Abstract
Effective interventions are needed to solve conflicts between humans and predators over livestock killing, nuisance behavior, and attacks on pets and humans. Progress in quantification of evidence-based effectiveness and selection of the best interventions raises new questions, such as the existence of thresholds to identify truly effective interventions. Current classification of more and less effective interventions is subjective and statistically unjustified. This study describes a novel method to differentiate true and untrue effectiveness on a basis of false positive risk (FPR). I have collected 152 cases of applications of damage-reducing interventions from 102 scientific publications, 26 countries, 22 predator species, and 6 categories of interventions. The analysis has shown that the 95% confidence interval of the relative risk of predator-caused damage was 0.10–0.25 for true effectiveness (FPR < 0.05) and 0.35–0.56 for untrue effectiveness (FPR ≥ 0.05). This means that damage was reduced by 75–90% for truly effective interventions and by 44–65% for interventions of untrue effectiveness. Based on this, it was specified that truly effective interventions have the relative risk ≤ 0.25 (damage reduction ≥ 75%) and the effectiveness of interventions with the relative risk > 0.25 (damage reduction < 75%) is untrue. This threshold is statistically well-justified, stable, easy to remember, and practical to use in anti-predator interventions. More research is essential to know how this threshold holds true for other conservation interventions aiming to reduce negative outcomes (e.g., poaching rates) or increase positive outcomes (e.g., species richness).
Highlights
Biodiversity loss and degradation of natural ecosystems are the globally pressing emergencies to which scientists and practitioners need to find practical, socially acceptable and effective evidencebased solutions (Adams et al, 2019; Burivalova et al, 2019; Sutherland et al, 2020)
It can be specified that truly effective interventions have relative risk of damage (RR) ≤ 0.25 and the effectiveness of interventions with RR > 0.25 is untrue (Table 1)
This study has shown that the 5% false positive risk (FPR) could reliably separate true and untrue effectiveness of conservation interventions aimed at reduction of damage by predators
Summary
Biodiversity loss and degradation of natural ecosystems are the globally pressing emergencies to which scientists and practitioners need to find practical, socially acceptable and effective evidencebased solutions (Adams et al, 2019; Burivalova et al, 2019; Sutherland et al, 2020). Development and validation of conservation interventions is essential to reduce threats, recover species and landscapes, and secure sustainable co-existence between local societies and wildlife (Sutherland et al, 2019; Treves et al, 2019; Littlewood et al, 2020). This field is highly important, both scientifically and practically, in the context of conflicts between humans and mammalian predators. All possible efforts should be invested to find interventions which would be nonlethal and effective over a sufficiently long period of time (Khorozyan and Waltert, 2019a,b)
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