The role of snow leopard predation in determine prey recruitment: a synthetic study of abiotic, bottom-up and top-down influences on the Tibetan Plateau

Ungulate populations could either be limited by resources (bottom-up control) or be regulated by predation (top-down control). Consequently, for ungulates and their predators, conservation strategies may need to differ depending on the predominance of either of these forces at any given time period. Livestock competition, snow leopard Panthera uncia predation, and snow disaster in winter are three main forces affecting recruitment of blue sheep Pseudois nayaur, the major wild prey of snow leopards on the Tibetan Plateau. To answer the question which of them is the dominant force regulating blue sheep population, we selected seven study sites representing a gradient of livestock grazing pres…