Research Article: Treves, A., & Karanth, K. U. (2003). Human‐carnivore conflict and perspectives on carnivore management worldwide. Conservation biology, 17(6), 1491-1499.

Blog Author: Yashendu Chinmayee Joshi

Key Takeaways:

  • Globally, human–carnivore conflicts pose an urgent challenge, since these negative interactions put human communities against carnivores and against other humans, such as government officials and conservationists, who protect wildlife. 
  • Three approaches have been used to manage human-carnivore interactions; 1) eradication, 2) regulated harvest, and 3) preservation. 
  • The authors suggest two solutions to human-carnivore conflict: 1) modify humans and animal behaviour, and 2) prevent the activities that bring humans and carnivores close to each other. 
  • The authors suggest that conservation biologists should inform the public and policy-makers about locally feasible solutions to tackle human-carnivore conflict, based on scientific research. These locally feasible solutions can include natural barriers, wildlife corridors, or non-invasive or invasive methods of repelling animals.

 

Interactions between humans and non-humans are escalating with increasing encroachment into wild habitats for agricultural and urban expansion, resulting in competition for food and space. Competition over resources often ends with negative interactions between humans and carnivores (predators). Thus, there is a growing need for innovative and context-specific approaches to managing these dynamic interactions between humans and carnivores. In this paper, the authors have re-evaluated the past strategies of managing negative interactions between human and carnivore communities in light of modern research, and future solutions to address negative interactions have been suggested. 

Globally, governments have used three management strategies for carnivores; eradication, regulated harvest, or preservation. Eradication of carnivores was widely used in the past; this involved killing a sizable population of large predators from a region. Eradication was used to prevent agricultural and personal losses that people often have to bear when they share spaces with carnivores. However, governments and wildlife managers across the globe rarely consider the ecological impacts of eradication. Killing large predators from an area would encourage the population growth of large ungulates and small to medium-sized predators. Eradication is also expensive since governments have to pay bounties and hire trained agents to eliminate large carnivores. Thus, this method has several costs, both ecological and political. 

Regulated harvest, on the other hand, is slightly more sustainable since carnivore populations are monitored, and management involves hunting a few individuals periodically. However, in most cases, the monitoring primarily involves indirect, non-scientific, and regional techniques instead of intensive and systematic monitoring. Moreover, unregulated hunting can lead to severe ecological and socio-political consequences. Thus, the authors suggest that hunting through regulated harvest is not the best strategy for managing human-carnivore conflicts. 

The third strategy, preservation, involves making strict laws to protect carnivores inside  protected areas as well as outside. This strategy can aid in recovering carnivore populations; however, it is nearly impossible to do this outside of protected areas due to various anthropogenic pressures. Preservation also requires a considerable investment of time and resources. Moreover, cattle owners, farmers and hunters would oppose such decisions for their own personal and financial benefits, making this also an important political issue. 

Using these management strategies, carnivore populations are recovering in some regions. In other areas, the threats to carnivores are intensifying despite all conservation and management efforts. Thus, authors suggest a two-fold solution to this problem; 1) modify the behaviour, by killing or translocating the individual involved in conflict incidents, or using non-lethal control measures to repel them and, 2) prevent the activities that bring humans and carnivores close, by prohibiting certain human activities in and around protected areas and employing voluntary resettlement schemes. 

However, the authors acknowledge that there is no universal solution to the issue of human-carnivore interactions. Instead, they appeal to conservation biologists to provide locally feasible solutions that take into account the unique ecological, social, and cultural contexts of different regions. They also emphasise the need for scientific research to inform the development of effective management strategies that balance the needs of both humans and carnivores. In the future, conservationists should emphasise primarily on non-lethal carnivore behaviour modification, a change in human behaviour, and spatial segregation. The authors also appeal that lethal control measures should be avoided, unless it is absolutely necessary. 

 

You can access the original article here. 

Keywords: Human-carnivore conflict, management strategies, human and carnivore behaviour, conservation