256 C. Zhang et al.


(Borchers & Efford, 2008) to estimate snow leopard pop- ulation density in this area.


Study area


The Qilian Mountains lie at the north-eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau in Gansu Province, China. The 26,530 km2 Qilianshan National Nature Reserve on the northern slopes of the Qilian Mountains was established in 1988 to protect the forests and wildlife of this region. We con- ducted our research in the central and eastern region of the Reserve, known as Machang (Fig. 1), located at the boundary of the Hei and Shiyang river systems and charac- terized by high mountains, deep valleys and a dense net- work of rivers. Altitude is 2,420–4,933 m, with strong vertical gradients of vegetation comprising mainly grass- land (Stipa przewalskii montane grassland and Bistorta vivipara alpine grassland) and shrub vegetation (Caragana spp.), with isolated areas of forest (Picea crassifolia and Sabina przewalskii forests). The study area supports a mammalian carnivore assemblage that, in addition to the snow leopard, includes the grey wolf Canis lupus,red fox Vulpes vulpes, Tibetan fox Vulpes ferrilata, Pallas’s cat Otocolobus manul and Chinese mountain cat Felis bieti, and ungulates including the blue sheep Pseudois nayaur, Alpine musk deer Moschus chrysogaster, red deer Cervus


elaphus and Siberian roe deer Capreolus pygargus. Accord- ing to a policy issued in 2017 by the government of Gansu, livestock herding is limited in the study area, and the areas surrounding Qilianshan National Nature Reserve are used by herders to graze livestock, principally yak and sheep.


Methods Camera-trapping survey


We deployed 40 camera traps (Ereagle E1B, Shenzhen Ereagle Technology, Shenzhen, China) over an area of c. 650 km2, with a minimum spacing of 1 km between camera traps, during January–March 2019. The study area theoretically spanned multiple snow leopard home ranges as it is larger than the best available estimate of mean minimum convex polygon home range size for snow leopards (c. 500 km2; Johansson et al., 2016). We assumed a temporally closed population as our sampling period was comparatively short relative to snow leopard lifespan (Karanth&Nichols, 1998; Alexander et al., 2015). Weplaced camera traps systematically, in a 5 × 5 km grid, with two camera-trap stations, each comprising a single camera, in each grid cell. We maximized detection probability by placing cameras at sites where snow leopards were likely to travel (e.g. near snow leopard signs such as scrapes,


FIG. 1 The study area in Machang, central and eastern Qilian Mountains, China, showing the 5 × 5 km grid and the locations of the camera-trap stations (two per grid cell) used for surveying the snow leopard Panthera uncia. The inset map illustrates the range of the snow leopard (McCarthy et al., 2017).


Oryx, 2024, 58(2), 255–260 © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605323000340


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