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The main aim of this interdisciplinary research project is to enhance the understanding on the long-term impacts and effectiveness of Educational Programmes implemented in Natural Protected Areas as a biodiversity conservation strategy - including impacts on Local Environmental Knowledge. To do so, particular Educational Programmes implemented in Protected Areas in Finland and Madagascar have been selected as case studies context, providing a socio-ecological system approach, including human-wildlife conflicts, and also local community participation and LEK integration possibilities.
Team
Dr. Mar Cabeza, Dr. Aili Pyhälä
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.
Team
Peter Bridgeford, Holger Kolberg