People and Predators: From Conflict to Coexistence - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1559630841 ISBN 13: 9781559630849

Verlag: ISLAND PR, 2004

Inhaltsangabe

Carnivores provide innumerable ecological benefits and play a unique role in preserving and maintaining ecosystem services and function, but at the same time they can create serious problems for human populations. A key question for conservation biologists and wildlife managers is how to manage the world's carnivore populations to conserve this important natural resource while mitigating harmful impacts on humans.

In People and Predators, leading scientists and researchers offer case studies of human-carnivore conflicts in a variety of landscapes, including rural, urban, and political. The book covers a diverse range of taxa, geographic regions, and conflict scenarios, with each chapter dealing with a specific facet of human-carnivore interactions and offering practical, concrete approaches to resolving the conflict under consideration. Chapters provide background on particular problems and describe how challenges have been met or what research or tools are still needed to resolve the conflicts.

People and Predators will helps readers to better understand issues of carnivore conservation in the 21st century, and provides practical tools for resolving many of the problems that stand between us and a future in which carnivores fulfill their historic ecological roles.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Nina Fascione is VP, Species Conservation, Defenders of Wildlife, DC

Aimee Delach is Senior Associate, Species Conservation Division, Defenders of Wildlife, DC

Martin E. Smith is Carnivore Biologist, Defenders of Wildlife, DC.

Defenders of Wildlife is dedicated to the protection of all native wild animals and plants in their natural communities. We focus our programs on what scientists consider two of the most serious environmental threats to the planet: the accelerating rate of extinction of species and the associated loss of biological diversity, and habitat alteration and destruction. Long known for our leadership on endangered species issues, Defenders of Wildlife also advocates new approaches to wildlife conservation that will help keep species from becoming endangered. Our programs encourage protection of entire ecosystems and interconnected habitats whi le protecting predators that serve as indicator species for ecosystem health. Founded in 1947, Defenders of Wildlife is a 501(c)(3) membership organization with over 460,000 members and supporters nationwide.

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People and Predators

From Conflict to Coexistence

By Nina Fascione, Aimee Delach, Martin E. Smith

ISLAND PRESS

Copyright © 2004 Defenders of Wildlife
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-55963-084-9

Contents

About Island Press, 
About Defenders of Wildlife,, 
Title Page, 
Copyright Page, 
Foreword, 
Preface, 
Introduction, 
PART 1 - Coexistence in Rural Landscapes, 
CHAPTER 1 - Minimizing Carnivore–Livestock Conflict: The Importance and Process of Research in the Search for Coexistence, 
CHAPTER 2 - Characteristics of Wolf Packs in Wisconsin: Identification of Traits Influencing Depredation, 
CHAPTER 3 - Wolves in Rural Agricultural Areas of Western North America: Conflict and Conservation, 
PART 2 - Coexistence in Developer Landscapes, 
CHAPTER 4 - Ecology and Management of Striped Skunks, Raccoons, and Coyotes in Urban Landscapes, 
CHAPTER 5 - Birds of Prey in Urban Landscapes, 
CHAPTER 6 - Challenges in Conservation of the Endangered San Joaquin Kit Fox, 
CHAPTER 7 - Carnivore Conservation and Highways: Understanding the Relationships, Problems, and Solutions, 
CHAPTER 8 - Living with Fierce Creatures? An Overview and Models of Mammalian Carnivore Conservation, 
PART 3 - Coexistence in Political Landscapes, 
CHAPTER 9 - Dispersal and Colonization in the Florida Panther: Overcoming Landscape Barriers—Biological and Political, 
CHAPTER 10 - State Wildlife Governance and Carnivore Conservation, 
CHAPTER 11 - Conserving Mountain Lions in a Changing Landscape, 
CHAPTER 12 - Restoring the Gray Wolf to the Southern Rocky Mountains: Anatomy of a Campaign to Resolve a Conservation Issue, 
Conclusion, 
About the Editors, 
About the Contributors, 
Index, 
Island Press Board of Directors, 

CHAPTER 1

Minimizing Carnivore–Livestock Conflict: The Importance and Process of Research in the Search for Coexistence

Stewart W. Breck

Large carnivores that kill livestock can create both an economic and an emotional burden for producers. Because these acts of predation often result in deep disdain for large carnivores, and because humans who are in the profession of producing food have strong local and national political backing, finding solutions that minimize the number of livestock killed by large carnivores is a critical conservation priority. This is particularly true in areas throughout the world where the repatriation and protection of large carnivores is a priority. Unfortunately, our understanding of the biological and ecological factors that influence a carnivore's decision to kill livestock, and of alternative methods for mitigating problems, is still nascent. Attaining solutions that minimize livestock losses while maintaining carnivore populations that are sustainable and ecologically relevant (Pyare and Berger 2003) will require reliable knowledge that only well–designed and well–executed research can provide.

In this chapter I explore the importance of research in the continued effort to develop better solutions for problems between large carnivores and livestock. I begin with a brief overview of research design to help nonscientists understand the terminology of the field. I then explore a number of different research topics, from causative factors in carnivore–livestock conflict to possible ways to reduce such conflict. Each research topic stresses varying needs, such as improving research design; broadening the scope of study to include large–carnivore behavior and ecology as these relate to livestock production; and addressing how environmental characteristics affect our management tools. These are difficult arenas for research because of the inherent problems in working with carnivores, the sociopolitical aspects of carnivore–livestock conflicts, and the large scale at which researchers must ask questions. In conclusion, I suggest ways to improve the scientific process by promoting better cooperation among stakeholders, more collaboration among scientists, and the use of adaptive management.

Research Design

Research may be defined as a purposeful endeavor to attain reliable knowledge—that is, information leading to a trustworthy understanding of a phenomenon, and/or which can be used to make good decisions regarding alteration of a system to achieve a desired outcome. Often these goals involve finding cause–and–effect relationships among variables (e.g., a scare device causes carnivore behavior to be altered). Trust in the reliability of results in large part depends on how well three elements of research design (control, randomization, and replication) are incorporated into the study.

The research design that offers the most opportunity to gain reliable knowledge regarding cause–and–effect relationships is the manipulative experiment. Manipulative experiments purposefully manipulate treatment units and compare them with unmanipulated control units, randomly selecting which units will act as treatment or control, and replicating the study either internally (replication within a study) or externally (replication of an entire study).

Unfortunately, manipulative experiments are extremely difficult to perform with large endangered carnivores. In particular, the lethal removal of individuals (a manipulation) is hard to justify because of ethical concerns and practical considerations regarding species recovery. Working at large spatial scales makes manipulative experiments more difficult for many reasons, including high cost (limiting the ability to replicate); logistical difficulty (limiting the ability to set up controls); and increased environmental variability (increasing the need for replication and control). Because of these and other difficulties, wildlife researchers often perform observational studies, which do not contain manipulations and often lack critical features of sound research design. Attaining reliable knowledge is possible with observational studies, but the process takes longer and is risky in the sense that unreliable information may be attained.

The challenge then is for researchers to maximize efficiency of learning and reliability of knowledge by creatively incorporating as many features of good research design as possible. Conceptually, a great deal of progress has been made along this front by promoting such ideas as adaptive management ("learning by doing"; MacNab 1983; Walters 1997) and metareplication (external replication; Johnson 2002), topics that will be covered in more detail toward the end of the chapter.

Understanding Carnivore–Livestock Conflicts

To develop effective solutions to carnivore–livestock conflicts we must understand why large carnivores attack livestock by discerning what aspects of the predators' environment, biology, or ecology predispose them to do so. These questions require synthesizing knowledge of individual carnivore behavior, population dynamics of carnivores and their prey, and community ecology as they relate to the presence of livestock. Two research areas that begin to address these questions deal with the presence of "hot spots" and the existence of problem individuals.

Hot Spots: Why Do They Exist?

Recent studies of livestock losses to carnivores demonstrate the presence of hot spots, or small areas that have recurring attacks on livestock by carnivores (Fritts 1982; Cozza et al. 1996). For example, Stahl et al. (2001) studied lynx attacks on sheep in...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: ISLAND PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2004
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1559630841
• ISBN 13: 9781559630849
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Herausgeber: Fascione Nina, Delach Aimee, Smith Martin
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchpark GmbH; gpsr@buchpark.de; ; Krügerweg 1; Trebbin; Brandenburg; 14959; Deutschland