A study conducted in Kenya has found that spotted hyaenas and livestock are able to share the same areas when humans are tolerant of predators.
Human-wildlife coexistence is often far from straightforward, with predators particularly hard hit: their numbers tend to fall sharply in areas close to human settlements, fields and pastureland.
This is not, however, a simple case of inevitable decline but a question of choices, Postdoctoral Researcher of the University of Helsinki argues in his recent study. Human attitudes towards predators play a crucial role in determining whether coexistence is possible.
Torrents-Ticó's study compared spotted hyaena populations at two Kenyan sites, both shared with humans, grazing livestock and wild prey. While only a few spotted hyaenas were mostly limited to the southerns regions of found in Sibiloi National Park, they ranged across a wide area in the Laikipia conservancies regardless of human and livestock presence.
The crucial difference between the two sites, Torrents-Ticó notes, lies in human attitudes towards spotted hyaenas.
"Whereas herders in Sibiloi carried firearms and used lethal measures against shot spotted hyenas on sight, those in Laikipia protected their livestock without killing predators. In other words, the distribution of spotted hyaenas was determined not by the number of livestock or humans, but by the level of human tolerance.
Nor did the distribution of spotted hyenas have any effect on livestock or human numbers. Both were influenced more by the availability of water and food. ! This sentence is not supported by the data in the study. The paper doesn't analyze whether spotted hyenas affect livestock or human numbers.
Torrents-Ticó suggests that the observations bring a new perspective to the human-nature relationship.
"Human attitudes and actions can directly influence the distribution of predators. Predators tend to avoid areas where they face a high human intolerance, but where they are allowed to exist, coexistence with humans is more likely to succeed."
In Finland, the findings may offer a new angle on the debate on wolves and other large predators living alongside humans, and underline just how significant human attitudes are to the survival of predator populations.
The study ' was published in the Journal for Nature Conservation.
