Very Clever
In the last 4 decades the distribution of the cheetah population has been reduced by 50%. The largest population that remains is about 20% of the entire world’s population and is located in Namibia. The Namibian cheetahs mainly live outside of protected areas, in a large area of connected livestock ranches. This is a major problem for cheetahs, who are considered pests and threats to livestock by ranchers. Even though cheetahs are considered protected game and can not be hunted for sport or profit, ranchers are allowed to kill cheetahs to protect their life or property. Killing cheetahs to protect livestock has become a major reason for the population decline.
Worldwide, livestock ranchers have strong negative perceptions of big cats in general and cheetahs in particular. These are often unfounded but do follow common sense. A cheetah hunts herd animals, ranchers are raising herd animals, a cheetah is therefore a threat to the ranchers’ animals.
What’s so clever about all this are the solutions that organizations, most notably the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) headed by Dr. Laurie Marker, are coming up with. Research has shown that cheetahs do not usually prey on livestock, but instead prefer to prey on wild ungulates. By educating local ranchers about the cheetahs’ actual predation habits and about the important role that large carnivores play in the ecosystem, the CCF has managed to change perceptions about cheetahs and decrease the number of indiscriminate killings.
Even more clever is a program Dr. Marker put into place using Anatolian Sheep Dogs. This program gives dogs to the local ranchers and assists with training and care. These dogs are a non-lethal way to control cheetahs and keep them away from livestock. Furthermore, these dogs also protect the livestock from other wild animals which may actually be more of a threat. The number of livestock lost to predation has decreased and the dogs give the farmers a sense of security and greatly decrease the indiscriminate killing of cheetahs by ranchers.
Neater still, it looks like the CCF is checking out a new program to see if its feasible to create a fuel product based on harvested bush. If this works it would a) create jobs for local people, b) be a renewable source of energy and c) restore patches of habitat for cheetahs throughout Namibia.
Summer Reading List: L. L. Marker, M. G. L. Mills, D. W. Macdonald (2003) Factors Influencing Perceptions of Conflict and Tolerance toward Cheetahs on Namibian Farmlands, Conservation Biology 17 (5) , 1290–1298)
I don’t understand this part:
How can it be both “unfounded” and “common sense?” It seems like a better way to think of the cheetahs is as a public good, and killing them in order to make raising livestock (marginally) easier is an externality, compounded by the (mistaken) perception that cheetahs are more dangerous to livestock than they actually are.
The standard response to an externality is (I think) to make the parties to the transaction pay a cost for their use of the public good — you could ask the government to fine the ranchers for cheetahs that they kill, for instance. Obviously the twin initiatives of education and sheep dogs isn’t a tax or a fine, but maybe there’s a way to see them in those terms.
Well, Son1, I think the idea that cheetahs don’t hunt livestock on ranches is counterintuitive so I think it could be unfounded and yet seem to be common sense. But, more importantly, I think you hit on an important psychological issue with the Namibian cheetahs and environmental protection in general. Environmentalists may believe that cheetahs are the ‘public good’ because they are important for the ecosystem. But this is not at all transparent to the ranchers. In fact, the ranchers consider cheetahs a *threat* to the public good. Instead of punishment with fines and taxes, the better approach would be educating the ranchers about the true importance of cheetahs and helping the ranchers to mediate their problems with the cheetahs.