Wildlife impacts and changing climate pose compounding threats to human food security

Jonathan Salerno; Forrest R Stevens; Andrea E Gaughan; Tom Hilton; Karen Bailey; Timothy Bowles; Lin Cassidy; Patricia Mupeta-Muyamwa; Duan Biggs; Narcisa Pricope; Alfons Wahabe Mosimane; Luwaya Maseka Henry; Michael Drake; Ariel Weaver; Selma Kosmas; Kyle Woodward; Nicholas Kolarik; Joel Hartter

doi:10.1016/j.cub.2021.08.074

Wildlife impacts and changing climate pose compounding threats to human food security

Curr Biol. 2021 Nov 22;31(22):5077-5085.e6. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.08.074. Epub 2021 Sep 24.

Authors

Jonathan Salerno¹, Forrest R Stevens², Andrea E Gaughan², Tom Hilton³, Karen Bailey⁴, Timothy Bowles⁵, Lin Cassidy⁶, Patricia Mupeta-Muyamwa⁷, Duan Biggs⁸, Narcisa Pricope⁹, Alfons Wahabe Mosimane¹⁰, Luwaya Maseka Henry¹¹, Michael Drake⁴, Ariel Weaver², Selma Kosmas¹², Kyle Woodward⁹, Nicholas Kolarik², Joel Hartter⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1480, USA. Electronic address: jonathan.salerno@colostate.edu.
² Department of Geographic and Environmental Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292, USA.
³ Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1480, USA.
⁴ Environmental Studies Program, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80303, USA.
⁵ Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
⁶ Okavango Research Institute, University of Botswana, Maun, Botswana.
⁷ The Nature Conservancy South Africa, Cape Town, South Africa.
⁸ School of Earth and Sustainability, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA; Resilient Conservation, Centre for Planetary Health and Food Security, School of Environment and Science, Griffith University, Nathan, QLD 4111, Australia; Department of Conservation Ecology and Entomology, Stellenbosch University, Matieland 7602, South Africa; Centre for Complex Systems in Transition, School of Public Leadership, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch 7600, South Africa.
⁹ Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington, NC 28403, USA.
¹⁰ Multi-Disciplinary Research Centre, University of Namibia, Neudamm Campus, Windhoek, Namibia.
¹¹ Department of National Parks and Wildlife, Chilanga, Lusaka, Zambia.
¹² Department of Wildlife Management and Ecotourism, Katima Mulilo Campus, University of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia.

PMID: 34562383
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.08.074

Abstract

High-level policy debates surrounding elephant management often dominate global conservation headlines, yet realities for people living with wildlife are not adequately incorporated into policymaking or evident in related discourse.¹^,² Human health and livelihoods can be severely impacted by wildlife and indirectly by policy outcomes.³ In landscapes where growing human and elephant (Loxodonta spp. and Elephas maximus) populations compete over limited resources, human-elephant conflict causes crop loss, human injury and death, and retaliatory killing of wildlife.^4-6 Across Africa, these problems may be increasingly compounded by climate change, which intensifies resource competition and food insecurity.^6-9 Here, we examine how human-wildlife impacts interact with climate change and household food insecurity across the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, the world's largest terrestrial transboundary conservation area, spanning five African nations. We use hierarchical Bayesian statistical models to analyze multi-country household data together with longitudinal satellite-based climate measures relevant to rainfed agriculture. We find that crop depredation by wildlife, primarily elephants, impacts 58% of sampled households annually and is associated with significant increases in food insecurity. These wildlife impacts compound effects of changing climate on food insecurity, most notably observed as a 5-day shortening of the rainy season per 10 years across the data record (1981-2018). To advance sustainability goals, global conservation policy must better integrate empirical evidence on the challenges of human-wildlife coexistence into longer term strategies at transboundary scales, specifically in the context of climate change.³^,^9-11.

Keywords: African savanna elephants; Loxodonta africana; climate change; food security; human-wildlife coexistence; human-wildlife conflict; sustainable development goals.

Publication types

Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

Animals
Animals, Wild*
Bayes Theorem
Climate Change
Conservation of Natural Resources
Elephants*
Humans