Socio-ecological factors influencing illegal use of poison by farmers in Namibia - Implications for reconciling human activities and vulture conservation

Research summary

There is an increasing surge in the conflict between farmers and carnivores in Namibia (as well as in many other areas). Namibian farmers are living on the edge between making economic profit or suffering losses from their activities every year. Loss of livestock predated by carnivores (such as lions, leopards, jackals) may significantly negatively affect the unstable economic balance of farmers at the end of the year. As a response, farmers have started to apply an easy-to-implement, yet illegal, solution consisting in the administration of poisons to predated livestock carcasses. Such practice not only kills carnivores, as in the farmers wish, but has repercussions on the entire ecosystem, with vulture species seemingly the most negatively, yet indirectly, affected. This project will use an interdisciplinary approach to understand the factors that most importantly affect the use of poison by farmers in Namibia. It will also allow to quantify and map the use of poison across the country. The map will pinpoint the major hotspots of poison use where conservation efforts should be focused in order to resolve the conflict between farmers and wildlife.

Description

Research info

Research title
Socio-ecological factors influencing illegal use of poison by farmers in Namibia - Implications for reconciling human activities and vulture conservation

Research timeline
1.8.2015 - 1.12.2015

Keywords
carnivores conservation biology farmers human-wildlife conflict interdisciplinarity predators social-psychology vultures

Region
Africa

Countries
Finland, Namibia

Institution
University of Helsinki
Department of Biosciences
Helsinki, Finland

Head of research
Andrea Santangeli

Research team
Peter Bridgeford, Holger Kolberg

Partners
University of Helsinki, Vultures Namibia

Contact information
Andrea Santangeli

Record last updated
29.1.2015