Managing the Livestock–Wildlife Interface on Rangelands

Comparing expedient and proactive approaches to the planning of protected area networks on Borneo

Protected areas are an important tool for wildlife conservation; however, research is increasingly revealing both biases and inadequacies in the global protected area network. One common criticism is that protected areas are frequently located in remote, high-elevation regions, which may face fewer threats compared to more accessible locations. To explore the conservation implications of this issue, we consider a thought experiment with seven different counterfactual scenarios for the Sunda clouded leopard's conservation on Borneo. This allows us to examine two contrasting paradigms for conservation: "proactive conservation" which prioritises areas with high biodiversity and high risk of development, and "expedient conservation" which focusses on areas with the lowest development risk. We select clouded leopards as our focal species not only because of their emerging conservation importance, but also because, as top predators, they represent both keystone species and ambassadors for wider forest biodiversity. Furthermore, a published analysis of the likely impacts of forest loss in their habitat provides a benchmark for evaluating the modelled outcomes of alternative hypothetical conservation scenarios. We find that, across all metrics, expedient reserve design offered few benefits over the business-as-usual scenario, in contrast to the much greater conservation effectiveness of proactive protected area design. This paper sheds light on the challenging trade-offs between conservation goals and the competing land uses essential for the economic development and well-being of local communities.

Pastoralism and Resulting Challenges for National Parks in Afar, Ethiopia

Pastoralists and national parks are key stakeholders in the management and conservation of natural and protected habitats. In Ethiopia, Afar pastoralists migrate seasonally with their livestock in search for grazing and water areas. Livestock are also a source of infectious diseases that can spread into wildlife populations when pastoralists encroach into unfenced national parks. The interactions between pastoralists and national parks, as well as the subsequent impacts, remain insufficiently understood in Afar. Two structured questionnaire surveys were conducted in 2021, including 300 pastoralist households in seven woredas of Afar, and 58 staff from three national parks (Awash, Alidegi and Yangudi Rassa). They captured pastoralist movements and livestock diseases as well as the perception of national park staff regarding challenges resulting from pastoral encroachment into parks. Among the pastoralists, 74.7% migrated with their livestock for a mean 3.5 months per year, during which time, 90% of respondents reported contact with other livestock herds, and over 80% with wildlife. A third (34.2%) reported disease outbreaks in their village prior to migration. Pastoralists traveled long distances, crossing woreda, regional or national boundaries. All 58-park respondents reported pastoralists with livestock inside their park and their close contact with wildlife. Additionally, 69% reported the presence of domestic dogs. Wildlife displacement, habitat loss and dog attacks on wildlife were perceived as the main threat caused by the presence of pastoralists, whereas diseases were only mentioned by 15.5%. Overall, park staff showed poor disease knowledge. They reported poor disease surveillance and no disease response. Within pastoral contexts, improved collaboration between wildlife and livestock authorities regarding land use, disease awareness and surveillance is needed to balance the needs of both wildlife and pastoralist's livestock development and mitigate threats to wildlife habitats.

Facilitation of a free-roaming apex predator in working lands: evaluating factors that influence leopard spatial dynamics and prey availability in a South African biodiversity hotspot

Apex predators ideally require vast intact spaces that support sufficient prey abundances to sustain them. In a developing world, however, it is becoming extremely difficult to maintain large enough areas to facilitate apex predators outside of protected regions. Free-roaming leopards (Panthera pardus) are the last remaining apex predator in the Greater Cape Floristic Region, South Africa, and face a multitude of threats attributable to competition for space and resources with humans. Using camera-trap data, we investigated the influence of anthropogenic land modification on leopards and the availability of their natural prey species in two contrasting communities-primarily protected (Cederberg) and agriculturally transformed (Piketberg). Potential prey species composition and diversity were determined, to indicate prey availability in each region. Factors influencing spatial utilisation by leopards and their main prey species were also assessed. Estimated potential prey species richness (Cederberg = 27, Piketberg = 26) and diversity indices (Cederberg-H' = 2.64, Ds = 0.90; Piketberg-H' = 2.46, Ds = 0.89), supported by both the Jaccard's Index (J = 0.73) and Sørensen's Coefficient (CC = 0.85), suggested high levels of similarity across the two regions. Main leopard prey species were present in both regions, but their relative abundances differed. Grey rhebok, klipspringer, and rock hyrax were more abundant in the Cederberg, while Cape grysbok, Cape porcupine, chacma baboon, and common duiker were more abundant in Piketberg. Leopards persisted across the agriculturally transformed landscape despite these differences. Occupancy modelling revealed that the spatial dynamics of leopards differed between the two regions, except for both populations preferring areas further away from human habitation. Overall, anthropogenic factors played a greater role in affecting spatial utilisation by leopards and their main prey species in the transformed region, whereas environmental factors had a stronger influence in the protected region. We argue that greater utilisation of alternative main prey species to those preferred in the protected region, including livestock, likely facilitates the persistence of leopards in the transformed region, and believe that this has further implications for human-wildlife conflict. Our study provides a baseline understanding of the potential direct and indirect impacts of agricultural landscape transformation on the behaviour of leopards and shows that heavily modified lands have the potential to facilitate mammalian diversity, including apex predators. We iterate that conservation measures for apex predators should be prioritised where they are present on working lands, and encourage the collaborative development of customised, cost-effective, multi-species conflict management approaches that facilitate coexistence.

Long-term persistence of wildlife populations in a pastoral area

Facilitating coexistence between people and wildlife is a major conservation challenge in East Africa. Some conservation models aim to balance the needs of people and wildlife, but the effectiveness of these models is rarely assessed. Using a case-study approach, we assessed the ecological performance of a pastoral area in northern Tanzania (Manyara Ranch) and established a long-term wildlife population monitoring program (carried out intermittently from 2003 to 2008 and regularly from 2011 to 2019) embedded in a distance sampling framework. By comparing density estimates of the road transect-based long-term monitoring to estimates derived from systematically distributed transects, we found that the bias associated with nonrandom placement of transects was nonsignificant. Overall, cattle and sheep and goat reached the greatest densities and several wildlife species occurred at densities similar (zebra, wildebeest, waterbuck, Kirk's dik-dik) or possibly even greater (giraffe, eland, lesser kudu, Grant's gazelle, Thomson's gazelle) than in adjacent national parks in the same ecosystem. Generalized linear mixed models suggested that most wildlife species (8 out of 14) reached greatest densities during the dry season, that wildlife population densities either remained constant or increased over the 17-year period, and that herbivorous livestock species remained constant, while domestic dog population decreased over time. Cross-species correlations did not provide evidence for interference competition between grazing or mixed livestock species and wildlife species but indicate possible negative relationships between domestic dog and warthog populations. Overall, wildlife and livestock populations in Manyara Ranch appear to coexist over the 17-year span. Most likely, this is facilitated by existing connectivity to adjacent protected areas, effective anti-poaching efforts, spatio-temporal grazing restrictions, favorable environmental conditions of the ranch, and spatial heterogeneity of surface water and habitats. This long-term case study illustrates the potential of rangelands to simultaneously support wildlife conservation and human livelihood goals if livestock grazing is restricted in space, time, and numbers.

Incorporating social-ecological complexities into conservation policy

In the process of developing new conservation policies, policymakers must have access to information which will inform their decisions. Evidence rarely considers the complexities of social-ecological systems. The Social-Ecological Systems Framework (SESF) is an adaptable yet structured approach for understanding the processes that lead to changes in natural resources, using a systems-based approach that aims to treat ecological and social components equally. Few conservation planning and policy initiatives have implemented the SESF to assess the interlinked social and ecological consequences of conservation policies. We apply the SESF to explore the barriers to the potential implementation of a policy of consumptive utilisation of wildlife in Kenya, a policy regarded as successful in several southern African countries. Using secondary data and expert review we developed a conceptual model of the social-ecological system associated with consumptive utilisation of wildlife in Kenya. We then analysed how different combinations of first and second-tier variables interacted to create focal action situations, and subsequently identified seven barriers to this policy. Our analysis revealed that game ranching would require large-scale investment in effective monitoring systems, new regulations, training, market development and research, considerations about equity, and devolved ownership of wildlife. The least barriers existed for game farming. The SESF appears to be a useful framework for this purpose. In particular, it can help to reveal potential social and ecological barriers which conservation policies might face in attempting to meet intended goals. The information required to implement the SESF are necessarily cross-disciplinary, which can make it challenging to synthesise.

The effects of livestock grazing on biodiversity are multi-trophic: a meta-analysis

Anthropogenic disturbance has generated a significant loss of biodiversity worldwide and grazing by domestic herbivores is a contributing disturbance. Although the effects of grazing on plants are commonly explored, here we address the potential multi-trophic effects on animal biodiversity (e.g. herbivores, pollinators and predators). We conducted a meta-analysis on 109 independent studies that tested the response of animals or plants to livestock grazing relative to livestock excluded. Across all animals, livestock exclusion increased abundance and diversity, but these effects were greatest for trophic levels directly dependent on plants, such as herbivores and pollinators. Detritivores were the only trophic level whose abundance decreased with livestock exclusion. We also found that the number of years since livestock was excluded influenced the community and that the effects of grazer exclusion on animal diversity were strongest in temperate climates. These findings synthesise the effects of livestock grazing beyond plants and demonstrate the indirect impacts of livestock grazing on multiple trophic levels in the animal community. We identified the potentially long-term impacts that livestock grazing can have on lower trophic levels and consequences for biological conservation. We also highlight the potentially inevitable cost to global biodiversity from livestock grazing that must be balanced against socio-economic benefits.

Rancher-reported efficacy of lethal and non-lethal livestock predation mitigation strategies for a suite of carnivores

Pastoralists have dealt with livestock losses from predators for millennia, yet effective mitigation strategies that balance wildlife conservation and sustainable agriculture are still needed today. In Wyoming, USA, 274 ranchers responded to a retrospective survey, and rated the efficacy of predation mitigation strategies for foxes, dogs, coyotes, wolves, bobcats, mountain lions, bears, and birds (buzzards, eagles, hawks, ravens). Rancher reported efficacy of mitigation varied by predator species, mitigation strategy, and lethality of strategies, but not livestock type. Ranchers perceive they were most effective at mitigating predation by foxes and coyotes, moderately effective at mitigating large carnivores, and the least effective at mitigating birds. Ranchers also reported that avian predators seem to be the most challenging predator type. The general perception was lethal mitigation strategies were more effective than non-lethal strategies, with guard animals showing the most potential among the non-lethal options. In general, ranchers did not perceive non-lethal strategies as a proxy for lethal strategies. However, a few ranchers reported being successful with non-lethal options such as herding, fencing, and stalling at night but more details about such successful applications are needed. Innovation in current or novel non-lethal mitigation strategies, and examples of efficacy, are needed to justify producer adoption.