Human Perceptions Mirror Realities of Carnivore Attack Risk for Livestock: Implications for Mitigating Human-Carnivore Conflict.

摘要: Human-carnivore conflict is challenging to quantify because it shaped by both the realities and people’s perceptions of carnivore threats. Whether align with can have implications for mitigation: misalignments lead heightened indiscriminant persecution carnivores whereas alignments offer deeper insights into human-carnivore interactions. We applied a landscape-scale spatial analysis livestock killed tigers leopards in India model map observed attack risk, surveyed owners their rankings threats across habitats perceived risk. Observed tiger risk was greatest near dense forests at moderate distances from human activity while leopard open vegetation. People accurately differences between hunting patterns, expected greater threat areas high values carnivores. Owners’ perception largely did not depend on environmental conditions surrounding village (spatial location, dominant land-use or risk). Surveys revealed that who previously lost used more protection methods than those had no prior losses, recently first time expressed interest changing experienced losses. Our findings suggest systems where align, conservation programs policies optimize outcomes (1) improving effectiveness (2) working are most willing invest effort adapting strategies mitigate conflict.