Title
Filling the knowledge gap on the Endangered Asian tapirs in southern part of Tropical Rainforest Heritage of Sumatra
Author(s)
Ardiantiono;Surahmat, Fahrudin ;Sugiharti, Tri ;Pusparini, Wulan
Published
2016
Abstract
As the largest protected area in southern part of Sumatra, Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park (BBSNP) is believed to harbor one of the highest populations of Endangered Asian tapirs. However, despite becoming an important area for tapir conservation, there is a paucity of information on this large mammal species's population status and ecology in BBSNP. Thus, to fill the knowledge gap, we analyzed the Asian tapir data collected from a camera trapping study targeting tigers in BBSNP. With a trap effort of 1.580 trap days/100 km 2 covering effective trapping area size of 969.5 km 2 , a total of 512 tapir photographs were recorded resulting in 162 independent tapir detections. Tapir relative abundance was 2.08 events/100 camera-trap days. Tapir site occupancy was mostly affected by slope with ᴪ = 0.72 (0.54—0.85 95% CI). Tapirs were found mostly active at night-time (56.96%) and using low elevation hills to submontane areas (x 2 = 1.4189, P = 0.4919). This study thus provides much needed information on tapir population and ecology in BBSNP and highlights the extent application of camera trapping to study other cryptic mammals beside target species.
Keywords
Asian tapir (Tapirus indicus);camera trapping;population;distribution;activity patterns;BBSNP

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PUB18880