When does agriculture enter into conflict with wildlife? A global assessment of parrot–agriculture conflicts and their conservation effects

Abstract

Aim: No human activity has changed natural habitat availability and ecosystem functioning more than agriculture. As a consequence, species may be forced to use croplands as foraging habitat, resulting in potential conflicts with farmers. To assess the causes and consequences of wildlife-agriculture interactions, we investigated the underlying associations among species traits, climate and landscapes factors that determine parrot species to use croplands, and related them to their conservation status. Location: Global. Methods: We used parrots as a model due to their global distribution, high behavioural plasticity, high proportion of species using croplands (43%) and threatened species (26%). Within the distribution range of the 398 extant parrot species, we calculated annual averages and seasonality of ecosystem productivity, climate conditions and land-use patterns from satellite data. We then categorized species conservation status using information provided by IUCN. Results: We found that habitat degradation, where biodiversity is low and primary productivity is low and intermittent, together with the plasticity of species to use different habitats, is key interrelated conditions that increase the likelihood of species to use croplands worldwide. The persecution of parrots as crop pests varied among regions, being higher for large-bodied species, those with small distributions, and in highly human-impacted areas. Moreover, persecution is contributing to the global population decline and extinction risk of parrots, especially in those species with small distribution ranges. Main conclusions: Parrot-agriculture conflicts may affect both the conservation of parrot species and their key ecological functions. Our results highlight the importance of using multi-specific and multi-source information to understand and predict where and why human-wildlife conflicts may arise, as their main drivers interact and are heterogeneous at large spatial scales. Further studies should evaluate the actual extent and economic impact of crop losses caused by wild species to help solve agriculture-wildlife conflicts. | 5 BARBOSA et Al.

Confounding Rules Can Hinder Conservation: Disparities in Law Regulation on Domestic and International Parrot Trade within and among Neotropical Countries

“…The fact that several parrot species make use of agriculture and are persecuted, killed and trapped as pest crops [41] complicates the scenario of illegal trade. In many cases (e.g., parakeets of genus Psittacara in some Andean regions), illegal domestic trade results as a by-product of trapping parrots in crops to increase the incomes of people in rural and remote areas [36].…”

Feeding ecology of the Green-cheeked Parakeet, Pyrrhura molinae (Psittaciformes, Psittacidae), in a subtropical forest of Argentina

“…One common feature of feeding habits in Pyrrhura genus is the extensive consumption of few, but abundant available food resources (Ragusa-Netto 2007;Botero-Delgadillo et al 2010). Parrots are considered adaptable, consuming a great variety of plant species, as well as adapting to novel foods in modified environments, causing conflicts with farmers (Matuzak et al 2008;Barbosa et al 2021). However, the population decline of some parrot species has been linked to the decline of keystone plant resources (Berg et al 2007;Renton et al 2015).…”

Temporary behavioral responses to playbacks by a pest parrot and implications for management

“…As parrot species distributions change with increasing urbanization (Huang et al, 2019;Liu et al, 2020) and movement via the pet trade (Edelaar et al, 2015;Martin, 2018;Pires, 2015), parrots are often coming in close contact with humans. Human-parrot conflict increases as parrots settle in or near human-modified habitats like farms or suburban/urban greenspaces (de Matos Fragata et al, 2022;Menchetti & Mori, 2014), with ~44% of parrot species using croplands as habitat (Barbosa et al, 2021). These conditions make parrots opportune to explore how integrating auditory stimuli can alleviate not only humanparrot conflict but human-wildlife conflict more generally.…”