When wildlife and humans share the same environment, there is a potential for conflict to occur. This can be split into several broad categories:
It is easy to watch wildlife programs on the television and see the animals as beautiful or magnificent animals, but if you have to live alongside these animals then you may have a different view - is a Lion the graceful king of the jungle or is it livestock killing vermin ? The answer will vary between different people, with those people who live alongside the Lion being most likely to have the latter view. In the same way that farmers in the UK often see foxes or badgers as vermin that cause them problems, in Africa Lions and other predators are a problem for farmers with livestock as they do kill livestock, and this can lead to significant financial problems for farmers. Other animals also cause losses for farmers - a farmer growing crops can suffer losses from any number of herbivores that will see his field of crops as a large meal. Click here to read more about wildlife causing financial and other losses for humans.
Attacks by animals on people are very rare compared to other forms of death such as road traffic accidents, but do still occur on a regular basis with several people being killed by animals each year Click here to read more about some past cases of animal attacks on humans.
One of the biggest problems for conservation of wildlife is the loss of habitat. As the human population grows, people spread out - cities expand and previously uninhabited areas become inhabited. As this happens the amount of land where wildlife can live in peace shrinks and clashes between humans and wildlife increase. Additionally changing land use practices such as forests being cleared by logging (both legal and illegal) or for farming, which destroys a large amount of wildlife habitat.
The final area of conflict is people hunting animals. Poachers will often set snares to trap antelope or other species so they can either eat the animal or sell its meat. The poachers snares are indiscriminate though and kill any animal that strays into them, so while African wild dogs for instance aren't targeted by poachers they do still get killed by wire snares left for other animals. The Painted Dog Conservation project has dealt with a number of African Wild Dogs and other animals that have been trapped by poachers snares.
Animals are not just hunted for food - elephants are poached for their tusks (Ivory), rhino's are poached for their horns, Tigers are poached for their skins or for use in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and many other animals are also killed illegally for various reasons. CITES aims to reduce this problem by controlling the import or export of certain wildlife based products.
Wildlife Human conflict is a key issue that is being addressed for long term wildlife conservation. As such it is an area that is addressed by several of the projects that we have helped to fund.
The Caprivi Carnivore Project will be looking at ways to reduce conflict between people and wildlife (Spotted Hyenas in particular) in the Caprivi region of Namibia.
The Kunene lion project is aiming to encourage more tourism to visit the areas inhabited by the desert lions, so that the local community can gain economically by the presence of these predators that do sometimes kill livestock.
Cheetah Conservation Botswana works with the farmers and local communities by discussing the issues with them and educating them in methods of protecting livestock from predators so they are able to reduce their losses without resorting to the old method (killing any predators they see).
The Painted Dog project runs an education centre for children from various schools and also talks to farmers and the local communities to educate them about wildlife. They also run a very successful anti poaching program and a scheme where the wire recovered from poachers snares is used by local people to make sculptures which are then sold (giving an income to both the sculptor and the project), so the people see the Painted Dog project as a valuable addition to the community and in turn do their part to help preserve the wildlife.
The Brown Hyena project in Luderitz works with the diamond mining industry to look at the impact that proposed work will have on the Brown Hyenas and recommend possible ways to minimise problems.
© Predator Conservation Trust.