Conservation Conflicts Flashcards
Why Conflicts?
Why Conflicts?
The human population is growing
Human influence spreads into most ecosystems
Contact between people and wildlife leads to conflicts
Competition over limited resources leads to conflicts
Differing value systems lead to conflicts
Conservation success can result in conflicts
Why Conflicts?
Conflicts can have positive outcomes
More often they are costly
Time, Money, PR, Trust
So understanding causes and consequences of conflicts important for environmental management
Conflicts are “one of the most intractable
problems facing conservation”
Conservation conflicts are “situations that occur when two or more parties with strongly held opinions clash over conservation objectives and when one party is perceived to assert its interests at the expense of another”
TREE 28: 100-109 (2013)
Redpath et al., 2013
Two types of conflict
Human-wildlife conflicts:
- conflicts involving direct interactions between people and wildlife
Biodiversity conflicts
arguments between people seeking to conserve species and those with other goals
Human-wildlife conflict
crop-raiding
predation of livestock and game
injury or death of people
Case Study
Human-Carnivore Conflict
Treves, A., & Karanth, K. (2003). Human-carnivore conflict and perspectives on carnivore management worldwide Conservation Biology 17: 1491–1499
Carnivore-related threats to: human life
economic security
recreation
Conflicts pit people against carnivores, and against other people who want to conserve carnivores
Carnivores eat livestock
Wolves and bears eat sheep (Europe, N America)
Pumas and jaguars eat cattle (S America)
Tigers and leopards eat livestock (Asia)
Smaller carnivores eat game species, crops, fish, poultry
Conservation can drive conflicts
Carnivores are often conservation icons
Restoring habitat can bring carnivores closer to human settlements
Restoring and reintroducing carnivore populations increases the chance of contact
Livestock depredation by large carnivores in the Indian trans-Himalaya
Mishra
Madhusudan
Living amidst large wildlife:
livestock and crop predredation in South India
Linking snow leopard conservation and people-wildlife conflict resolution: grassroots measures to protect the endangered snow leopard from herder retribution
Livestock depredation has become a significant problem across the snow leopard’s range in Central Asia. Such predation, especially incidents of “surplus killing”, in which 5 to 100 more sheep and goats are lost in a single night, almost inevitably leads herders to retaliate by killing rare or endangered carnivores like snow leopard, wolf, and lynx. Such loss can be avoided by making the night-time enclosures predator-proof, improving animal husbandry techniques, educating herders on wildlife consrvation and the importance of protecting the natural prey base, and by providing economic incentives like handicrafts skills training and marketing, along with carefully planned ecotourism;
Large carnivore depredation on livestock in Europe
Each bear kills an average of 82 sheep annually, each wolf 41, and each lynx 9
Managing wolf conflict with livestock in NW USA
Wolves were once common but deliberately exterminated because of livestock depredations. Sixty years later the gray wolf was listed under endangered species act. Natural recovery and reintroduction has resulted in an expanding wolf population. Minimise conflicts between wolves and livestock to build human tolerance for restoring wolf populations
Sandstrom et al., 2015
Meta-analysis of studies on attitudes towards bears and wolves
“Across Europe, people’s attitudes were more positive toward bears than wolves. Attitudes toward bears became more positive over time, but attitudes toward wolves seemed to become less favorable the longer people coexisted with them. Younger and more educated people had more positive attitudes toward wolves and bears than people who had experienced damage from these species, and farmers and hunters had less positive attitudes toward wolves than the general public.”
Navarrete et al., 2016
Moral dimensions of human-wildlife conflict
“Most respondents attributed intrinsic value to wolves… Leveraging agreement over intrinsic value may foster cooperation among stakeholders and garner support for controversial conservation policy.”
Case Study
Hen Harriers and Red Grouse
Thirgood, S., & Redpath, S. (2008). Hen harriers and red grouse: science, politics and human-wildlife conflict Journal Of Applied Ecology 45: 1550–1554
The context
Many heather moorlands in the UK are managed
for grouse
Management involves burning heather, and
controlling parasites and predators
Killing raptors illegal, but continues and is the
main limiting factor to harrier populations
