Habitat connectivity for endangered Indochinese tigers in Thailand

Habitat connectivity is crucial for the conservation of species restricted to fragmented populations within human-dominated landscapes. However, identifying habitat apex predators challenging because trophic interactions between primary productivity and prey influence both distribution habitats, predator movement. Our goal was assess Indochinese tigers (Panthera tigris) in Thailand. We quantified suitable dispersal corridors based an ensemble model that included distributions, productivity, abiotic variables on camera-trap data from 1996 2013 15 protected areas. employed graph theory evaluate relative importance patches overall network. found tiger occurrence models with without distributions performed well (Area Under Curve: 0.932–0.954). inclusion significantly improved performance (P < 0.001). Protected areas at time our surveys were highly isolated high resistance movement corridors, four them have lost their since. Potential outside also mostly isolated, but it encouraging find there ample potential are not occupying. The Huai Kha Kaeng - ThungYai patch Krachan corridor most important connectivity. Generally, integrating into assessments a promising approach can be widely applied predict delineate thereby supporting planning other large carnivores.