Abstract
Illegal wildlife crime is a global phenomenon, accelerating the ongoing biodiversity crisis. In the Old World, and particularly in Africa, illegal use of poisons to eliminate carnivores is the main driver of the continental vulture crisis. Knowledge about the underlying source and drivers of this threat is lacking for most areas, including Kenya, a global vulture and biodiversity hotspot. An extensive questionnaire survey of over 1300 respondents was run, using a specialized questioning technique and quantitative analytical approaches. Results show that, while pastoralists have a positive attitude towards vultures, over 20% of them use poisons to eliminate predators. Poisoning was largely driven by livestock losses to predators, and by negative attitude towards predators. Poisoning was less prevalent among respondents aware of the Kenya Wildlife Act. Overall, we suggest that a combination of top-down, e.g. legislation, and bottom-up (such as corrals or compensation) along with awareness campaigns may help reduce poisoning on the ground.
Highlights
Conflicts between humans and wildlife represent an important conservation challenge in the Anthropocene (Redpath et al 2013)
Most respondents (62%) indicated that drought was the primary cause of livestock loss during the preceding year, while predation was indicated by 16% of respondents and was largely attributed to hyenas and lions (83 and 8% of losses, respectively)
91% of respondents reported that vulture populations have declined in their area over the past five years, with 38% of these respondents directly attributing the decline to poisoning
Summary
Conflicts between humans and wildlife represent an important conservation challenge in the Anthropocene (Redpath et al 2013). Approaches to study sensitive behaviors, such as illegal practices, developed within the social science, have become popular in conservation to robustly quantify and understand environmental crime (Nuno and St John 2015) These sensitive questioning approaches are furthering our knowledge of the prevalence and correlates of environmental crimes, such as illegal forest logging, hunting and trapping of wildlife, collection of endangered plants, and use of poisons to control predators, among others (Nuno et al 2013; St John et al 2015; Santangeli et al 2016; Craig et al 2019; Hinsley et al 2019)
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