A multispecies assessment of wildlife impacts on local community livelihoods.

Conflicts between the interests of agriculture and wildlife conservation are a major threat to biodiversity and human well-being globally. Addressing such conflicts requires a thorough understanding of the impacts associated with living alongside protected wildlife. Despite this, most studies reporting on human-wildlife impacts and the strategies used to mitigate them focus on a single species, thus oversimplifying often complex systems of human-wildlife interactions. We sought to characterize the spatiotemporal patterns of impacts by multiple co-occurring species on agricultural livelihoods in the eastern Okavango Delta Panhandle in northern Botswana through the use of a database of 3264 wildlife-incident reports recorded from 2009 to 2015 by the Department of Wildlife and National Parks. Eight species (African elephants [Loxodonta africana], hippopotamuses [Hippopotamus amphibious], lions [Panthera leo], cheetah [Acinonyx jubatus], African wild dogs [Lycaon pictus], hyenas [Crocuta crocuta], leopards [Panthera pardus], and crocodiles [Crocodylus niloticus]) appeared on incident reports, of which 56.5% were attributed to elephants. Most species were associated with only 1 type of damage (i.e., either crop damage or livestock loss). Carnivores were primarily implicated in incident reports related to livestock loss, particularly toward the end of the dry season (May-October). In contrast, herbivores were associated with crop-loss incidents during the wet season (November-April). Our results illustrate how local communities can face distinct livelihood challenges from different species at different times of the year. Such a multispecies assessment has important implications for the design of conservation interventions aimed at addressing the costs of living with wildlife and thereby mitigation of the underlying conservation conflict. Our spatiotemporal, multispecies approach is widely applicable to other regions where sustainable and long-term solutions to conservation conflicts are needed for local communities and biodiversity.

Article Impact Statement: Impacts of protected wildlife on local community livelihoods can vary and overlap across species, spatial scales, and time of the year. Una Evaluación Multiespecie de los Impactos de la Fauna sobre el Sustento de la Comunidad Local Resumen Los conflictos entre los intereses de la agricultura y la conservación de fauna son una gran amenaza para la biodiversidad y el bienestar humano en todo el mundo. Para tratar estos conflictos se requiere un entendimiento exhaustivo de los impactos asociados con la convivencia con fauna protegida. A pesar de esto, la mayoría de los estudios que reportan sobre los impactos humano-fauna y las estrategias que se usan para mitigarlos se enfocan en una sola especie, lo que simplifica demasiado los complejos sistemas de interacciones humano-fauna. Buscamos caracterizar los patrones espaciotemporales de los impactos por múltiples especies coocurrentes sobre el sustento agrícola en la franja oriental del Delta del Okavango al norte de Botswana mediante el uso de una base de datos de 3,264 reportes de incidentes con fauna registrados entre 2009 y 2015 por el Departamento de Vida Silvestre y Parques Nacionales. Ocho especies (elefante africano [Loxodonta africana], hipopótamo [Hippopotamus amphibious], león [Panthera leo], chita [Acinonyx jubatus], licaón [Lycaon pictus], hiena [Crocuta crocuta], leopardo [Panthera pardus] y cocodrilo [Crocodylus niloticus]) aparecieron en los reportes de incidentes, de los cuales el 56.5% estaba atribuido a los elefantes. La mayoría de las especies estuvo asociada sólo con un tipo de daño (es decir, daño a cultivos o pérdida de ganado). Los carnívoros fueron los principales implicados en los reportes de incidentes relacionados con la pérdida de ganado, particularmente hacia el final de la temporada seca (mayo-octubre). Al contrario, los herbívoros estuvieron asociados con los incidentes de pérdida de cultivos durante la temporada de lluvias (noviembre-abril). Nuestros resultados ejemplifican cómo las comunidades locales pueden enfrentar diferentes dificultades en su sustento por parte de diferentes especies durante diferentes periodos en el año. Tal evaluación multiespecie tiene consecuencias importantes para el diseño de las intervenciones de conservación enfocadas en la resolución de los efectos de la convivencia con la fauna y por lo tanto la mitigación del conflicto de conservación subyacente. Nuestro enfoque multiespecie espaciotemporal puede aplicarse ampliamente a otras regiones en donde las comunidades y la biodiversidad local necesitan soluciones sustentables y a largo plazo para los conflictos de conservación.

Lion (Panthera leo) movements in a multiuse area of the eastern Panhandle of the Okavango Delta, Botswana.

As global large carnivore populations continue to decline due to human actions, maintaining viable populations beyond protected area (PA) borders is critical. African lions (Panthera leo) ranging beyond PA borders regularly prey on domestic livestock causing humans to retaliate or even preemptively kill lions to minimize impacts of lost livestock. To understand how lions navigate high-conflict areas in human-dominated landscapes, lions were observed and monitored in the eastern Panhandle of the Okavango Delta between October 2014 and December 2016, and five lions were fitted with GPS satellite collars from August 2015 to December 2016. Lion prides and coalitions were small, with all prides having four or fewer females and all coalitions having two or fewer males. Home range size varied between the sexes but was not statistically different (males: x¯ = 584 km2, n = 3; females: x¯ = 319 km2, n = 2). There was considerable spatial overlap in home ranges as nonassociating, neighboring collared individuals utilized high levels of shared space (female-female overlap = 152 km2, representing 41-56% of respective home ranges; male-male overlap = 125-132 km2, representing 16-31% of respective home ranges). However, neighboring lions varied use of shared space temporally as evidenced by low coefficients of association (< 0.08), avoiding potentially costly interactions with neighboring individuals. Highest levels of overlap occurred during the wet and early dry seasons when flood waters minimized the amount of available land area. All collared individuals minimized time in close proximity (< 3 km) to human habitation, but some individuals were able to rely heavily on areas where unmonitored livestock grazed. While most lions exist within PAs, anthropogenic impacts beyond PA boundaries can impact critical populations within PAs. Studying systems beyond park boundaries with high levels of human-lion conflict while also establishing conservation programs that account for both ecological and sociocultural dimensions will better aid lion conservation efforts moving forward.