Climate velocity and human pressures shape global range contraction in the leopard

Understanding the drivers of species range contraction under accelerating global change remains a central challenge in conservation science. Despite its ecological flexibility, the leopard ( Panthera pardus ) has experienced extensive range loss across all nine subspecies. Yet the relative associations of climatic and anthropogenic factors with range contraction remain poorly understood. Here, we integrated global datasets of environmental and human predictors within a unified modelling framework to quantify patterns of historical local extirpation across the species’ range. Random Forest models identified climate velocity as the predictor most strongly associated with contraction patterns, followed by landscape modification, livestock density, and forest loss. Subspecies-level analyses revealed pronounced heterogeneity in predictor ranking, indicating that the relative importance of climatic and anthropogenic variables varied among leopard subspecies. Logistic models further indicated that landscape modification and climate velocity were positively associated with contraction probability, whereas forest loss showed a comparatively weaker effect size. These results indicate that both climatic displacement and anthropogenic pressures are strongly associated with global leopard range contraction patterns. Our framework provides a transferable approach for quantifying spatial vulnerability patterns in wide-ranging megafauna under accelerating environmental change.