Promoting co-existence between local people, carnivores and biodiversity conservation by conflict and poaching mitigation

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Matthias Waltert
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Animals and Ecosystems, Organismic Interactions
• Term: from 2016 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 325914482

Local people often express negative attitudes and even hostility towards neighboring protected areas because of having limited access to natural resources and suffering from human-carnivore conflicts over livestock depredation. As a result, local people become opposed to conservation and intensify poaching in retaliation or to obtain essential food and income. Despite human-carnivore conflicts are globally widespread, their scientific research is mostly descriptive and only few attempts have been made to predict conflicts and to assess the effectiveness of conflict mitigation approaches (CMA). We are not aware of studies and publications describing the causal relationships between conflicts, CMAs, attitudes and poaching and their trends over time and space. Meantime, such research is crucially important to reveal the key drivers and to find practical solutions for managing conflicts and poaching in socially acceptable and beneficial ways. I and my team plan to evaluate the effectiveness of CMAs (protective collars, shepherds and guarding dogs) and to study the mutual relationships between wildlife poaching, CMAs, local attitudes and human-carnivore conflicts. The project will be carried out in the Hyrcanian forest in northern Iran. The overarching goal is to develop evidence based, cost-effective and practical methods to reduce human-carnivore conflicts and poaching without compromising local livelihoods and biodiversity conservation. The study will include the following activities at large scales (villages) and fine scales (households): (1) time-series analysis and comparisons of conflicts, attitudes and poaching before and after the application of CMAs; (2) causal relationships by means of structural equation modeling; (3) estimation of true poaching rates by occupancy modeling and randomized response modeling; and (4) probabilistic causal relationships and decision-making processes extrapolated through Bayesian networks. Using these approaches, we will produce a spatially explicit, causal and predictive model of human-carnivore conflicts allowing to optimize decision-making on further use of chosen CMAs. The current work of our team is based on comprehensive ecological research on the globally endangered Persian leopard (Panthera pardus saxicolor = P.p. ciscaucasica) and other big cats. The essential components of this research include the modeling of human-felid conflicts, field research of felid diet (including the contribution of livestock), and development and validation of CMAs. In 2015 alone, we have published four scientific papers on these topics (PLoS One, Basic Appl. Ecol., Anim. Conserv. and Biol. Conserv.).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants