How effective are interventions to reduce damage to agricultural crops from herbivorous wild birds and mammals? A systematic review protocol.

Background: An important conservation challenge is to mitigate negative impacts that wild birds and mammals can have on human practices and livelihoods, and not least on agricultural crops. Technical interventions to limit the number and severity of damages are available, but evaluations of intervention effectiveness are usually limited in scope, and meta-analyses are rare. This protocol describes a systematic review that seeks to answer the following question: How effective are evaluated interventions in reducing damage from herbivorous wild birds and mammals on agricultural crops?

Methods: The literature searches are made in the databases Scopus and Zoological Record.

How effective are interventions to reduce attacks on people from large carnivores? A systematic review protocol.

Background: Instances of attacks from large carnivores that lead to human injury or death are increasingly reported worldwide. Ensuring human safety when people and carnivores co-occur is central to minimizing human suffering but is also essential to support sustainable carnivore conservation. Various interventions are available intended to alter either the behavior of large carnivores or people, in order to reduce the likelihood of a risky encounter and an attack.

Carnivore conservation needs evidence-based livestock protection.

Carnivore predation on livestock often leads people to retaliate. Persecution by humans has contributed strongly to global endangerment of carnivores. Preventing livestock losses would help to achieve three goals common to many human societies: preserve nature, protect animal welfare, and safeguard human livelihoods.

Games as Tools to Address Conservation Conflicts.

Conservation conflicts represent complex multilayered problems that are challenging to study. We explore the utility of theoretical, experimental, and constructivist approaches to games to help to understand and manage these challenges. We show how these approaches can help to develop theory, understand patterns in conflict, and highlight potentially effective management solutions.

Author Correction: Limited evidence on the effectiveness of interventions to reduce livestock predation by large carnivores.

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Limited evidence on the effectiveness of interventions to reduce livestock predation by large carnivores.

Successful coexistence between large carnivores and humans is conditional upon effective mitigation of the impact of these species on humans, such as through livestock depredation. It is therefore essential for conservation practitioners, carnivore managing authorities, or livestock owners to know the effectiveness of interventions intended to reduce livestock predation by large carnivores. We reviewed the scientific literature (1990-2016), searching for evidence of the effectiveness of interventions.

Poor construction, not time, takes its toll on subsidised fences designed to deter large carnivores.

Large carnivore conservation may be considered as successful in Sweden, as wolf (Canis lupus), lynx (Lynx lynx), brown bear (Ursus arctos), golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos), and wolverine (Gulo gulo) populations have recovered from extinction or near extinction to viable populations during the last three decades. Particularly the wolf and lynx populations have returned at the cost of an increasing number of carnivore attacks on domestic livestock. To support coexistence between carnivores and livestock production, the Swedish authorities subsidise interventions to prevent or reduce the number of carnivore attacks.

A conceptual framework for understanding illegal killing of large carnivores.

The growing complexity and global nature of wildlife poaching threaten the survival of many species worldwide and are outpacing conservation efforts. Here, we reviewed proximal and distal factors, both social and ecological, driving illegal killing or poaching of large carnivores at sites where it can potentially occur. Through this review, we developed a conceptual social-ecological system framework that ties together many of the factors influencing large carnivore poaching.

Human behaviour can trigger large carnivore attacks in developed countries.

The media and scientific literature are increasingly reporting an escalation of large carnivore attacks on humans in North America and Europe. Although rare compared to human fatalities by other wildlife, the media often overplay large carnivore attacks on humans, causing increased fear and negative attitudes towards coexisting with and conserving these species. Although large carnivore populations are generally increasing in developed countries, increased numbers are not solely responsible for the observed rise in the number of attacks by large carnivores.