{"id":3014,"date":"2018-09-04T15:55:03","date_gmt":"2018-09-04T15:55:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/?p=3014"},"modified":"2018-09-13T09:01:00","modified_gmt":"2018-09-13T09:01:00","slug":"dice-research-finds-that-serial-criminals-could-help-save-tigers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/2018\/09\/04\/dice-research-finds-that-serial-criminals-could-help-save-tigers\/","title":{"rendered":"DICE research finds that serial criminals could help save tigers"},"content":{"rendered":"

A geographic profiling tool used to catch serial criminals could help reduce the casualties of human-tiger conflict, according to conservationists who collaborated on an innovative research study. The results of their research, published in\u00a0Nature Communications<\/a><\/em>, help explain how\u00a0villagers in Sumatra coexist with tigers. If used preemptively, it could have helped\u00a0cut attacks by half, saving tigers from poaching and retaliation killings.<\/p>\n

DICE’s Dr Matthew Struebig<\/a>\u00a0and Dr Freya St. John at Bangor University, led a collaboration between spatial ecologists and social scientists to help\u00a0predict where human-tiger conflict interventions\u00a0could be most effective. Tigers are on the\u00a0brink of extinction\u00a0due to deforestation and persecution. They are highly threatened and pose a public threat, but\u00a0in Sumatra tigers continue to coexist with people,<\/strong>\u00a0offering insights for managing dangerous wildlife elsewhere. Millions of conservation funds are spent each year trying to\u00a0reduce people\u2019s risk of encountering harmful animals and mitigating livestock losses of local farmers.<\/p>\n

To reveal the drivers of human-tiger conflict, the team coupled spatial analyses of tiger encounter risk with information from 2,386 Sumatrans\u00a0who were asked about their tolerance of wildlife. To map risk, the study used thirteen years of human-tiger encounter records\u00a0to generate a geographic profile \u2013 a sophisticated statistical technique previously used throughout the world to\u00a0predict the whereabouts of serial criminals based on where their crimes have been committed.<\/p>\n

Although the risk of encountering a tiger was generally greater around\u00a0populated villages near forest or rivers, the geographic profile revealed three places where risk was particularly high. At the same time, questionnaires revealed that people\u2019s tolerance for tigers was related to their\u00a0underlying attitudes, emotions, norms and spiritual beliefs. By combining this information, the team was able to highlight villages where risk was\u00a0adversely high and tolerance was unusually low\u00a0\u2013 valuable guidance for organisations such as\u00a0Fauna & Flora International<\/a>, an international conservation charity that supports the Indonesian authorities and other in-country partners in Sumatra, helping them to\u00a0prioritise conflict interventions.<\/p>\n

The techniques used in this study are highly significant and open up new possibilities for more targeted actions that will not only boost efficiency, but, more importantly, ensure that\u00a0fewer people and tigers come to harm\u00a0as a result of their interactions. This research has shown for example that, had this information been available at the time, preemptive interventions using\u00a0these predictions could have averted up to 51% of attacks on livestock and people, potentially saving 15 tigers.<\/p>\n

Dr Struebig said, “Understanding people\u2019s tolerance is key to managing dangerous species and is particularly\u00a0urgent for tigers. When combined with our maps of encounter risk, information on people\u2019s tolerance to wildlife helps us direct conservation resources to where they are needed most. This could amount to significant costsavings in terms of animals lost\u00a0or funding spent, so could be very useful in conservation.”<\/p>\n

The research, published in Nature Communications<\/em>, also provides further evidence of the benefits of interdisciplinary research on such conservation conflicts.<\/p>\n

Addressing human-tiger conflict using socio-ecological information on tolerance and risk\u00a0<\/em><\/a>by Matthew Struebig, Nicolas Deere<\/a> and Jeanne McKay (all University of Kent); Matthew Linkie (Wildlife Conservation Society Indonesia); Betty Millyanawati (Fauna & Flora International Indonesia); Fachruddin Mangunjayan (Universitas Nasional Indonesia); Sally Faulkner and Steven Le Comber (Queen Mary University of London); Nigel Leader-Williams (University of Cambridge); and Freya St. John (Bangor University).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A geographic profiling tool used to catch serial criminals could help reduce the casualties of human-tiger conflict, according to conservationists who collaborated on an innovative … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40284,"featured_media":3129,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6599,124,70,6600],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3014"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40284"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3014"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3016,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3014\/revisions\/3016"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}