Human-carnivore relationships: current status and the future

Carnivores find themselves in conflict with people in many ways. Traditional areas of conflict are land use conflicts, livestock predation, threats to people’s lives, pelts, trophies, pollution and carnivores as pets. More... [ view full abstract ]

Carnivores find themselves in conflict with people in many ways. Traditional areas of conflict are land use conflicts, livestock predation, threats to people’s lives, pelts, trophies, pollution and carnivores as pets. More recently, by-catch, disturbance, tourism, pathogens, and the discovery by carnivores of the urban environment as a novel habitat have diversified zones of encounters. Many carnivores are threatened and becoming more so, yet others have staged remarkable recoveries, and this not to everyone’s delight. I will use examples of studies of carnivores in Africa and Europe to highlight the scale and characteristics of some recent issues which involved a broad range of approaches from ecological modelling to research projects co-designed by stakeholders. I will argue that in both research and the management of carnivore-people relationships we need to modify current conventional thinking and approaches. This is for two main reasons: (1) The future of the public’s attitude towards wildlife, including carnivores, will be determined by the urban population, with its specific “wildlife experiences”, and (2) both research and management benefit from involving stakeholders at the outset and the design of projects and measures if the aim is to minimize conflict.