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Recently, I and others wrote a response to a paper on a conservation conflict centered on farmer perceptions of livestock predation by scavenging birds. In a few tweets, I’d like to summarise why I thought this was necessary and, when available, how the authors replied. 1/
The paper asked Patagonian sheep farmers which, of 6 bird of prey spp., they thought were harmful/not harmful (not impact level) to livestock and compared this to field observations. The authors predicted obligate scavengers would not predate livestock. 2/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320720306856
The authors report vultures, caracaras and a condor killed 4.4% of lambs during 138 births (+ other severe/moderate non-lethal interactions). Yet, they framed these losses as ‘exceptional’, entitling the paper “Field observations do not support people’s perceptions” 3/
Our response aimed to highlight that we, as conservation scientists, should be careful in stating the threshold at which livestock losses are deemed significant if we haven’t actually asked stakeholders first. This might aid conflict mitigation 4/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320720307746?via%3Dihub
Sidenote: I actually thought Ballejo et al., 2020 was an interesting and important paper, my concern was chiefly with how they had discussed and summarised their findings.
