The impact of human-carnivore conflict mitigation strategies on the landscape of coexistence

: Large carnivores play an ecologically vital role within their ecosystem. As apex predators, the pressure they exert on species below them in the food chain is important in maintaining function and productivity (Estes et al., 2011; Ripple et al., 2014). Further, their presence can offer great economic value to the countries in which they exist (Lindsey et al., 2007; Naidoo et al., 2010), and intrinsic value worldwide (Macdonald et al., 2015). Despite this carnivore populations across the globe are some of the most threatened, in part due to their large home ranges and so dependence on land outside of protected areas for survival. This can result in intense conflict with people- a strong threat to their survival (Inskip and Zimmermann, 2009; Ripple et al., 2016).Human-carnivore conflict is of particular threat to lions (Panthera leo) and is one of the leading conservation concerns for the species. As human populations in Africa grow, people and lions are forced into closer proximity. With pastoralist communities often living on the boundaries of unfenced national parks, opportunities for livestock depredation by lions, and subsequent lethal human retaliation, are rife (van Eeden et al., 2017). Such conflict scenarios have undeniably contributed to the 43% decline in lion population numbers over the past 20 years (Bauer et al., 2016). To combat this, a range of interventions have been developed to aid in livestock protection, particularly at night. These include reinforcing traditional livestock bomas (using wire or natural resources), training guard dogs, and using sound/light deterrents. While some preliminary work has been done to assess the effectiveness of these interventions (Abade et al., 2014; Dickman, 2008; Miller et al., 2016), large gaps in the knowledge remain.Little is known about the way individual lions respond behaviourally to conflict mitigation interventions (e.g. reinforced bomas); whether such interventions trigger behavioural adjustments and over what timescale these effects occur. Following developments in GPS radio collar monitoring, it was found that lions avoided human dominated areas both spatially and temporally by adjusting their behaviour. They avoided areas of high human activity while resting and feeding during the day- but switched to using such areas for feeding at night (Suraci et al., 2019). Further, lions showed some landscape scale avoidance of pastoral lands, and when using these areas moved faster and straighter, suggestive of behavioural adjustments to minimise human encounters (Oriol-Cotterill et al., 2015). However, such GPS monitoring has not yet been used to identify the specific impact of livestock protection strategies on the behaviour of individual lions.Even when depredation strategies are successful in preventing livestock attacks by large carnivores, people may continue to persecute them as economic factors, cultural beliefs and negative perceptions of these species exacerbate the problem of conflict (Dickman and Hazzah, 2016). Little is known about how engagement with depredation interventions alters people's attitudes and perceptions of carnivores. This is particularly interesting when considering the influence such sociological variables can have on an individual's propensity to protect, or not, the predatory species that share their landscape (Dickman, 2010). The interplay between attitudes towards conservation of large carnivores, and an individual's history of conflict, is also largely understudied.While it is important to consider the impact of depredation prevention mechanisms at the level of the individual animal or person, it is also imperative that we understand their effects at the landscape level. If interventions displace livestock attack risk to neighbouring households or villages, this could inflame problems of human-carnivore conflict, and simultaneously create conflict between people.