Research overview: stepping-stone habitat for felid range shifts

Where continuous corridors are impossible, smaller patches of habitat can act as stepping stones that let animals move across otherwise inhospitable terrain. This overview surveys the role of stepping-stone habitat in facilitating range shifts and gene flow for wide-ranging cats, how such patches are identified in connectivity models, and the conditions under which they help or fail. It reviews the trade-offs between investing in large cores versus distributed stepping stones. The synthesis frames stepping stones as a pragmatic element of connectivity planning in fragmented, human-dominated landscapes, explaining why even modest protected patches can be disproportionately valuable if they fill a critical gap that a dispersing cat must cross to reach new or shifting habitat.