Human-Carnivore Conflicts in Dry Chaco agroecosystems

NANNI, A. SOFÍA; LUCHERINI, MAURO; GIORDANO, ANTHONY

Fort Collins, cColorado

Conferencia; PATHWAYS 2019; 2019

Colorado State University

he Argentine Dry Chaco presents high conservation value due to the presence of threatened and endemic vertebrate species. It is also one of the most dynamic agriculture frontiers today, where traditional extensive ranching by criollos families and subsistence hunting practices coexist with intensive land-use practices. Recent land-use changes have created new socioecological systems where the relationships between humans and carnivores are complex. We report the preliminary results of a project aiming at characterizing human-carnivore conflicts in five agroecosystems of the Argentine Chaco with different proportions of traditional and modern uses. Specifically, we 1- describe livestock-carnivore conflicts; 2- compare livestock predation by carnivores between intensive and extensive ranching; and 3- analyze how perceptions and attitudes towards carnivores vary among different social actors. We performed ~50 semi-structured interviews to criollos peasants, farm employees, and landowners at each agroecosystem. We found that conflicts are pervasive, involving all the carnivore species found in the region, even when depredation was not the main cause of livestock loss. However, the puma (Puma concolor), was considered the most conflictive carnivore, mainly due to predation on large-sized livestock. Depredation by pumas was frequent under extensive cattle ranching and was low to null under intensive cattle ranching. Although puma perceptions were typically negative, attitudes towards them differed among social actors and sites, and only where the density of criollos peasants was high they actively hunt pumas. Our study highlights that human-carnivore conflicts in agroecosystems of the Dry Argentine Chaco are an understudied and highly spatially variable threat both to carnivores and local livelihoods. We argue that while intensive practices can coexist with the current apex predator of the Argentine Dry Chaco, they may increase conflicts in the remaining patches occupied by criollos, by reducing their access to forest and thus increasing the encroachment of traditional human activities with wildlife.