Humans have time to discuss conceptual frameworks, some threatened species have not

BALLEJO, FERNANDO; PLAZA, PABLO I.; LAMBERTUCCI, SERGIO A.

BIOLOGICAL CONSERVATION

ELSEVIER SCI LTD

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2020

0006-3207

A widely used approach to analyze human-wildlife conflicts is the implementation of perception studies. Perception studies provide relevant information for the application of conservation policies and management practices (Kansky et al., 2016; Morales-Reyes et al., 2018). These studies allow identifying the characteristics, extent, and impacts of human wildlife-conflicts, which is a necessary step to subsequently implement different conceptual frameworks and conservation policies (Bruskotter and Wilson, 2014; Kansky et al., 2016). Conservation studies proft from including the contrast between what people perceive on a problem with its actual magnitude. We have recently studied what farmers perceive regarding the potential magnitude of livestock losses produced by obligate and facultative scavenger birds (raptors) in northwestern Patagonia (Ballejo et al., 2020). We have also performed feld observations to determine the actual losses produced by these birds and contrasted them with farmer´s perceptions. We found that farmers tend to perceive the damage caused by scavenger birds as worse than the actual damage they cause. Moreover, we showed that in the few events in which scavenger birds injured lambs, they required a lot of time and a large number of birds to be involved. Given that, we suggested relatively easy solutions to reduce these events and to mitigate this problem (Ballejo et al., 2020). Zuluaga et al. (2020) acknowledge our contribution and propose the implementation of one of the conservation social science frameworks available in the literature. In this sense, they suggest not only including an evaluation of tangible (monetary) impulses (perception of damage) but also including intangible factors such as fear, hatred, and empathy towards wildlife (wildlife tolerance model and hazard acceptance model). There is no doubt that further approaches are needed to solve this conflict and social science has a key role in this. However, we must clarify that including social aspects that may influence on theconflict was not the main aim of our work, but particularly comparing perceived with actual livestock losses. Here we explain the high relevance of frst characterizing the ecological aspect of the particular human-wildlife conflict we assessed (human-scavenger birds conflict), before implementing any standard conceptual framework. Moreover, we highlight the importance of implementing rapid frst-hand solutions for threatened species for which time is constraining, so urgent actions are required.