918 C. F. Hoffmann and R. A. Montgomery
(Clark&May, 2002;Lawler et al., 2006; Stroud et al., 2014;Di Marco et al., 2017; Donaldson et al., 2017; Troudet et al., 2017; Tensen, 2018). This bias is primarily driven by human social factors, including perceptions of species charisma, and the value of those species for society and as subjects of conser- vation funding (Bonnet et al., 2002; Donaldson et al., 2017; Rosenthal et al., 2017). This uneven distribution of research and funding among taxa can result in mismatches between research effort, the resulting knowledge base, and conserva- tion needs (Bonnet et al., 2002; Linklater, 2003; Fazey et al., 2005; Lawler et al., 2006; Wilson et al., 2007; Hortal et al., 2015; Rosenthal et al., 2017). These biases are not only influ- ential between taxonomic orders but also within them, and may have important consequences for the research– implementation gap (Anon., 2007;Knight et al., 2008; Martín-López et al., 2009; Trimble & van Aarde, 2012; Fleming & Bateman, 2016). To mitigate these effects, regular assessments of taxonomic bias have been recommended (Lawler et al., 2006; Wilson et al., 2007; Di Marco et al., 2017). Although previous studies have explored taxonomic bias in other conservation fields, its effect on the research– implementation gap has not previously been evaluated for the literature on the depredation of livestock by carnivores. Here, we used livestock depredation by large carnivores
in sub-Saharan Africa as a case study to assess whether taxo- nomic bias is evident in human–carnivore conflict research. We conducted a literature review and compared the central carnivore species of each study to those identified as being most responsible for livestock depredation. We then exam- ined the ways in which misalignment among these factors could contribute to the research–implementation gap af- fecting human–carnivore conflict mitigation. We explore the role of species charisma in catalysing research effort and conservation funding, and discuss the implications of our study for interventions and policies that could promote human–carnivore coexistence.
Methods
The term human–carnivore conflict obscures the nuanced experiences inherent in interactions between people and carnivores (Dickman, 2010; Redpath et al., 2013; Redpath, 2015; Krafte Holland et al., 2018; Lozano et al., 2019). We acknowledge that in assessing livestock depredation by car- nivores, our study does not allow a broader perspective on both positive and negative human–wildlife interactions. However,we focused our review on livestock depredation as it is often a primary driver of agonistic interactions between people and carnivores and thus is a threat to carnivore con- servation (Inskip & Zimmermann, 2009; Tumenta et al., 2013; Ripple et al., 2014). Furthermore,minimizing depreda- tion is a common aim of efforts to improve human–carni- vore coexistence (Krafte Holland et al., 2018; van Eeden
et al., 2018a,b). We chose to highlight sub-Saharan Africa because it is a hotspot for livestock depredation by carni- vores, and carnivore biodiversity (Ripple et al., 2014; Krafte Holland et al., 2018; Lozano et al., 2019). We completed our review in June 2019, using four
bibliographic databases: Web of Science Core Collection (Clarivate Analytics, Philadelphia, USA), Scopus (Elsevier, Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Wildlife and Ecology Studies Worldwide (EBSCO, Baltimore, USA) and Google Scholar (Google, Mountain View, USA).We conducted our review in English, as it is the predominant publication lan- guage for studies on livestock depredation by carnivores (Krafte Holland et al., 2018; van Eeden et al., 2018a,b). Using an iterative search process, we searched each database a total of three times.We first included the term‘human car- nivore livestock’,adding ‘conflict’ in the secondary search and ‘depredation’ in the tertiary. As the database used by Google Scholar is not limited to scientific publications, we used add- itional specificity in our search on that platform. Specifically, we started our search of Google Scholar using ‘human carni- vore conflict’ as a bound phrase (i.e. with the search termen- closed in quotations, so that the search results only include the exact phrase) and added ‘livestock’ and ‘depredation’ in the secondary and tertiary searches, respectively. We ex- cluded any studies thatwere not published in a peer-reviewed journal, those that were outside the geographical extent of sub-Saharan Africa, and those that were not directly relevant to our assessment (e.g. carnivore predation of wild prey, car- nivore attacks on people, or human attitudes towards conser- vation actions). For each studywe recorded: (1) the location of the field site, (2) the central (i.e. focal) carnivore species, and (3) the carnivore species responsible for the majority of live- stock depredation. For studies that did not provide exact geo- graphical coordinates,we approximated the field site location based on site maps and study area descriptions.We selected the centroid for those that included multiple field sites.
Central species
We identified the central carnivore species of each study using lexical analysis with MAXQDA Analytics Pro 20.0.8 (Kuckartz & Radiker, 2019). We conducted lexical searches among all studies to record the number of times that de- predating carnivore species were mentioned. Our search terms included ‘African lion’ Panthera leo, ‘spotted hyaena’ Crocuta crocuta, ‘African wild dog’ Lycaon pictus, ‘leopard’ Panthera pardus, ‘Ethiopian wolf’ Canis simensis, ‘cheetah’ Acinonyx jubatus, ‘jackal’ Canis mesomelas, ‘brown hyaena’ Parahyaena brunnea, ‘African wolf’ Canis lupaster, ‘caracal’ Caracal caracal and ‘striped hyaena’ Hyaena hyaena.We used only the common name of each species as a search term, included the alternate spelling of hyaena (i.e. hyena) for all three hyaena species, and specified each search term to be a character string instead of a bound phrase.
Oryx, 2022, 56(6), 917–926 © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605321000582
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