We obtained 138 independent captures of 24 adult snow leopards
across ten sampling sites (Table 1). The estimates of livestockabundance, wild prey abundance, livestock stocking densities, wild
prey densities, human population size and ruggedness are presented
in Table 1.
The sites showed considerable variation in wild prey abundance
and density (abundance ranging from 5 to 433 and density ranging
from 0.05 to 3.86/km2; Table 2) as well as livestock abundance and
stocking densities (abundance ranging from zero at one site to
5215 livestock heads at a site visited by nomadic herders; stocking
density ranging from zero to 57.23 livestock heads per km2). The
observer detection probability for the double observer surveys
for estimating wild prey abundance ranged from 0.61 to 1 across
observers and sites (Table 2).
Exploratory analysis using scatterplots indicated a monotonic
relationship of RUI with wild prey density and a quadratic relationship
with livestock stocking density (Fig. 2a and b). There appeared
to be a quadratic relationship between wild prey density/km2 and
livestock stocking density/km2 (Fig. 3).