Livestock Predation by Puma (Puma concolor) in the Highlands of a Southeastern Brazilian Atlantic Forest

Abstract

We evaluated local opinion about reducing livestock losses to puma (Puma concolor) and the potential for conflict among livestock breeders inside a protected area in the highlands of a southeastern Brazilian Atlantic forest. We also quantified the number and type of livestock losses, and determined if predation by puma was correlated with property profile and landscape characteristics. We conducted semistructured interviews with 42 livestock breeders sampled in 36 rural properties. When asked how to reduce predation, 33% of livestock breeders refused to answer, 26% suggested improving livestock husbandry practices, 19% stated that there was no appropriate action, 17% favored removing the "problem" individual, and 5 % suggested killing the puma. Opinion on how to solve predation was independent of herd size and history of losses, and was correlated with respondent age class. Older respondents tended to suggest removing or killing pumas. Attitudes toward predation represented high potential for conflict among livestock breeders who demonstrated high discordance among responses. Horses were the most common prey (51%), followed by cattle (28%), sheep (17%), and goats (4%); totaling 47 animals attacked between 2004 and 2007. Annual predation was approximately 12 ± 5 animals, equivalent to 0.4% of the total livestock. Property elevation and distance from the urban center were the main predictors of predation probability. This survey used a novel approach that has not been addressed directly in other studies on livestock predation and demonstrated that the high potential for conflict among livestock breeders should be considered before implementing management actions.

Attitudes toward jaguars and pumas and the acceptability of killing big cats in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest: An application of the Potential for Conflict Index2

“…The PCI 2 has been used to measure conflict between groups in a variety of contexts. For example, to measure differences in normative tolerance within and between scuba drivers and snorkelers (Vaske et al 2013), to assess people's acceptability of regulatory policies in private forests (Poudyal et al 2015), to measure users' opinions toward wild boar management approaches (Frank et al 2015), attitudes among livestock breeders toward livestock predation by pumas (Palmeira et al 2015), and attitudes toward implementation of management actions to reduce fear of brown bears and wolves (Frank et al 2014). The use of PCI 2 provided a better understanding of both the mean responses and the level of consensus in each sample (Sponarski et al 2015).…”

Perspectivas sobre el jaguar (Panthera onca) en dos comunidades insertas en áreas para su conservación en Nayarit, México

“…Si bien se han hecho esfuerzos para analizar las percepciones que sobre la fauna silvestre tienen las comunidades rurales, estos trabajos han sido en su mayoría poco sistemáticos y muchas veces muestran inconsistencias semánticas en aspectos fundamentales como el uso de conceptos, entre otras (Rodrigues dos Santos et al, 2008;Ávila-Nájera et al, 2011;Palmeira et al, 2015;Porfirio et al, 2016). Asimismo, los resultados suelen ser meramente descriptivos y de estructura binaria (de acuerdo-desacuerdo, negativo-positivo), lo cual puede generar dificultades de interpretación.…”

Tolerance towards wildlife in the Atlantic forest: an empirical test across ecological contexts and mammal specie

“…Although relatively rare, it is less sensitive to human disturbances than other large felids such as the jaguar (Sunquist & Sunquist, 2017). As other large carnivores, pumas are frequently involved in human-wildlife conflicts for attacking livestock of more economic value, such as cattle, horses and sheep (Palmeira et al, 2015). Location of the 13 landscapes within the study area; D) Remaining forest cover (darker grey) and spatial distribution of participants' households (points) in each landscape.…”

“…Hence, despite the evidences suggesting that experiences with nature influence people support towards conservation (Zaradic et al, 2009;Zhang et al, 2014), few HWC studies attempted to simultaneously account for how the ecological context determines people experiences with wildlife and how those experiences shape the antecedents of human behavior towards wildlife (but see van Velden et al, 2016;Behr et al, 2017). Moreover, most studies on HWC have frequently focused on groups of larger carnivores or single charismatic species (Carter et al, 2012;Inskip et al, 2014;Alexander et al, 2015;Palmeira et al, 2015), and neglected conflicts with smaller wildlife (Peterson et al, 2010), hampering the understanding of how human responses can change across species. We here develop and empirically test a conceptual model (Figure 1) that combines the ecological and human dimensions of conflicts, considering multiple landscapes and wildlife species in the Atlantic forest of Brazil.…”

“…Human occupation has converted most of the forest, today restricted to less than 16% of the original cover (Ribeiro et al, 2009). Despite this scenario that makes understanding and mitigating human-wildlife conflicts in this region crucial to both biodiversity conservation and the livelihoods of rural people, few HWC studies have been carried in the Atlantic forest (Palmeira et al, 2015;Engel et al, 2016), focusing mostly on large carnivores.…”