dc.contributor.author |
Dalerum, Fredrik
|
|
dc.contributor.author |
Selby, Liam O.K.
|
|
dc.contributor.author |
Pirk, Christian Walter Werner
|
|
dc.date.accessioned |
2020-10-05T15:01:12Z |
|
dc.date.available |
2020-10-05T15:01:12Z |
|
dc.date.issued |
2020-01-10 |
|
dc.description.abstract |
Promoting co-existence between humans and their physical and ecological environment,
including wildlife, has been given an increased importance due to a recent shift of
society to become environmentally sustainable. However, humans and large carnivores
have been in conflict throughout history. One of the most prominent reasons for this
conflict is damages to livestock and domestic animals. Population reduction or even local
eradication has often been used as a damage mitigation strategy. However, number of
carnivore damages need to be positively related to carnivore densities for population
reduction to be an effective damage limitation tool. Sweden is a country in northern
Europe with frequent human-carnivore conflicts, spurred by an intense and polarized
public debate. We use a 20-year data set on brown bear (Ursus arctos), Eurasian
lynx (Lynx lynx) and wolf (Canis lupus) and their damages in Sweden to evaluate
if temporal variation in carnivore densities has caused an equivalent variation in the
number of damages to cattle, sheep and domestic dogs, if such relationships differed
between the carnivore species and damage types, and if there were geographic scale
dependencies in these relationships.We observed contradictory effects of large carnivore
densities on damages, which included both positive and negative effects. Differences
occurred between carnivore species, damage types, geographic areas, and spatial
scales. However, wolf densities appeared to have been positively related to the number
of damages more often than bear and lynx densities. Our results highlight that large
carnivore damages can be highly context dependent, and that other factors than the size
of local or regional carnivore populations may be more important damage determinants.
Such an interpretation implies that population reduction may not necessarily be an effective method for limiting large carnivore damages, and highlight that damage
mitigation strategies need to be flexible over time and space. We recommend further
studies identifying the contexts in which large carnivore densities influence damages to
livestock and domestic animals, as well as studies aimed at identifying other factors that
may be related to the number of damages. |
en_ZA |
dc.description.department |
Mammal Research Institute |
en_ZA |
dc.description.department |
Zoology and Entomology |
en_ZA |
dc.description.librarian |
am2020 |
en_ZA |
dc.description.sponsorship |
The Ministry of Economy and
Competitiveness in Spain and by the National Research Foundation in South Africa. |
en_ZA |
dc.description.uri |
http://www.frontiersin.org/Ecology_and_Evolution |
en_ZA |
dc.identifier.citation |
Dalerum F, Selby LOK and Pirk CWW
(2020) Relationships Between
Livestock Damages and Large
Carnivore Densities in Sweden.
Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 7:507.
DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2019.00507 |
en_ZA |
dc.identifier.issn |
2296-701X (online) |
|
dc.identifier.other |
10.3389/fevo.2019.00507 |
|
dc.identifier.uri |
http://hdl.handle.net/2263/76346 |
|
dc.language.iso |
en |
en_ZA |
dc.publisher |
Frontiers Media |
en_ZA |
dc.rights |
© 2020 Dalerum, Selby and Pirk. This is an open-access article distributed
under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). |
en_ZA |
dc.subject |
Human-wildlife conflict |
en_ZA |
dc.subject |
Predation |
en_ZA |
dc.subject |
Livestock |
en_ZA |
dc.subject |
Brown bear |
en_ZA |
dc.subject |
Eurasian lynx |
en_ZA |
dc.subject |
Wolf |
en_ZA |
dc.subject |
Sheep |
en_ZA |
dc.subject |
Cattle |
en_ZA |
dc.title |
Relationships between livestock damages and large carnivore densities in Sweden |
en_ZA |
dc.type |
Article |
en_ZA |