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Research article2019Peer reviewedOpen access

Factors influencing the presence of the endangered Egyptian vulture Neophron percnopterus in Rukum, Nepal

Bahadur, Khim K. C.; Koju, Narayan Prasad; Bhusal, Krishna Prasad; Low, Matthew; Ghimire, Shravan Kumar; Ranabhat, Rishi; Panthi, Saroj

Abstract

Egyptian vultures (Neophron percnopterus) play an important ecological role in central Asia, but conservation planning is hindered because basic information about their habitat requirements is lacking. We used 66 observations of roosting vultures to identify factors related to their presence, and MaxEnt model to predict areas of suitable roosting sites in the mid-hills of Nepal (similar to 20% of the district appeared suitable based on roosting observations). Vultures preferred riverbanks and areas near human settlements and pathways, probably because of access to animal carcasses. This relationship to local people and livestock should be considered when producing conservation plans for this species. (c) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Keywords

Egyptian vulture; Anthropogenic factors; Human paths; Land cover; Maximum entropy modelling; Settlements

Published in

Global Ecology and Conservation
2019, Volume: 20, article number: e00727
Publisher: ELSEVIER

    UKÄ Subject classification

    Ecology

    Publication identifier

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2019.e00727

    Permanent link to this page (URI)

    https://res.slu.se/id/publ/103054