Seasonal shifts in Leopard (Panthera pardus) occupancy driven by prey availability and proximity to human settlements in Margalla Hills National Park, Pakistan.

The common leopard (Panthera pardus) is critically endangered in Pakistan, yet quantitative habitat assessments remain absent from the Himalayan foothills. This study provides the first detection-corrected occupancy assessment of leopards in Margalla Hills National Park (MHNP) using four years of systematic camera-trap data (2021-2024) across 20 sites and 2,400 sampling occasions per season. We modelled seasonal occupancy and detection probability during summer (May-August) and winter (November-February) using environmental and anthropogenic covariates. In summer, the null detection model was top-ranked (weight = 0.59), while prey relative abundance index (RAI) was the strongest occupancy predictor (β = 3.18 ± 1.31 SE, P = 0.015; ψ = 0.39 ± 0.19 SE). In winter, prey RAI strongly predicted detection probability (β = 0.437 ± 0.071 SE, P < 0.001), and occupancy was highest at sites distant from human settlements (β = 4.72 ± 2.19 SE, P = 0.031; ψ = 0.89 ± 0.13 SE), indicating active human-area avoidance during a season of heightened spatial overlap. These findings demonstrate the primacy of prey availability in driving leopard space use and identify settlement proximity as a key winter occupancy determinant. Conservation requires prey management, seasonal regulation of human activity in core leopard zones, and landscape-level planning across the MHNP-Murree Hills-Ayubia corridor.