Anthropogenic pressure on large carnivores and their prey in the highly threatened forests of Tanintharyi, southern Myanmar
NAY MYO SHWE,MATTHEW GRAINGER,DUSIT NGOPRAS ERT,SAW S OE AUNG MARK GRINDLEY and TOMMASO S AV I N I
Abstract The Tanintharyi Region in southern Myanmar is rich in biodiversity yet is facing threats from varying degrees of anthropogenic pressure. In this research we examine how anthropogenic pressures are influencing large carnivores (tiger Panthera tigris, leopard Panthera pardus and dhole Cuon alpinus) and their major prey species (wild pig Sus scrofa, muntjac Muntiacus spp., sambar Rusa unicolor, gaur Bos gaurus and banteng Bos javanicus) in the Lenya Reserved Forest and adjacent areas of Sundaic forest. We used data from camera-trap surveys during May 2016– March 2018 and logistic regression to analyse the rela- tionships between the presence of large carnivores and ex- planatory variables such as human disturbance, landscape variability and changes in prey distribution. Tiger presence was positively associated with the occurrence of gaur and distance to villages. The occurrence of prey did not explain the detection of leopards in the study area. We suspect this was because leopards have a broad diet, including arboreal primates, and their preywas not fully recorded in our camera- trap survey. Dholes were positively associated with wild pigs and the total number of prey but not associated with forest type and landscape variables. To restore the carnivore popu- lation and conserve the biodiversity of this area, effective protection of predators and habitat management for large ungulates are crucial.
Keywords Camera trap, dhole, human disturbance, hunt- ing, leopard, Myanmar, palm oil, tiger
Supplementary material for this article is available at
doi.org/10.1017/S0030605321001654
Introduction
in a major tropical region has been recorded (Karger, et al., 2021; Namkhan, et al., 2021). Human activities affect wildlife mainly through habitat destruction and hunting, re- sulting in defaunation and ecosystem degradation (Corlett, 2007; Rao et al., 2011; Dirzo et al., 2014; Newbold et al., 2014). Within South-east Asia, Myanmar retains some of the lar- gest forest patches in the region because of its previous slow economic development following long-term political isolation (Schmidt, 2012; WCS, 2012; Rao et al., 2013). However, since political reform in Myanmar began in 2010, increased threats to biodiversity have been observed (Donald et al., 2015; Woods, 2015; Connette et al., 2016, 2017; Shwe et al., 2020). The Tanintharyi (formerly known as Tenasserim)
B NAY MYO SHWE* (Corresponding author,
orcid.org/0000-0003-3739-3955,
nmshwe@googlemail.com), DUSIT NGOPRASERT and TOMMASO SAVINI Conservation Ecology Program, King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, Bangkok, Thailand
MATTHEW GRAINGER (
orcid.org/0000-0001-8426-6495) Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, Trondheim, Norway
SAW SOE AUNG and MARK GRINDLEY Myanmar Programme, Fauna & Flora International, Yangon, Myanmar
*Also at: Myanmar Programme, Fauna & Flora International, Yangon, Myanmar
Received 21 May 2021. Revision requested 29 July 2021. Accepted 1 November 2021. First published online 19 December 2022.
Region in southern Myanmar is one of the largest continu- ous forest patches in mainland South-east Asia (Donald et al., 2015; Aung et al., 2017), and has been largely spared from the high rates of clearance for industrial crops that has occurred elsewhere in the region (Leimgruber et al., 2005; Connette et al., 2016). This area lies in the southern Dawna–Tenasserim Ecoregion (Olson et al., 2001) on the Isthmus of Kra and is bordered by Chumphon Province (Thailand) to the east and the Andaman Sea to the west. The Lenya and NgaWunReserved Forest (formerly the pro- posed Lenya Reserved Forest and Lenya Reserved Forest Extension; Fig. 1) has been proposed as a protected area since 2004. However, because of persistent problems in reliable land mensuration, boundary marking, management implementation and unresolved disagreements over sover- eignty between the national government and ethnic Karen communities, the proposal was dropped in June 2019. This area is important for the transboundary conserva-
tion of tigers and other large, threatened mammals of Thai- land and Myanmar (Bennett, 1999). Since the late 1990s, however, a large portion of this lowland forest (,150 m altitude, with slopes ,10°; Shwe et al., 2020) has been lost (Namkhan et al., 2021), mostly in conversion to oil palm plantations (Baskett, 2015). Although forest still covers an estimated 80% of the land area of the Tanintharyi Region, this remaining forest is under threat from development and land-use conversion (Connette et al., 2016). Lowland
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Oryx, 2023, 57(2), 262–271 © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605321001654
iodiversity is declining worldwide, particularly in South-east Asia, where the highest deforestation rate
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