Study Area
The study was conducted across various PAs and non-PAs in the state of
Maharashtra, India. The study sites were situated in the Eastern
Vidarbha Landscape (EVL) of the Nagpur and Chandrapur Divisions and in
the districts of Pune and Solapur. The study on tigers, dholes and
leopards was conducted in EVL across 2 PAs (Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve
and Umred Karhandla Wildlife Sanctuary) and one Forest Division
(Brahmapuri Forest Division). EVL encompasses an area of about 50,000
km2 covering six districts. It houses a human
population of >10 million people, and at the same time has
a forest cover of about 20,000 km2. There are almost
8540 villages in this landscape (Habib, Nigam, Mondal, Ghaskadbi &
Hussain, 2017). The landscape habitat is primarily tropical dry
deciduous forest with bamboo Dendrocalamus strictus and teakTectona grandis as the dominant flora and is home to an estimated
number of 312 tigers (range 270-354) (Jhala et al, 2019). The study on
wolves was conducted across the grasslands of semi-arid landscapes in
two districts Pune and Solapur in Maharashtra. The area is dominated by
crop fields, grazing lands, scrublands, grasslands, villages and
territorial forest areas (Fig 1). The sympatric carnivores present in
the area are Stripped Hyena Hyaena hyaena, Golden jackalCanis aureus, Indian fox Vulpes bengalensis and wide
spread domestic dog Canis familiaris (Habib, 2007).