Performing Department
Wildlife Sustainability & Ecos
Non Technical Summary
Human-wildlife conflict (HWC) is a topic of tremendous concern for people all over the world. In North America, conflicts between agricultural producers and carnivores such as grey wolves, bears, and coyotes pose significant challenges to both producers as well as state and federal agencies. African communities are frequently on the forefront of HWC issues, given a rapidly expanding human population and increasing agricultural development in rural areas. These areas of conflict often are the site of some of the largest remaining wild populations of many species. In Botswana, "conflict" typically comes in the form of predators, like lions, cheetahs, or wild dogs, killing livestock. Much of the research and practice on HWC is focused on alleviating conflict and finding ways to compensate people who have experienced negative interactions with wildlife. In more recent years, the concern has shifted to finding ways for people and wild animals to coexist, to share landscapes and communities, even as they are competing for space, water, and food. This holistic approach acknowledges the social and human dimensions of HWC. This approach also recognizes that conflicts over land, politics, values, competing livelihoods, and other social tensions, or "human-human conflicts," are at the root of HWC.A significant body of evidence attests to the importance of experiential learning in augmenting traditional classroom-based curriculum. Immersive experiences facilitate learning by providing opportunities for students to process and transform relevant experiences into knowledge. Such "hands-on" experiences benefit natural resources students by fostering the acquisition of practical knowledge and increasing student perceptions of the applicability of both field-based and classroom information to "real world" situations. These experiences also benefit students by instilling social responsibility, promoting inclusion of historically underrepresented groups, and "cementing their identity as ecologists". In assessing the outlook for the fisheries and wildlife profession in the coming decades, Edge (2016) argued that university natural resources curricula should include a variety of experiential-learning opportunities - including internships, undergraduate research, and international experiences - in order to provide graduates the appropriate skills to successful address natural resource challenges. International experiences are valuable tools for exposing natural resources students to alternative problem-solving approaches. Because individual attitudes toward nature are determined largely by the cultural context, attitudes and approaches toward wildlife conservation are contingent partially upon the culture and history in which they arise.We propose a Large-scale Comprehensive Initiative to perform an integrated project focused on both applied natural and social science research that addresses a real-world problem in renewable natural resource conservation, as well as education focused on experiential learning in the form of internships and undergraduate research experiences. The specific objectives of our proposal are to 1) address information deficiencies in the area of human-wildlife conflict by conducting research in Botswana aimed at identifying ways for people in the Kalahari to benefit from their close proximity to wild carnivores and to gain support for efforts to safeguard their cattle while also tracking, monitoring, and stewarding wild carnivores; 2) provide experiential learning opportunities to student participants that involve reducing human-wildlife conflict in both Botswana and the United States, in the form of applied undergraduate research projects in Botswana and professional undergraduate and graduate internships in the United States; and 3) increase the capacity of Tarleton State University to conduct education and research activities related to agriculture and natural resources by promoting the professional growth and development of faculty, providing graduate assistantships, and building linkages between TSU and participating institutions and organizations.
Animal Health Component
0%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
100%
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
We propose a Large-scale Comprehensive Initiative to perform an integrated project focused on both applied natural and social science research that addresses a real-world problem in renewable natural resource conservation, as well as education focused on experiential learning in the form of internships and undergraduate research experiences. The specific objectives of our proposal areAddress information deficiencies in the area of human-wildlife conflict by conducting research in Botswana aimed at identifying ways for people in the Kalahari to benefit from their close proximity to wild carnivores and to gain support for efforts to safeguard their cattle while also tracking, monitoring, and stewarding wild carnivores.Provide experiential learning opportunities to student participants that involve reducing human-wildlife conflict in both Botswana and the United States, in the form of applied undergraduate research projects and professional undergraduate and graduate internships.Increase the capacity of Tarleton State University (TSU) to conduct education and research activities related to agriculture and natural resources by promoting the professional growth and development of faculty, providing graduate assistantships, and building linkages between TSU and participating institutions and organizations.
Project Methods
Multidisciplinary, team research on carnivore ecology and movements as well as human activities, attitudes, behaviors, and incentives will be essential to make the Conservation Performance Payment Program work. Here are the data collection, analysis, and applied research that will be needed and that will be led by the Batswana and American students, with leadership and mentoring from CCB and the TAMU and TSU faculty:Wildlife Tracking Track carnivores and livestock through spoor surveys and camera traps. Expert trackers will gather the data from the communities, with the help of the students, using a Cybertracker application on smart devices, combined with camera traps.CyberTracker is a GPS app that can be used on mobile devices to collect field observations on animal movements. One of its distinct advantages is that it features an "Icon User Interface" that enables fast data collection and does not require skills in reading or writing (see Figure 3). This will allow team members who speak different languages, Setswana, Sesarwa, and English, to collaborate easily using the same data collection tools. The icon interface design also reduces data input errors. The team will also deploy camera traps in and around the WMAs, GH10 and GH11, and the villages of Kacgae and Bere, to detect and estimate numbers of lions and livestock and identify where the species are interacting and where the flashpoints of conflict and predation occur.Undergraduate researchers will be involved in this facet of the research, learning how to use the GPS units, identifying and distinguishing the tracks of lion, cheetah, wild dog, and other species, setting up and monitoring camera traps, recording visual images in data sheets, and collaborating in a team with local and indigenous tracking experts.One of the Master's students may use this data to produce a stand-alone thesis on the movements of different species in the predator guild and analyzing them in relation to how livestock move in and out of the WMAs. This will provide more detailed understanding of how the expansion of cattle posts is making encounters between carnivores and cattle more likely and frequent, and exacerbating human-carnivore conflict.Defining a Points System: The students will collate camera trap data with the spoor data recorded in CyberTracker and with qualitative field observations of carnivores. The data will be spatially analyzed to show high and low carnivore activity and presence in relation to the WMAs and villages. The student team will present the collated data and analysis in Kgotla meetings in the communities. In partnership with CCB, and through a participatory process of idea generation and consensus building, the team will devise a points system such that residents who maintain high levels of carnivore presence and activity may be rewarded.The second Master's student may write a case study about the participatory processes of evaluating the carnivore data in relation to a rewards system.Designating Wildlife Corridors: This facet of the research will require a full year of fieldwork to track seasonal movements of carnivores and livestock. Some data will come from GPS collars on lions; others will come from field measurements of location, size, and frequency of spoor. The collar data and observations of predator movements will be complemented by consultations with village residents, cattle herders, chiefs, and expert indigenous trackers. This combination of GPS data and traditional knowledge has been modeled in research on elephant use of the landscape in Botswana (Buchholtz et al. 2020).This will be part of the PhD student's research, with support and help from the undergraduates, for example in fitting lion collars and making field observations.Establishing Grazing Zones: The PhD and Master's students will contribute livestock and carnivore movement data to the land use planning process (from the collars, CyberTracker data, field observations, and camera traps). The graduate students will gather social science data as well from residents of the villages of Bere and Kacgae and livestock herders. Questions will focus on willingness of people to adhere to exclusion zones, what they perceive as barriers and opportunities to the zoning, and what the actual costs and benefits of barriers and mitigation efforts are. The data collection tools will include a survey instrument for all residents to get a baseline of household economics and livelihoods, as well as semi-structured interviews and focus groups to quantify and interpret attitudes about lions and other predators, perceptions of risk, and strategies for coping with loss and predation. The PhD student will work with the undergraduates to lead several participatory mapping meetings to gather feedback on and validate the proposed grazing zones. These data on perceptions will be correlated with reported and observed behaviors, including willingness to practice lion-proof husbandry techniques and keep livestock in agreed zones.Building Social and Economic Incentives: Students will analyze the social science data gathered from the surveys, interviews, and focus groups to contribute to CCB's plans for a community-based compensation plan. The field work and analysis will be the work of the graduate students. Undergraduates will help with enumeration of the surveys, as well as with coding and entering data.Education - The Internship Experience in the US Our education partner in the project is USDA-APHIS-Wildlife Services, who will be hosting the student internships. WS is the primary federal agency tasked with resolving human-wildlife conflict in the United States. In the second project year (2023), four undergraduate and two graduate (MS) students, will enter into a summer (June-August) wildlife conflict management internship with WS in the United States. Bringing with them experiences in wildlife conflict management from Africa, the undergraduate and graduate students will be stationed in various locales that are actively managing for wildlife conflicts. Working alongside WS, and its associated state programs, students will be actively engaged in field experience with wildlife conflict managers addressing the nature of conflicts from human dimensions to wildlife management actions to policy formation. These conflicts range the spectrum from traditional carnivore conflicts on livestock, such as wolves, coyotes, bears, and mountain lions; to invasive, exotic species such as feral swine; to human health and safety issues involving bird-airstrike hazards and zoonotic diseases such as rabies. Students may be stationed anywhere in the USA, but we anticipate a group in the Inter-mountain West (e.g. Montana and Wyoming), a group in Texas, and a group in the Eastern USA (e.g. Maryland and Virginia). Following a diverse experience across the USA, students will reconvene on the campus of TSU for a three-day workshop to share their experiences, synthesize what they have learned from their comparative time in Africa and the USA, before returning to Africa to complete the program. The culmination of the workshop will be a series of seminars given by the students describing their experience. The seminars will be open to students, faculty, and the general public, and video recordings will be made available online. Combined with other aspects of this grant program, the diverse internship experience will prepare students to enter the wildlife conflict management profession, with a broad understanding of the framework of managing conflicts, regardless of location or species causing damage; students will recognize that pattern and process are more similar worldwide than different. By drawing on a variety of conflict management solutions, they will be better prepared to solve novel conflicts arising in the future.