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Discordant scales and the potential pitfalls for human-carnivore conflict mitigation

2018; Elsevier BV; Volume: 224; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.biocon.2018.05.018

1873-2917

Robert A. Montgomery, Claire F. Hoffmann, Eric Tans, Bernard M. Kissui,

Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies

Floral and faunal biodiversity are jeopardized by a number of ecological, environmental, and anthropogenic factors. Increasingly however, an evident disconnect between the science and policy spheres problematizes efforts to conserve biodiversity. One of the issues that informs this research-implementation gap is discordance among the scales at which: i) the research objective is devised, ii) the data are collected, and iii) the inferences are applied. This issue might be influential among human-carnivore conflict research where applied results are intended to optimize the implementation of interventionist activities. Using human-lion (Panthera leo) conflict research as a novel case study, we reviewed papers studying patterns of conflict from 1990 to 2016. Despite the fact that the majority (70.5%, 62 of 88) of these papers devised their research objectives at broad spatial scales (i.e., either landscape or regional), most (64.8%, 57 of 88) envisioned their inferences at fine scales (i.e., either household or community). Mismatches between the coarsest reported scale of data collection and the finest reported scale of inference were also evident. For instance, 24 of 79 papers (30.4%) had potentially problematic mismatches given that the scale of inference was at a finer scale than the scale of data collection. We infer that scale discordance in human-lion conflict research is common and derives, in part, from the lack of fine-scale geospatial data describing the systems in which humans and lions interact. Efforts to develop more resolute geospatial libraries across biodiverse regions will help to make conservation research more effectual by narrowing the research-implementation gap. Discordance between the scale of data collection and the scale of prediction problematize efforts to devise interventions for human-carnivore conflict.