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. Collated evidence on best practices is still lacking, and this protocol outlines a systematic review of evidence for intervention effectiveness to reduce the risk or severity of direct attacks on humans by large carnivores. Specifically, the review seeks to answer the question: How effective are evaluated interventions in reducing large carnivore attacks on people? METHODS: The bibliographic databases Zoological Record, BIOSIS Citation Index, and Scopus will be searched using a predefined search string. Grey literature will be requested through professional networks, contacts with relevant organizations, and searching selected websites. All returned titles and abstracts will be manually screened using Rayyan.ai. For inclusion, studies should describe the Population, Intervention, Comparator, and Outcome (PICO) of the review research question and be written in English, Spanish, or Swedish. Review papers will be excluded. All records of data coding and extraction are documented in a purposely developed, and priorly piloted, data sheet. Critical appraisal of study validity will be done according to the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence Critical Appraisal Tool prototype version 0.3. Review outcomes will be synthesized in a narrative, and if possible, a quantitative synthesis. The narrative synthesis will describe in text the carnivore population (species, location), context (target object, intervention model), as well as the design and reported results of each study. The quantitative synthesis will include a summary statistic, preferably logarithmic risk ratio, calculated for each original study. A forest plot will be created to visualize study outcomes, as well as judgments of critical appraisal. Provided that enough data is available and that it complies with its assumptions, a meta-regression analysis will be undertaken using metafor package for R software.

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. The search string is based on a Population-Intervention-Comparator-Outcome (PICO) formatted research question, and search terms fall within five categories: Wildlife type (Population), Damage object (Population), Counteraction (Intervention), Evaluation (Comparator), and Damage (Outcome). Initial scoping searches informed amendment of the search string. A set of 19 benchmark articles were used to estimate the ability of the scoping search to capture relevant literature. To be eligible for inclusion in the review, original articles should study cases where settings of exposure to interventions (measures implemented to reduce damages on agricultural crops caused by terrestrial birds and mammals) are compared to a control setting without exposure to interventions. Eligible studies will be subject to data extraction, systematically documented in an Excel spreadsheet. Associated risk of bias will be critically appraised for the included articles according to seven criteria: 1. risk of confounding biases, 2. risk of post-intervention selection biases, 3. risk of misclassified comparison biases (observational studies only), 4. risk of performance biases (experimental studies only), 5. risk of detection biases, 6. risk of outcome reporting biases, and 7. risk of outcome assessment biases. The results will be reported in narrative and, if possible, quantitative syntheses. The quantitative synthesis will include a summary statistic calculated based on the data of each study and illustrated graphically in a forest plot. If possible, meta-regression analyses will be conducted.

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. Between 2016 and 2018, four independent reviews evaluated >40 years of research on lethal and nonlethal interventions for reducing predation on livestock. From 114 studies, we find a striking conclusion: scarce quantitative comparisons of interventions and scarce comparisons against experimental controls preclude strong inference about the effectiveness of methods. For wise investment of public resources in protecting livestock and carnivores, evidence of effectiveness should be a prerequisite to policy making or large-scale funding of any method or, at a minimum, should be measured during implementation. An appropriate evidence base is needed, and we recommend a coalition of scientists and managers be formed to establish and encourage use of consistent standards in future experimental evaluations.

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. The choice of approach should be guided by the research question and by whether the focus is on testing hypotheses, predicting behaviour, or engaging stakeholders. Games provide an exciting opportunity to help to unravel the complexity in conflicts, while researchers need an awareness of the limitations and ethical constraints involved. Given the opportunities, this field will benefit from greater investment and development.

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. We found experimental and quasi-experimental studies were rare within the field, and only 21 studies applied a case-control study design (3.7% of reviewed publications). We used a relative risk ratio to evaluate the studied interventions: changing livestock type, keeping livestock in enclosures, guarding or livestock guarding dogs, predator removal, using shock collars on carnivores, sterilizing carnivores, and using visual or auditory deterrents to frighten carnivores. Although there was a general lack of scientific evidence of the effectiveness of any of these interventions, some interventions reduced the risk of depredation whereas other interventions did not result in reduced depredation. We urge managers and stakeholders to move towards an evidence-based large carnivore management practice and researchers to conduct studies of intervention effectiveness with a randomized case-control design combined with systematic reviewing to evaluate the evidence.

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. The most commonly used intervention is carnivore deterring fencing, and all livestock owners can apply for subsidies to build a fence. To receive reimbursement the fence must be approved by the authorities according to predefined criteria. An important part of any management aiming to be adaptive is evaluating interventions. In this paper we evaluate to what extent previously subsidised fences still meet the criteria 1-15 years after their approval. Of 296 fences that had received subsidies in the county of Värmland, 100 randomly selected fences were revisited in 2016. From this subsample 14% of the fences still met the initial criteria for subsidies. None of the fences that still fulfilled the criteria were more than 8 years old, whereas fences with identified failures occurred in all age groups. Of the 86 fences that failed to meet the criteria, construction failures were the most commonly occurring problem. Maintenance failures, wear and tear, only explain a minor part of the failures. To improve the quality of fencing, as well as the quality and longevity of the subsidies programme, there is a need for improved communication between authorities, and improved communication and support from the authorities to livestock producers before and during construction of fences, as well as more rigorous inspection when the fences are built.

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. Unlike most conservation action models, an important attribute of our framework is the integration of multiple factors related to both human motivations and animal vulnerability into feedbacks. We apply our framework to two case studies, tigers in Laos and wolverines in northern Sweden, to demonstrate its utility in disentangling some of the complex features of carnivore poaching that may have hindered effective responses to the current poaching crisis. Our framework offers a common platform to help guide future research on wildlife poaching feedbacks, which has hitherto been lacking, in order to effectively inform policy making and enforcement.

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. Here we show that an increasing number of people are involved in outdoor activities and, when doing so, some people engage in risk-enhancing behaviour that can increase the probability of a risky encounter and a potential attack. About half of the well-documented reported attacks have involved risk-enhancing human behaviours, the most common of which is leaving children unattended. Our study provides unique insight into the causes, and as a result the prevention, of large carnivore attacks on people. Prevention and information that can encourage appropriate human behaviour when sharing the landscape with large carnivores are of paramount importance to reduce both potentially fatal human-carnivore encounters and their consequences to large carnivores.