Abstract
Tigers are critically endangered due to deforestation and persecution. Yet in places, Sumatran tigers (Panthera tigris sumatrae) continue to coexist with people, offering insights for managing wildlife elsewhere. Here, we couple spatial models of encounter risk with information on tolerance from 2386 Sumatrans to reveal drivers of human–tiger conflict. Risk of encountering tigers was greater around populated villages that neighboured forest or rivers connecting tiger habitat; geographic profiles refined these predictions to three core areas. People’s tolerance for tigers was related to underlying attitudes, emotions, norms and spiritual beliefs. Combining this information into socio-ecological models yielded predictions of tolerance that were 32 times better than models based on social predictors alone. Pre-emptive intervention based on these socio-ecological predictions could have averted up to 51% of attacks on livestock and people, saving 15 tigers. Our work provides further evidence of the benefits of interdisciplinary research on conservation conflicts.
Highlights
Tigers are critically endangered due to deforestation and persecution
Evidence suggests that applying socio-ecological models to conservation conflicts can be informative and beneficial; such models are rare, but have been increasingly applied in recent years[5]
By providing an application of risk modelling that incorporates geographic profiling as well as ecological and social data, we demonstrate an important interplay between ecological predictors of risk and the social context that drives people to intolerant attitudes and behaviours towards dangerous wildlife
Summary
Tigers are critically endangered due to deforestation and persecution. Yet in places, Sumatran tigers (Panthera tigris sumatrae) continue to coexist with people, offering insights for managing wildlife elsewhere. Tolerance may take attitudinal and behavioural forms[13]: people may have negative attitudes towards animals, which are reflected in the behavioural act of killing[18] These negative perceptions need not result in such extreme acts, nor are they always based on history of experiencing harm[19]. Deviation from social norms— the shared expectations about appropriate actions that influence people’s behaviour in groups—is known to deter rule-breaking in conservation due to feelings of shame or exclusion[10,21,23] Together, these social–psychological factors are a pervasive influence on people’s decision making, and should play a large role in shaping tolerance of wildlife. Tigers have struggled to survive in areas converted to large-scale agriculture, but continue to flourish in forests bordering smallholdings, despite ongoing encounters with people[26]
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