Introduction:

Worldwide, expanding human activities continue to be a threat to many large-bodied species, including jaguars. As these activities continue, it is critical to understand how home range sizes will be impacted by human-modified landscapes.

Objective:

To evaluate the importance of protected and unprotected land on home-range size across their range.

Methods:

We used home range data from 117 jaguars in several habitat protection categories and human biome types. We used a Generalized Linear Mixed Model to test home range and spatial overlap with conservation categories and human biomes.

Results:

Most home-ranges were in Jaguar Conservation Units (62 %), followed by Protected Areas (21 %), Indigenous People's Lands (10 %) and Jaguar Movement Corridors (3 %), where 76 % of the jaguars lived inside one the first three conservation types. However, outside of conserved land, Rangeland, Cropland, Seminatural land and other human biomes were also important (24 % of the individuals). Jaguars in Rangeland, Cropland and Seminatural land had the largest home ranges.

Conclusions:

Although conservation land was dominant, human-impacted lands appear to play a considerable role in satisfying the spatial requirements of jaguars.