Taxonomic bias and human–carnivore conflict 919
We also included words from the lemma list without case sensitivity. With these search settings, MAXQDA returned a hit for any combination of the search terms and any word forms (Kuckartz & Radiker, 2019). For example, ‘lion’ returned a hit for the exact match, along with ‘Lion’ and ‘lions’. For each study, we recorded the number of hits for each carnivore species within all sections of the document, excluding the references and running title. We converted the number of hits by carnivore species into a per cent of the total hits in the study.We considered a carnivore species to be central if the number of hitswere$25%of the total hits for that study. Thus, it was possible for a study to have mul- tiple central species.We classified a study as having no central species if none had $25%of the totalhits. Lexical analysis is an established tool for assessing text-
based media, as high frequency terms are representative of content themes and biases (Wodak & Meyer, 2008; Bednarek&Caple, 2014). Lexical analyses are replicable, quan- tifiable and unbiased, and thus are valuable for studies of taxonomic bias (dos Santos et al., 2020). However, as the ap- plicationof thismethod is emergent inconservation,we used a secondary document analysis to verify our results, identifying the central species based upon references to carnivore species throughout the document. For example, we classified a study to be centredaroundthe spottedhyaenaifthatwas thepri- mary species around which the introduction, methods and results were framed. We performed the document analysis separate from the lexical analysis, to minimize the risk of implicit coding bias from the results of the lexical analysis.
Measures of livestock depredation
Next, we determined the carnivore species responsible for the majority of livestock depredation in each study.We used the twomost prevalentmethods for measuring livestock depreda- tion (KrafteHolland et al., 2018): quantitative measures of live- stock depredated by carnivores (e.g. the number of livestock killed), and perceptions of depredation risk among livestock owners (e.g. the proportion of respondents who considered a carnivore species to be the greatest threat to their livestock; Marker et al., 2003; Kissui, 2008; Miller et al., 2016a,b). We identified the carnivore species with the greatest contribution to these two conflict measures, depending on which was re- ported. Thus, our final database consisted of the geographical location, the central carnivore species and primary depredator foreachstudy.We thenmappedthe distributionof all studies in ArcMap10.5 (ESRI,Redlands,USA)andassessed thealignment between central species and primary livestock depredator.
Results
Our literature reviewreturned 119 peer-reviewed publications on livestock depredation in sub-Saharan Africa published
during 1997–2019. We eliminated 19 studies that did not fit the conditions of our review (e.g. did not directly examine livestock depredation or were not published in a peer-re- viewed journal), so our final database comprised a total of 100 studies (Fig. 1, Supplementary Material 1). The majority of these were conducted in Eastern Africa (i.e. Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya; n = 51), and Southern Africa (i.e. Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe; n = 43). Six were based in Western and Central Africa (i.e. Niger, Guinea, Chad, Cameroon, Benin). Seven studies did not have any central species, as identified via lexical analysis and confirmed through the document analysis. Among those with a sin- gle central species, the African lion was the most common (n = 29; Figs 2 & 3). Other single central species included the spotted hyaena (9), African wild dog (9), cheetah (7), leopard (6), black-backed jackal (5), Ethiopian wolf (4) and brown hyaena (1). The studies with at least two central species included African lions/spotted hyaenas (n = 10), African lions/leopards (3), African lions/spotted hyaenas/ leopards (3), and spotted hyaenas/leopards (2). There was one study each that included Ethiopian wolves/African wolves, cheetahs/black-backed jackals, black-backed jack- als/caracals, spotted hyaenas/leopards/black-backed jackals, and leopards/black-backed jackals/caracals (Fig. 2). Therewere 41 studies that included measures of livestock
depredation. Over three-quarters (85.4%, n = 35) of these studies reported depredation events and the remainder (14.6%, n = 6) reported perceptions of depredation risk. Spotted hyaenas were the primary livestock depredator in the majority of these studies (58.5%, n = 18 and n = 4 for depredation events and perceptions of depredation risk, respectively), followed by African lions (24.4%, n = 9 and n= 2), leopards (7.3%, n = 3 and n = 0), black-backed jackals (4.9%, n = 2 and n = 0), African wild dogs (2.4%, n = 1 and n= 0), and African wolves (2.4%, n = 1 and n = 0; Figs 2&3). Notably, not all reported measures of livestock depredation were indicative of the magnitude of loss resulting from the depredation (e.g. monetary value of the livestock killed). Among the four most common single central species re-
ported to depredate livestock in the reviewed studies (African lions, spotted hyaenas, African wild dogs, and leopards), there was a mismatch between central species and primary depreda- tor for spottedhyaenas and leopards (Table 1). Spottedhyaenas were not a central species in 37.5% of the studies (9 of 24)in whichtheywere the primary livestock
depredator.Wedetected such amismatch for leopards in one study (Table 1).
Discussion
Applied conservation research is most effective when re- search findings and conservation outputs are aligned (Balmford et al., 2003; Stroud et al., 2014; Eklund et al., 2017). A discrepancy between these two factors may limit
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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