Leveraging social networks and mobile technologies to promote human-carnivore coexistence

Funding year: 2022-2024

Carnivore populations globally are experiencing dramatic declines due to accelerating habitat loss and direct conflicts with humans. Carnivore decline has widespread consequences for ecosystem function, while human-carnivore coexistence requires balancing conflicts that can impact the social and economic well-being of human communities. This GCRT assembles a diverse team to investigate the culture of carnivore tolerance and intolerance, specifically how beliefs and experiences are transmitted through social networks. The team will focus on an important yet data-poor system with a novel high risk/reward approach – African lions and pastoralists, measuring the spread of conflict and tolerance through mobile phone data – while advancing the use of network science in conservation across 3 key human-carnivore systems globally.

Co-Principle Investigators

  • Jonathan Salerno, Assistant Professor, Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, Warner College of Natural Resources
  • Kevin Jablonski, Assistant Professor, Animal Sciences, Agricultural Sciences
  • Stewart Breck, Center for Human-Carnivore Coexistence, Warner College of Natural Resources