjacent efforts worldwide. However, protected areas do not act in private lands. isolation because they are connected with surrounding, Keywords National park, occupancy, potential habitat, unprotected lands. Few studies have evaluated the effects private land, road, Southern Yungas, Tapir Conservation of protected areas on wildlife populations inhabiting pri- Unit, Tapirus terrestris vate lands in the surrounding landscapes. The lowland tapir Tapirus terrestris is the largest terrestrial mammal of the Supplementary material for this article is available at Neotropics and is categorized as Vulnerable on the IUCN doi.org/./S Red List. It is necessary to understand the influence of landscape characteristics on the tapir’s habitat use to enable effective conservation management for this species. Our objectives were to ( ) determine the potential distribution Introduction of the lowland tapir’s habitat in the Southern Yungas of Argentina, and () evaluate the role of protected areas and rotected areas are set aside to conserve species and other covariates on tapir habitat use in adjacent private Ptheir habitats, and they are cornerstones of biodiver- lands. We used records of lowland tapirs to model the spe- sity conservation worldwide (Ewers & Rodrigues, ). cies’ potential distribution and determined habitat use with Biodiversity is typically higher and deforestation lower occupancy modelling. Based on the covariates found to be inside protected areas compared to the surrounding land- significant in our models, we constructed predictive maps scape, highlighting the effectiveness of area-based conserva- of probability of habitat use and assessed the area of poten- tion (Joppa & Pfaff, ; Geldman et al., ; Gray et al., tial habitat remaining for the species. Probability of habitat ). However, protected areas do not work in isolation use was higher in the vicinity of two national parks and because they are embedded within wider landscapes and small households than further away from them. We found are connected with surrounding unprotected lands through that in % of the lowland tapir’s potential distribution the fluxes of organisms, energy and nutrients (Hansen & DeFries, probability of habitat use is high (. .). These areas are ). Protected areas may act as refugia that sustain wild- near the three national parks in the study area. The prob- life populations in the surrounding landscapes, especially ability of detecting lowland tapirs increased with distance for large mammals. Wildlife conservation across landscapes to roads. We conclude that national parks play a key role thus requires a clear understanding of the interactions between protected areas and the surrounding unprotected lands (McNeely, ; DeFries et al., ). Private lands have long been recognized as essential LUIS OSVALDO RIVERA (Corresponding author, orcid.org/0000-0003-2960- for large mammal conservation (Simonetti, ; Hilty & 9779), NATALIA POLITI ( orcid.org/0000-0002-8283-3262) and SOFIA BARDAVID Merenlender, ; Soares-Filho et al., ) because lim- Instituto de Ecorregiones Andinas, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Universidad Nacional de Jujuy, San Salvador de Jujuy, itations in area and representation of habitats in protected Argentina. E-mail [email protected] areas can impede long-term conservation of populations SEBASTIAN MARTINUZZI ( orcid.org/0000-0003-3433-0561), VOLKER RADELOFF and species. However, land use around protected areas is and ANNA PIDGEON ( orcid.org/0000-0002-0090-3352), Department of Forest considered a major threat to biodiversity (Joppa et al., and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, USA ; Radeloff et al., ). Increasing human popula- SOLEDAD DE BUSTOS Biodiversity Program, Secretary of Environment of Salta Province, Salta, Argentina tions, agricultural expansion and infrastructure development around protected areas reduce wildlife habitat, limit species SILVIA CHALUKIAN Grupo Argentino de Tapires, IUCN Tapir Specialist Group, Bariloche, Argentina movements, affect population source–sink dynamics and LEONIDAS LIZÁRRAGA National Park Administration of Argentina, Salta, expose wildlife to anthropogenic threats such as hunting, Argentina poaching, invasive exotic species and diseases. These factors Received May . Accepted June . First published online April . potentially limit the conservation value of protected areas This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, Downloadeddistribution, from https://www.cambridge.org/core and reproduction in any medium,. IP address: provided 170.106.40.40 the original work, onis 30 properly Sep 2021 cited. at 21:53:22, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/termsOryx, 2021, 55(4), 625–634 ©. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605319000796The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605319000796 626 L. O. Rivera et al. (Hansen & DeFries, ). Researchers commonly compare (Tobler, ; Medici, ). They keep away from infra- habitats and wildlife populations inside vs outside protected structure, including roads and oil and gas developments, areas to assess the effectiveness of protected areas (DeFries and are unlikely to persist in areas with human densities et al., ; Blake et al., ; Geldmann et al., ). /km (Naveda et al., ; Taber et al., ). Well- However, most studies assessing the interaction between protected areas such as national parks are probably strong- protected areas and surrounding lands have focused on holds for the species (Novaro et al., ;Chalukianetal., the effects of land use and anthropogenic pressures in the ). In north-west Argentina the lowland tapir inhabits surrounding landscape on wildlife populations within pro- both dry Chaco and Southern Yungas forests, at –, m tected areas (Woodroffe & Ginsberg, ; Setsaas et al., altitude (Taber et al., ; Chalukian et al., ). Forest ; Balme et al., ; Harrison, ; Häkkilä et al., loss and fragmentation, illegal hunting, and competition ). High levels of anthropogenic disturbance in areas with livestock are the main factors responsible for popula- surrounding protected lands usually have a negative effect tion declines of lowland tapirs, and they are also chased and on species within protected areas (Metzger et al., ; killed by dogs (Naveda et al., ;Chalukianetal.,). In Laurance et al., ; Häkkilä et al., ). Argentina, the species’ range has declined by %intheth In contrast, the effects of protected areas on wildlife century, remaining populations are small and highly frag- populations inhabiting adjacent private lands have rarely mented (Chalukian et al., ), and the species is categorized been analysed, especially not in a spatially explicit manner. as Endangered nationally (Ojeda et al., ). Fifty-one Tapir Typically, the presence of charismatic mammals such as the Conservation Units, areas with important or critical habitat jaguar Panthera onca, Baird’s tapir Tapirus bairdii, primates for the conservation of the species, have been identified and ungulates declines with distance from protected areas, globally based on expert opinion (Taber et al., ). but factors such as land-cover type, distance from human The mountainous, forested region of north-west Ar- settlements and prey richness also influence habitat use gentina known as the Southern Yungas contains four (Licona et al., ; Carretero-Pinzón et al., ; Schank Tapir Conservation Units and three national parks, but et al., ; Petracca et al., ). Nonetheless, habitats out- most of the land is privately owned. Here, we sought to de- side protected areas can have a high probability of wild- termine how much potential habitat remains for the low- life occupancy, as has been reported for the jaguar in land tapir in both the Tapir Conservation Units and in Nicaragua (Zeller et al., ). Understanding the distribu- the Southern Yungas of Argentina. We also assessed the in- tion patterns of charismatic species in landscapes that con- fluence of small human settlements, roads and rivers, and tain a mosaic of patches with different ownership is useful whether properties were categorized as private reserves, on for understanding the extent of influence of protected areas tapir habitat use in private properties adjacent to national and the role of adjacent private lands, and for informing parks. We expected a higher degree of human influence conservation decisions. This is particularly applicable in at the landscape scale, expressed as shorter distances from regions with high levels of biodiversity, and where large human settlements and roads, to be associated with lower mammals can serve as indicators of the status of more cryp- habitat use by lowland tapirs. Conversely, proximity to na- tic species. Such information is also vital in places such tional parks and to water, and categorization as private re- as South America, which support high biodiversity and serves, were expected to be associated with higher values where

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