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Effects of shepherds and dogs on livestock depredation by leopards (Panthera pardus) in north-eastern Iran

Human-carnivore conflicts over livestock depredation are increasingly common, yet little is understood about the role of husbandry in conflict mitigation. As shepherds and guarding dogs are most commonly used to curb carnivore attacks on grazing livestock, evaluation and improvement of these practic...

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Autores principales: Khorozyan, Igor, Soofi, Mahmood, Soufi, Mobin, Hamidi, Amirhossein Khaleghi, Ghoddousi, Arash, Waltert, Matthias
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5326547/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28243544
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3049
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author Khorozyan, Igor
Soofi, Mahmood
Soufi, Mobin
Hamidi, Amirhossein Khaleghi
Ghoddousi, Arash
Waltert, Matthias
author_facet Khorozyan, Igor
Soofi, Mahmood
Soufi, Mobin
Hamidi, Amirhossein Khaleghi
Ghoddousi, Arash
Waltert, Matthias
author_sort Khorozyan, Igor
collection PubMed
description Human-carnivore conflicts over livestock depredation are increasingly common, yet little is understood about the role of husbandry in conflict mitigation. As shepherds and guarding dogs are most commonly used to curb carnivore attacks on grazing livestock, evaluation and improvement of these practices becomes an important task. We addressed this issue by studying individual leopard (Panthera pardus) attacks on sheep and goats in 34 villages near Golestan National Park, Iran. We obtained and analyzed data on 39 attacks, which included a total loss of 31 sheep and 36 goats in 17 villages. We applied non-parametric testing, Poisson Generalized Linear Modelling (GLM) and model selection to assess how numbers of sheep and goats killed per attack are associated with the presence and absence of shepherds and dogs during attacks, depredation in previous years, villages, seasons, ethnic groups, numbers of sheep and goats kept in villages, and distances from villages to the nearest protected areas. We found that 95.5% of losses were inflicted in forests when sheep and goats were accompanied by shepherds (92.5% of losses) and dogs (77.6%). Leopards tended to kill more sheep and goats per attack (surplus killing) when dogs were absent in villages distant from protected areas, but still inflicted most losses when dogs were present, mainly in villages near protected areas. No other variables affected numbers of sheep and goats killed per attack. These results indicate that local husbandry practices are ineffectual and the mere presence of shepherds and guarding dogs is not enough to secure protection. Shepherds witnessed leopard attacks, but could not deter them while dogs did not exhibit guarding behavior and were sometimes killed by leopards. In an attempt to make practical, low-cost and socially acceptable improvements in local husbandry, we suggest that dogs are raised to create a strong social bond with livestock, shepherds use only best available dogs, small flocks are aggregated into larger ones and available shepherds herd these larger flocks together. Use of deterrents and avoidance of areas close to Golestan and in central, core areas of neighboring protected areas is also essential to keep losses down.
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spelling pubmed-53265472017-02-27 Effects of shepherds and dogs on livestock depredation by leopards (Panthera pardus) in north-eastern Iran Khorozyan, Igor Soofi, Mahmood Soufi, Mobin Hamidi, Amirhossein Khaleghi Ghoddousi, Arash Waltert, Matthias PeerJ Biodiversity Human-carnivore conflicts over livestock depredation are increasingly common, yet little is understood about the role of husbandry in conflict mitigation. As shepherds and guarding dogs are most commonly used to curb carnivore attacks on grazing livestock, evaluation and improvement of these practices becomes an important task. We addressed this issue by studying individual leopard (Panthera pardus) attacks on sheep and goats in 34 villages near Golestan National Park, Iran. We obtained and analyzed data on 39 attacks, which included a total loss of 31 sheep and 36 goats in 17 villages. We applied non-parametric testing, Poisson Generalized Linear Modelling (GLM) and model selection to assess how numbers of sheep and goats killed per attack are associated with the presence and absence of shepherds and dogs during attacks, depredation in previous years, villages, seasons, ethnic groups, numbers of sheep and goats kept in villages, and distances from villages to the nearest protected areas. We found that 95.5% of losses were inflicted in forests when sheep and goats were accompanied by shepherds (92.5% of losses) and dogs (77.6%). Leopards tended to kill more sheep and goats per attack (surplus killing) when dogs were absent in villages distant from protected areas, but still inflicted most losses when dogs were present, mainly in villages near protected areas. No other variables affected numbers of sheep and goats killed per attack. These results indicate that local husbandry practices are ineffectual and the mere presence of shepherds and guarding dogs is not enough to secure protection. Shepherds witnessed leopard attacks, but could not deter them while dogs did not exhibit guarding behavior and were sometimes killed by leopards. In an attempt to make practical, low-cost and socially acceptable improvements in local husbandry, we suggest that dogs are raised to create a strong social bond with livestock, shepherds use only best available dogs, small flocks are aggregated into larger ones and available shepherds herd these larger flocks together. Use of deterrents and avoidance of areas close to Golestan and in central, core areas of neighboring protected areas is also essential to keep losses down. PeerJ Inc. 2017-02-23 /pmc/articles/PMC5326547/ /pubmed/28243544 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3049 Text en ©2017 Khorozyan et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Biodiversity
Khorozyan, Igor
Soofi, Mahmood
Soufi, Mobin
Hamidi, Amirhossein Khaleghi
Ghoddousi, Arash
Waltert, Matthias
Effects of shepherds and dogs on livestock depredation by leopards (Panthera pardus) in north-eastern Iran
title Effects of shepherds and dogs on livestock depredation by leopards (Panthera pardus) in north-eastern Iran
title_full Effects of shepherds and dogs on livestock depredation by leopards (Panthera pardus) in north-eastern Iran
title_fullStr Effects of shepherds and dogs on livestock depredation by leopards (Panthera pardus) in north-eastern Iran
title_full_unstemmed Effects of shepherds and dogs on livestock depredation by leopards (Panthera pardus) in north-eastern Iran
title_short Effects of shepherds and dogs on livestock depredation by leopards (Panthera pardus) in north-eastern Iran
title_sort effects of shepherds and dogs on livestock depredation by leopards (panthera pardus) in north-eastern iran
topic Biodiversity
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5326547/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28243544
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3049
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