Abstract
Ungulate conservation directly affects conservation of their predators and habitats. Assessing conservation status of ungulates found in the mountains is particularly challenging given the tough terrain and extreme weather. This is true for Central and South Asia’s mountains which harbour high ungulate diversity. Urial Ovis vignei, a Vulnerable wild sheep, occurs patchily across Asian mountains. Ladakh urial Ovis vignei vignei is a subspecies restricted to Ladakh and Gilgit-Baltistan in the trans-Himalaya. Poor understanding of its conservation status has limited conservation efforts in the region. We conducted a distribution survey using single-season single-species occupancy, with spatial replicates accounting for auto-correlated replicate-level presence across the entire potential urial habitat (3425km2) in Ladakh, India. We then identified remaining populations and conducted double-observer surveys to estimate densities. We found urial to use only 32% (16–53%) of its presumed range. We estimated densities of 1.27 (1.27–1.39) urial km−2 and 0.96 (0.96–1.10) urial km−2 across the two landscapes covering 18% of surveyed area. These two areas are currently the last remaining strongholds for the species in India, yet densities were lower than expected when compared to previous studies. Urial distribution in India overlaps with human use like habitations, livestock grazing, and roads, hence effective conservation of the species will need involvement of local communities. We propose annual monitoring of urial and setting up community-based livestock-free reserves across the two landscapes. More such robust investigations at meaningful large scales are needed to direct conservation action for the understudied mountain ungulates of high Asia.
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Data availability
Will upload on Nature Conservation Foundation’s website as a dataset within publications (https://www.ncf-india.org/publications) and to Data Dryad’s open repository upon publication.
Code availability
Attached in supplementary material 1.
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Acknowledgements
This study would not have been possible without the generous support of and permissions from the Wildlife Protection Department, Ladakh, especially Mr. M. Sajid Sultan, Chief Wildlife Warden, Ladakh, and Mr. Pankaj Raina, Regional Wildlife Warden, Leh. Additionally, we extend our heartfelt thanks to the various officers, rangers, and staff of the Wildlife Protection Department, Ladakh, who so patiently gave us advice and helped us conduct the field survey. A special appreciation to Rigzin Dorjay, Karma Sonam, Sherab Lobzang, and Stanzin Spaldon who expertly helped in conducting the field work. We also extend our heartfelt thanks to the numerous villagers that we met during this study. They were generous with both their homes and their knowledge of urial.
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The work was generously funded by a grant from British Ecological Society, National Geographic Society, and Royal Bank of Scotland Foundation to Nature Conservation Foundation and Snow Leopard Trust.
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KS, YVB, and AG conceived the idea of the study. KS and AG conceptualized the study design. AK, MK, AG, DR, and URP conducted field work. AK and MK conducted the data analysis and lead the writing. KS helped develop the ideas, guided the analysis, and contributed to the writing of the manuscript. All authors edited and commented the manuscript.
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Khara, A., Khanyari, M., Ghoshal, A. et al. The forgotten mountain monarch? Understanding conservation status of the Vulnerable Ladakh urial in India. Eur J Wildl Res 67, 62 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-021-01492-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-021-01492-4