The political ecology of human-wildlife conflict: Producing wilderness, insecurity, and displacement in the Limpopo National Park

Massé, Francis

doi:10.4103/0972-4923.186331

Cited by 78 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…The region consists of open woodland savannah, bushlands and wetlands (Stalmans et al 2004). LNP includes 18 communities with a human population of approximately 7000 in the central park and a further 20,000 in the buffer zone (Massé 2016). Approximately 36,000 cattle (Bos primigenius) graze within the park (Grossmann et al 2014) with higher numbers outside.…”

Section: Study Area and Populationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence of a further emerging threat to lion conservation; targeted poaching for body parts

Everatt

Kokés²,

Pereira³

2019

Biodivers Conserv

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The African lion, Panthera leo, has, like many of the world's megafauna, become threatened with extinction over the past century. Loss of habitat and prey, persecution in retaliation of livestock depredation, by-catch by bushmeat poachers and unsustainable trophy hunting are all documented anthropogenic caused threats to lion conservation. Here we present data that indicate the emergence of a further threat to lion conservation: the targeted poaching of lions for body parts. We present lion abundance and mortality data from field surveys in southern Africa between 2011 and 2018 of a resident lion population. The targeted poaching of lions for body parts accounted for 35% of known human caused mortalities across the landscape and 61% of mortalities within Limpopo National Park with a clear increase in this pressure in 2014. Retaliatory killing for livestock conflict accounted for 51% of total mortalities, however in 48% of conflict cases body parts were also removed, suggesting that a demand for body parts may incentivize conflict related killing of lions. The use of poison was the most common means of killing lions and was recorded in 61% of mortalities. Teeth and claws were the body parts harvested most often from illegally killed animals in the study area, with an increase from 2014 onwards. This pressure threatens the viability of the species in our study area and the success of current conservation initiatives. We suggest that the results of this study be viewed as a warning to the global conservation community to be vigilant of the impact that illegal wildlife trade can have on the conservation of lions, just as a similar pressure has already had on other big cat populations.

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Section: Study Area and Populationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence of a further emerging threat to lion conservation; targeted poaching for body parts

Everatt

Kokés²,

Pereira³

2019

Biodivers Conserv

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“…Protecting rhinos more intensely through anti‐poaching, reducing demand for rhino horn or supplying horn to the market, however, only resulted in rhino population sustainability when done in concert with disrupting organized crime and providing economic alternatives for people living next to parks (Haas and Ferreira ). A key additional game‐changing element thus should focus on disrupting organized crime (Haas and Ferreira ) and addressing social injustices (Masse ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Finding politically feasible conservation policies: the case of wildlife trafficking

Haas

Ferreira

2018

Ecological Applications

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Abstract. Conservation management is of increasing importance in ecology as most ecosystems nowadays are essentially managed ecosystems. Conservation managers work within a political-ecological system when they develop and attempt to implement a conservation plan that is designed to meet particular conservation goals. In this article, we develop a decision support tool that can identify a conservation policy for a managed wildlife population that is both sustainable and politically feasible. Part of our tool consists of a simulation model composed of interacting influence diagrams. We build, fit, and use our tool on the case of rhino horn trafficking between South Africa and Asia. Using these diagrams, we show how a rhino poacher's belief system can be modified by such a policy and locate it in a perceived risks-benefits space before and after policy implementation. We statistically fit our model to observations on group actions and rhino abundance. We then use this fitted model to compute a politically feasible conservation policy.

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“…The creation of designated PAs is ultimately rooted in the western perspective of nature as untouched, uninhabited and unaltered (Neumann, 2002). This notion of pristine nature is, however, fails to recognize how people have been altering their landscapes for centuries and these altered landscapes have thus been classified as "natural" and "wild" (Shafer, 2015;Massé, 2016;Anaya and Espírito-Santo, 2018). Consequently, the dominant approach to conservation throughout the twentieth century was through the establishment of PAs from which people were essentially excluded.…”

Section: Conservation Rights and Accessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forest Conservation, Rights, and Diets: Untangling the Issues

Sunderland

Vasquez

2020

Front. For. Glob. Change

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Recent research has highlighted the contributions of forests and tree-based systems to both dietary diversity and nutrition as well as agricultural production in the form of tree-based ecosystem services. Wild foods provide a significant nutritional contribution to the diets of rural dwellers, the majority of whom would be classified as some of the world's poorest. Yet, despite the important human-forest interactions and relative degrees of forest dependency, access to much of the global forest estate is increasingly regulated under the guise of biodiversity conservation. How this restricted access plays out when the "right to food" is a deeply enshrined human right has been deeply contested, particularly with regard to land annexation. This paper outlines the critical issues related to dietary diversity and nutrition in the context of the availability of wild foods juxtaposed with the growing call for the annexation of land for conservation. We suggest that a more integrated and equitable approach to land management that embraces both biodiversity conservation and broader food security and nutrition goals can provide multiple benefits, while mitigating local conflicts. As such, a rights-based approach to conservation and an embracing of broader landscape perspectives are possible strategies to achieve these seemingly conflicting agendas.

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The political ecology of human-wildlife conflict: Producing wilderness, insecurity, and displacement in the Limpopo National Park

Cited by 78 publications

References 22 publications

Evidence of a further emerging threat to lion conservation; targeted poaching for body parts

Evidence of a further emerging threat to lion conservation; targeted poaching for body parts

Finding politically feasible conservation policies: the case of wildlife trafficking

Forest Conservation, Rights, and Diets: Untangling the Issues

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