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).