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Satel­lite col­lars have pro­vided researchers in Bor­neo with a new insight into the mys­te­ri­ous move­ments of the Sunda clouded leop­ard, help­ing to ensure the future of this vul­ner­a­ble species.

Rah­sia, the only female Sunda clouded leop­ard col­lared dur­ing the project.
Source: Danau Girang Field Cen­tre face­book page

The inter­na­tional team, includ­ing researchers from Cardiff Uni­ver­sity, Oxford Uni­ver­sity Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Research Cen­tre (Wild­CRU) and the Danau Girang Field Cen­tre, tagged four Sunda clouded leop­ards with satel­lite col­lars and used sophis­ti­cated mod­el­ling approaches to inves­ti­gate what fac­tors influ­ence their move­ments through the land­scape, and explored how future land­scape change sce­nar­ios might affect them. The study, which was pub­lished online on 19 April in the jour­nal Bio­log­i­cal Con­ser­va­tion, took place in the Lower Kin­abatan­gan Wildlife Sanc­tu­ary, a human-​dominated, yet region­ally impor­tant pro­tected area in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo.

Dr Andrew J. Hearn, Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Research Unit (Wild­CRU), Depart­ment of Zool­ogy, Uni­ver­sity of Oxford, United Kingdom

Hearn added: “We found that for­est canopy cover facil­i­tates the move­ments of these cats through the land­scape, but that recently cleared or under­pro­duc­tive and flooded oil palm plan­ta­tion areas tended to resist their movements.”

By track­ing the elu­sive preda­tor, the col­lab­o­ra­tive research aimed to influ­ence poli­cies and pro­vide rec­om­men­da­tions to sup­port the con­ser­va­tion of the Sunda clouded leop­ard — one of the largest preda­tors in Bor­neo. Sunda clouded leop­ards from the island Bor­neo (Neo­fe­lis diardi ssp borneen­sis) are clas­si­fied as Endan­gered by the IUCN Red List of Threat­ened Species™.

Dr Benoit Goossens, Cardiff Uni­ver­sity and Direc­tor of the Danau Girang Field Cen­tre, said: “Our research showed that the con­ver­sion of fre­quently flooded and under­pro­duc­tive plan­ta­tions areas to for­est would bring large ben­e­fits to Sunda clouded leop­ards, whilst min­imis­ing impacts to the plan­ta­tion indus­try. We pre­dicted that the refor­esta­tion of nar­row for­est cor­ri­dors may be an impor­tant and cost-​effective con­ser­va­tion tool for this species.”

These find­ings will be inte­grated in the State Action Plan for the Sunda clouded leop­ard that is cur­rently drafted and will be launched in Sep­tem­ber 2018.

Dr Samuel Cush­man, Direc­tor of the USDA For­est Ser­vice Cen­ter for Land­scape Sci­ence, said: “The analy­sis pro­duced a very clear find­ing that clouded leop­ards are highly resis­tant to mov­ing out­side of for­est cover and the sce­nario analy­ses pro­vide clear and use­ful guid­ance to man­agers about the costs and ben­e­fits of alter­na­tive con­ser­va­tion plan­ning in the Kin­abatan­gan region.”

Pro­fes­sor David Mac­don­ald, Direc­tor of the Wild­CRU said that “Clouded leop­ards may be the most dif­fi­cult felid to study in the world, so our find­ings are a tri­umph at the inter­sec­tion of nat­u­ral­is­tic skills, high tech sci­ence and pol­icy relevance”.

(Source: Cardiff Uni­ver­sity news release, 10.05.2018; Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Research Unit news release, 23.04.2018)