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Jaguars and pumas are top-predator species in the Neotropics that are threatened by habitat destruction, illegal poaching of their body parts and their favored prey, and by the human–wildlife conflicts that arise when predators attack livestock. Much of the remaining felid habitat in the Americas is in protected nature reserves that are too small and isolated to support local populations. Surrounding forests therefore play a vital role in felid conservation. Successful long-term conservation of these two felids requires evidence-based knowledge of their biological and ecological requirements. We studied population distributions of jaguars and pumas and their prey in and between two small, private reserves of the Northern Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, with areas of 25 and 43 km2. During 2 years of camera trapping (2015 and 2016), we detected 21 jaguars, from which we estimated an average space requirement of 28–45 km2/individual. Dietary niche overlap exceeded random expectation. The most frequently occurring prey items in jaguar and puma diets were collared peccary and deer. Jaguar also favored nine-banded armadillos and white-nosed coati, while puma favored canids. Both felids avoided ocellated turkey. Overall, diet of jaguars was less species-rich, but similar in niche breadth, to that of pumas. A fluid use of space by both species, in 2015 tending toward mutual attraction and in 2016 toward partial exclusion of pumas by jaguars, combined with the high dietary overlap, is consistent with a dominance hierarchy facilitating coexistence. Jaguars and pumas favor the same prey as the people in local communities who hunt, which likely will intensify human–wildlife impacts when prey become scarce. We conclude that even small reserves play an important role in increasing the continuity of habitat for prey and large felids, whose generalist habits suppress interspecific competition for increasingly limiting prey that are largely shared between them and humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human-wildlife impacts threaten large-felid persistence in the northern Yucatán Peninsula, triggered largely by livestock depredation. We aimed to explore knowledge and attitudes about local wildlife in relation to husbandry practices, hunting habits, and human-wildlife interactions, in three Maya Forest communities. A questionnaire survey of 30 long-established smallholdings, where livelihood depended on a private fenced plot and surrounding communal forest, found wide knowledge of local wildlife, perception biases for abundances of game species, and preference for living amongst wild herbivores over carnivores. Interviewees had concerns about perceived year-on-year decreases in local wildlife, attributed to regular subsistence hunting by their communities. The few interviewees reporting large-felid attacks on their livestock subsequently altered management practices to prevent further attacks. The region suffers from a poverty trap of subsistence hunting by smallholders needing protein supplement potentially exacerbating depredation on the livestock that sustain their economies by large felids deprived of their natural prey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]