Management Tools to Reduce Carnivore-Livestock Conflicts: Current Gap and Future Challenges

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Abstract

Predation on domestic animals by carnivores is a persistent problem wherever carnivores and livestock co-occur. A wide range of management tools to reduce predation has been invoked. However, the evidence of their effectiveness is still limited for a broader range of species and conditions. Using a global analysis of domestic animal predation by native carnivores under a “before-after/control-impact” framework, we assessed the effectiveness of management techniques used to reduce domestic animal predation identifying knowledge gaps and research needs. We reviewed 291 predation cases in 149 studies published between 1990 and 2017 involving 47 carnivores. Lethal control is the most common method to reduce predation in comparison with nonlethal techniques. Yet the effectiveness of both approaches remains poorly evaluated (30.1% of study cases) and largely based on producers’ perceptions (70% of cases where effectiveness was evaluated). Lethal control and night confinement of domestic animals would have no effect on reducing predation, whereas the use of livestock-guarding dogs, fencing, or herdsmen may significantly reduce domestic animal losses. When the effectiveness of each technique to reduce predation was assessed by large and mesocarnivores, fencing significantly reduced predation of domestic animals by the former. Despite little scientifically published material, our findings indicate lethal control would have no effect in reducing animal predation by native carnivores when compared with nonlethal techniques. Our study also indicates the effectiveness may vary depending on the type of carnivore involved in the conflict with livestock activity. The use of an evidence-based framework to measure and assess the differential effectiveness of nonlethal techniques and the use of complementary tools at different spatial and temporal scales must be research priorities to prevent livestock predation while promoting the conservation of carnivores in production-oriented lands as encouraged by the Convention of Biological Diversity.

Introduction

Carnivore predation upon domestic animals is a matter of conservation concern (Treves and Karanth, 2003, Woodroffe et al., 2005). Although the number of domestic animals lost annually to predators tends to be small relative to the number of animals raised (< 1–5%; Baker et al. 2008), these losses might be significant in term of livestock biomass (Novaro et al. 2004) or economically sizeable for the local economy and owner’s well-being (Knowlton et al. 1999). As a consequence, due to human retaliation, numerous carnivores’ populations have declined, some to the extent of being locally extirpated (Thirgood et al., 2005, Dickman, 2010).

Effective management of the conflict derived from the predation of domestic animals would benefit from the explicit use of verificable scientific evidence obtained from both experimental research and the disemination of routinely systematic reviews (Sutherland et al., 2004, Treves et al., 2016). Although the reduction of predation upon domestic animals has traditionally relied on lethal methods (Treves and Karanth 2003), the effectiveness and acceptability of lethal approaches are still controversial (Baker et al., 2008, Treves et al., 2016). For instance, the elimination of “problem” predators at local scale might be buffered by recolonization of individuals migrating from adjacent areas (Novaro et al. 2005) or by the individuals’ compensatory reproduction at regional scale in subsequent years (Knowlton et al. 1999). Thus, even though the elimination of animals could reduce the domestic animal losses in the short term (i.e., during lambing season), little or no effect may be achieved in the long term (Blejwas et al. 2002). More importantly, the extirpation of native carnivores as a management technique is socially regarded as undesirable on ethical and ecological grounds (Treves and Naughton-Treves, 2005, Dickman, 2010).

In turn, the effectiveness and efficiency of nonlethal techniques to reduce predation upon domestic animals while conserving carnivores have to be demonstrated in order to replace the reliance on lethal control techniques (Treves and Karanth, 2003, Baker et al., 2008, Treves et al., 2016). This is particularly important if conservation of biodiversity is to be achieved in lands devoted to agriculture including livestock raising, as expected under the Aichi Biodiversity Targets (CBD 2010). For instance, presumed nonlethal techniques such as the animals’ translocation, requires critical appraisal, as they have turned to trigger higher mortality among translocated individuals, being equivalent to lethal control (Fontúrbel and Simonetti 2011).

In response to the increasing rate of conflicts between carnivores and livestock, recent review studies have documented the relative effectiveness of conflict-mitigation strategies on a global scale (Miller et al., 2016, Van Eeden et al., 2017, Eklund et al., 2017). Although the evidence provided by research suggests that nonlethal strategies may reduce domestic animal predation, the focus on large carnivores-livestock conflicts, as well as the use of predation cases reporting statistic metrics, limit our understanding above the success of nonlethal techniques under a wider range of species and conditions. Consequently, from a conflict management perspective, important insights can be gained by assessing if the effectiveness of each technique varies between carnivore species and environmental conditions. Furthermore, to demonstrate this effectiveness, confident and accurate methods to quantify domestic animal predation should also be considered in order to avoid the overestimates/underestimations of animals’ losses under different management strategies. This is particularly important if replacement animals or financial payments schemes are used by public agencies to compensate those losses (Baker et al. 2008).

If the utilization of nonlethal techniques is not only perceived but also demonstrated to effectively decrease predation, then the willingness to use these methods by producers is expected to increase, enhancing the survival of native carnivores in production-oriented lands (Redpath et al. 2013). The success of techniques has been mostly evaluated individually (e.g., Andelt, 1992, Woodroffe et al., 2007; see examples in Eklund et al. 2017), and little evidence is known about the additive or synergic effects of combined strategies (Espuno et al., 2004, Garrote et al., 2015). Here, we examined the effectiveness of lethal and nonlethal management techniques in reducing predation upon a wide range of domestic animals and carnivores. As a new aspect of this research, we have disaggregated the predation by carnivores with different body sizes in an attempt to identify patterns of used techniques that might facilitate more informed selection by potential users. To do so, we reviewed published cases of predation of domestic animals that quantified effectiveness of a given management technique as the change in domestic animal losses (as reported by different sources) after/with the applied technique.

Section snippets

Methods

We searched the Web of Science (Science Citation Index Expanded) for papers using the following search terms: carnivore-livestock conflict* OR human-carnivore interaction* OR predation risk*. We reviewed peer-reviewed literature dealing with predation of a wide range of domestic animals (from poultry to cattle) by a wide range of terrestrial native carnivores and excluded studies that did not explicitly mention management techniques to prevent domestic animal losses. We also excluded avian

Results

A total of 255 papers were retrieved, of which 149 studies published between 1990 and 2017 fulfilled our inclusion criteria completing a total of 291 study cases involving 47 carnivore species (Appendix 1). We considered a study case as an event of predation on individuals of domestic animal species by a particular carnivore. Lethal control was the method most frequently mentioned across the study cases (19.2%) compared with nonlethal techniques: livestock fencing (15.8%), livestock-guarding

Discussion

Predation on domestic animals by carnivores is a persistent problem wherever carnivores and livestock co-occur. As such, this predation is a triggering factor of human-wildlife conflicts in livestock-raising lands worldwide (Woodroffe et al. 2005). Consequences of this conflict are not only circumscribed to the negative effects on economy or food production of local and regional communities. The elimination of predators is also one of the underlying factors affecting the long-term persistence

Management Implications

Sustainable livestock production is expected to reduce domestic animal loss while reducing pressure on biodiversity occurring on these production-oriented lands. Despite limited data, current evidence suggests that nonlethal methods such as fencing, livestock-guarding dogs, and herdsmen allow the coexistence between native carnivores and livestock activity, but their effectiveness may vary depending on the carnivore species involved in the conflict.

On the basis of the evidence provided by this

Acknowledgments

We thank all participants in the workshop “Dialogue in Patagonia: Perceptions and Attitudes of the Relevant Actors: The First Step,” organized by the Asociación Kauyeken at Río Verde, Magallanes, May 2014. Thanks are also due to G. Simonetti-Grez and G. Stipicic for arranging this workshop. We thanks anonymous reviewers for their relevant comments.

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