Strategic grassland conservation for swift foxes in multi-use landscapes

Grasslands are among the most widely distributed, but most imperiled, biomes on Earth. North American grasslands once covered ~162 million ha prior to European colonization, but only ~30 % of this landcover currently remains due to continued human-modified landscape changes. Strategic conservation of remaining grassland landcover, which considers species-specific habitat requirements, is critical for the persistence of grassland species and has become a global priority. Intact grassland landcover is critical for swift fox (Vulpes velox), a facultative prairie carnivore, and we sought to strategically identify areas where grassland conservation would most impact population persistence in an agro-prairie ecosystem. We modeled site (n = 381) occupancy by swift foxes using three years of camera-trap data (2018–2020) from western Kansas, USA, and integrated known-fate survival information to identify priority native grassland conservation areas. Additionally, we evaluated ownership of our identified priority conservation lands to determine strategies for conservation delivery. Our grassland assessment of two thresholds of predicted swift fox occupancy (≥0.09 [priority] and ≥0.18 [high priority]) identified 2,377,193 ha and 84,420 ha for conservation in Kansas, respectively. Identified conservation areas were overwhelmingly located on privately owned working lands (98 % [priority and high priority]), rather than federal, state, or non-governmental organization owned lands (2 % [priority and high priority]), and highlight the need for using conservation easements and incentive-based programs to promote grassland conservation to private landowners.