These include habitat loss, prey depletion and human-wildlife conflict.
Although not apparent from most hunting offtakes, leopards have undergone an estimated range decline of 35% in Africa [18] and were recently listed as Near Threatened by IUCN due to habitat loss, prey depletion, illegal skin trade and problem animal conflicts [19].
Differences in diet between species, specifically the level of dietary specialization, may relate to extinction risk because dietary specialists should be more sensitive than generalists to the loss of prey [16] or the destruction of prey habitat [13].
The loss of prey (mainly to spotted hyaena (Crocuta crocuta)) and its impact on African wild dog population has been discussed extensively16,21,30,31,45,49,50.
The African lion, Panthera leo, is threatened throughout much of its remaining range by human impacts such as loss of prey, habitat fragmentation and direct human-caused mortality, often in response to livestock predation.
Large carnivore populations are imperiled worldwide through habitat loss, insufficient prey, and intolerance by people, promoting concerns that their populations will persist only in protected areas and remote regions.
There are thought to be around 3,200 tigers left in the wild in south and east Asia, but they are endangered by poaching for the trade in tiger body parts (used in traditional Chinese medicine) and their skins, loss of prey and the more long-term threat of habitat loss.
Our findings show that the large space requirements for cheetah, coupled with the complex range of threats faced by the species in the wild, mean that it is likely to be much more vulnerable to extinction than was previously thought". All populations of these animals face multiple serious threats including loss of prey, habitat loss, and illegal hunting and trafficking.
That's because there are insufficient data to determine how the ill effects of noise created by ships, sonar signals, and other activities interact with other threats, including pollution, climate change, and the loss of prey due to fishing.
In a Lotka-Volterra context, we might say that the loss of prey to a second predator (−a2PC2) is in part a function of the density of the first predator (C1).
And since there is no way to accurately count the shopping trips unmade, and the businesses unbuilt, estimates of this kind of economic loss often fall prey to the prior biases of their authors.
