Forecasting Environmental Hazards and the Application of Risk Maps to Predator Attacks on Livestock

Abstract

Environmental hazards are distributed in nonrandom patterns; therefore, many biologists work to predict future hazard locations from the locations of past incidents. Predictive spatial models, or risk maps, promise early warning and targeted prevention of nonnative species invasion, disease spread, or wildlife damage. The prevention of hazards safeguards both humans and native biodiversity, especially in the case of conflicts with top predators. Top predators play essential ecological roles and maintain biodiversity, but they can also threaten human life and livelihood, which leads people to eradicate predator populations. In the present article, we present a risk map for gray wolf (Canis lupus) attacks on livestock in Wisconsin between 1999 and 2006 that correctly identified risk in 88% of subsequent attack sites from 2007 to 2009. More-open habitats farther from any forest and closer to wolf pack ranges were the riskiest for livestock. Prediction promotes prevention. We recommend that the next generation of risk mappers employ several criteria for model selection, validate model predictions against data not used in model construction before publication, and integrate predictors from organismal biology alongside human and environmental predictors.

Livestock losses and hotspots of attack from tigers and leopards in Kanha Tiger Reserve, Central India

“…We generated univariate linear regression models to examine which landscape attributes were strong predictors of kill probability. Following standard methods (Garamszegi 2010;Treves et al 2011), we ran Spearman correlations between variables and built global models for livestock species that included the variables that were significant in the univariate regression and not correlated with more significant variables (r s \ 0.6). These requirements excluded the variable distance to nonforest, which was correlated with distance to village (r s = 0.7) and distance to very dense forest (r s = 0.7).…”

“…livestock husbandry techniques (Wikramanayake et al 1998;Miller 2015). Many previous studies on humancarnivore conflict have focused on depredation by a single carnivore species (usually a high-priority species of conservation concern) on all livestock species generally, which can obscure unique risk gradients for individual livestock species from specific carnivores (Treves et al 2011;Lichtenfeld et al 2014;Athreya et al 2014;Miller et al 2015). Differences between the body sizes, anti-predator defenses, and grazing requirements of livestock species result in distinct levels of vulnerability to wild carnivores (Seidensticker 1976;Sinclair et al 2003).…”

Vegetation Type Influences Livestock Predation by Leopards: Implications for Conservation in Agro-Ecosystems

“…Esterhuizen & Norton, 1985) have investigated the spatial distribution of leopard (Panthera pardus) predation, the associated livestock losses and the management responses to leopard depredation (McManus, Dickman, Gaynor, Smuts & Macdonald, 2014). This information is essential in improving species management and reducing conflict (Treves et al, 2011). The present study investigated the conflict between leopards and livestock in the Baviaanskloof Mega-Reserve (BMR), South Africa.…”

“…Recently, a large body of literature has focused on identifying hotspots of predator-livestock conflict (Treves, Martin, Wydeven & Wiedenhoeft, 2011;Ward, Levin, Lance, Jeffries & Acevedo-Gutiérrez, 2012). For example, Stahl, Vandel, Herrenschmidt & Migot (2001) showed that 33-69% of Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) attacks on live-stock were localized to 0.3-4.5% of the total area where lynx predation occurred.…”

“…According to Treves et al (2011), a better understanding of these areas may assist in better management of predator-livestock conflict. We determined the areas where leopards prefer to kill livestock in the BMR based on surveys of stock farmers, and investigated the consequences of this habitat selection for livestock management and biodiversity conservation.…”