Baird’s Tapir (Tapirus bairdii) avoid human settlements and roads while searching for water in community-owned forests from the Calakmul region

Tapir’s pond use in Calakmul region

Abstract

Baird’s tapir (Tapirus bairdii) populations are declining because of deforestation, fragmentation, poaching, and vehicle collisions.  Tapirs play an ecological role as seed dispersers and seed predators; therefore, their loss will impact plant communities.  This species prefers large areas with continuous native forest where human pressure is low and with permanent water bodies.  In the Calakmul region of Southern Mexico, there are no permanent water bodies, only seasonal ponds called locally “aguadas”.  These ponds have been crucial for tapir survival.  Communal lands of the Calakmul region are important for tapirs, offering more surface water than the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve.  Therefore, the objective of the present work was to determine the habitat features and anthropic factors influencing Baird’s tapir use of ponds on communal lands.  Our hypothesis was that Baird's tapirs would use seasonal ponds that are farther from roads and human settlements with higher frequency than ponds near roads and human settlements.  We set camera-trap stations for 50 days at 36 ponds on three communal lands from September to November 2022.  We measured 3 habitat covariates: presence/absence of water, normalized differential vegetation index, and vegetation type. The disturbance covariates were Euclidean distance to roads and human settlements, and the sampling effort as the number of days stations were active.  We evaluated the effect of these covariates in a single occupancy model, where we built detection histories in R v. 4. 2. 2 software.  We obtained 60 independent records of Baird’s tapir at 27 out of the 36 ponds with a sampling effort of 1,599 camera trap nights.  For tapir detection, the effort had a positive effect (β = 0.34 + 0.19, Wi = 0.66, p = 0.08).  Distance to roads had the strongest effect (positive) on Baird’s tapir occupancy (β = 1.2 + 1.27, Wi = 0.39, p = 0.34), while Distance to human settlements also had a positive effect (β = 0.49 + 0.65, Wi = 0.17, p = 0.45).  On communal lands from the Calakmul region, tapirs are searching for water sources on ponds far from roads and settlements to avoid potential conflicts with humans.  Although tapirs are not hunted, other factors associated with villages and roads might encourage tapirs to avoid these areas.  Communal lands have greater water availability in ponds than in the protected area, so therefore we recommend the creation of communal protected areas to preserve the remaining forests outside the reserve.  With the arrival of mega-projects like the Maya train, the economic development of the study region will likely increase.  For this reason, it’s of great importance that wildlife passages remain available and that mega-projects assure the free movement of tapirs to ponds in the Calakmul region.