Fine‐scale spatio‐temporal niche partitioning enables coexistence of wild ungulates and livestock in a resource‐limited Himalayan landscape, India

Understanding how wild ungulates share space with domestic livestock is central to conservation planning in Himalayan multi‐use landscapes. This study focuses on multi‐axis niche relationships among six wild ungulates: hangul Cervus hanglu hanglu , Kashmir musk deer Moschus cupreus , Himalayan goral Naemorhedus goral , kashmir markhor Capra falconeri cashmiriensis , Himalayan ibex Capra sibirica hemalayanus, wild boar Sus scrofa and pooled livestock, using valley‐wide camera trapping. Camera traps were deployed at 184 stations from May 2023 to September 2025 across approximately 16 000 km ² , stratified into five landscapes (Central, North, South, Sindh and Gurez). Raw detections were filtered to independent events using a 30‐min threshold for abundance and habitat‐use analyses, yielding 5689 events (summer 2604, winter 3085). We estimated relative abundance index (RAI; events/100 trap‐days), seasonal occupancy and detectability using single‐season occupancy models (weekly occasions; ψ as a function of landscape; p as a function of effort), diel activity using kernel‐density estimation, temporal overlap (Δ), spatial overlap from camera‐level RAI vectors and fine‐scale spatial‐temporal co‐use from camera‐by‐hour matrices. Livestock dominated encounter rates (summer mean RAI 288.18; winter 148.91), whereas wild ungulates showed lower and patchier use (musk deer 5.63/4.51; hangul 2.98/3.46; goral 3.01/6.56). Occupancy revealed strong landscape structuring: hangul was restricted mainly to dachigam and adjoining areas in central Kashmir and sindh, goral and markhor to kazinag national park north Kashmir, ibex to Gurez/Sindh valley, and musk deer was the most widespread wild ungulate distributed throughout the valley. Livestock were strongly diurnal (0.79–0.89) whereas musk deer and hangul were mainly nocturnal or crepuscular. ungulates show moderate to high temporal overlap, but fine‐scale camera‐hour co‐use was near zero for several key pairs, including livestock–hangul. Coexistence in this multi‐use Himalayan system was structured primarily by spatial and fine spatio‐temporal segregation rather than by broad diel separation, highlighting the need to protect spatial refugia and seasonal interaction hotspots in grazing landscapes.