Applicability of Age-Based Hunting Regulations for African Leopards

Key Points:

• In species in which juvenile survival depends strongly on male tenure, excessive trophy hunting can artificially elevate male turnover and increase infanticide, potentially to unsustainable levels
• Simulation models show that the likelihood of safe harvests can be improved by restricting offtakes to males old enough to have reared their first cohort of offspring to independence; in the case of African leopards, males were >7 years old
• A discriminant model including dewlap size, the condition of the ears, and the extent of facial scarring accurately discriminated among male leopard age classes.
• Our study demonstrated that an age-based hunting approach is practically applicable for leopards.