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Spotlight on LMICs – Footprints and Pawprints: Exploring Co-existence in the Dry Chaco

In the Dry Chaco, pumas as apex predators help regulate the populations of herbivores and smaller predators, maintaining the balance of the ecosystem. This regulatory role is essential for controlling prey species, which in turn influences vegetation and overall biodiversity. The role of pumas in the Dry Chaco is complex due to the region’s rapid anthropogenic environmental changes, including deforestation and agricultural expansion. These changes have led to habitat fragmentation and increased encounters between pumas and humans. Their survival in the Dry Chaco depends on effective conservation strategies that address both habitat preservation and conflict mitigation with local communities.

Sofía Nanni et al. integrate the concepts of source/sink habitat dynamics, and anthropogenic resistance to assess and map opportunities and barriers to coexistence between people and pumas in the Argentine Dry Chaco. They used occupancy modeling and a spatial human-puma conflict risk model to identify ‘safe’ and ‘unsafe’ habitat patches. The authors found that:

  • Safe puma habitat patches (i.e., suitable and safe) covered 29% of the region, whereas attractive sinks (i.e., suitable but risky) represented 12%. 
  • Movement areas corresponded to 60% of the region, while conflict risk and high landscape resistance undermined connectivity: unsafe and severed movement areas covered 10% and 11% of the region, respectively. 
  • Nearly 98% of safe habitat and movement areas occurred outside protected areas.
Study region of the Argentine Dry Chaco. (a) Distribution of major land-cover types within the Argentine Dry Chaco (Source: Baumann et al., 2022), and location of interviews and camera-trap sampling sites. (b) Example of the camera trap setup in one of the sampling sites. (c) Example of a camera trap picture of a puma.

The authors present a dynamic, spatially-driven framework for a powerful three-pronged conservation strategy to safeguard vital habitats and movement corridors, reduce livestock depredation in high-risk zones and conflict hotspots, and restore fragmented landscapes to enhance ecological connectivity. It is an opportunity for policy makers to utilize relevant data in their decision-making process to harmonize human-wildlife coexistence.

Dr. Nanni is a part of the Global Land Programme (GLP) Global Research Network of Future Earth. Her interest is understanding the consequences of human activities on medium-large mammal conservation, and the social-ecological factors that affect human-wildlife coexistence in different SES of Latin America, with focus on the South American Chaco. Her research focuses on co-designing strategies fostering coexistence and biodiversity conservation that are aligned with the interests, needs and possibilities of the people sharing the land with wildlife. Dr. Nanni is a Researcher at the Instituto de Ecología Regional (UNT‐CONICET) Tucumán Argentina and Facultad de Ciencias Naturales e IML Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. 

Nanni AS, Ghoddousi A, Romero-MMunoz A, Baumann MM, Burton J, Camino M, Decarre J, Martello F, Regolin AL, and Kuemmerle T. (2024). Mapping Opportunities and Barriers for Coexistence Between People and Pumas in the Argentine Dry Chaco. Diversity and Distributions. https://doi.org/10.1111/ddi.13920

Do you have a recent publication within the Global South that you would like spotlighted? Share your publication with Makyba Charles-Ayinde at Makyba.charles-ayinde@futureearth.org for a possible feature!