Transfrontier conservation landscapes, such as the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier
Conservation Area (KAZA TCA), play a crucial role in preserving global biodiversity and
promoting sustainable development of local communities. However, resources to facilitate
management may become scarce across large areas, leading to difficulty in obtaining baseline
ecological information. Consequently, vast landscapes may experience loss of wildlife species,
which may destabilize ecosystems. This effect is particularly significant if the loss involves top
predators, hence understanding carnivore distributions is critical to inform management. We
conducted a mammal survey in the Ondjou Conservancy in Namibia, a 8,729 km2 understudied
area located in the southwestern region of the KAZA TCA. We analysed camera trapping data from
a 2,304 km2
grid and identified high carnivore richness (18 species) despite wide-spread human
activity and depleted prey populations. Using a multi-species occupancy framework, we found that
carnivore occurrence increased with increasing distance from the main village, and with closer
proximity to KAZA TCA’s neighbouring Nyae Nyae Conservancy, which has large and diverse
carnivore populations. Carnivore occurrence was higher when local prey richness was high. The
Ondjou Conservancy could function as an important buffer for the larger conservation network, =
yet rural communities therein require support for fostering human-wildlife coexistence.
Additionally, restoring the natural prey base will be critical to ensure long-term viability of
carnivore populations in this and other human-impacted landscapes. With many remote areas of
transfrontier conservation landscapes understudied, our findings illustrate the conservation potential
of such areas within large-scale conservation networks.