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Closer to the people: snow leopard hunting for prey in the Himalayas
Photo: Oriol Alamany / Nature Picture Library / IMAGO
The snow leopards follow the blue sheep.
The goat species, which is native to the Himalayas, increasingly seeks proximity to human settlements and eats plants from the fields since its natural habitat in the high mountains is shrinking due to rising temperatures and increased snowmelt.
But the blue sheep, also called Bharal, are followed by snow leopards looking for prey down the valley.
Wherever they are there, they kill one or the other livestock.
Farmers in Nepal lose up to half of their income to the wild predators - and now they go hunting for leopards themselves.
As a result, most of the deaths of this species, which is already threatened, are attributed to such revenge drives.
Researchers analyzed 49 such examples of increasing conflicts between humans and wild animals for a study published in the journal »Nature«.
The overview study collects case studies from the past three decades from all continents except Antarctica and all oceans.
Sometimes droughts are the cause of changed behavior from mosquitoes to elephants, sometimes increasing rain, sometimes forest fires, sometimes it's rising air or water temperatures.
The climate crisis was consistently identified as the root of the problem.
According to the study, a further increase in such conflicts is to be expected.
"We were surprised that it was so global," the Guardian quoted University of Washington biologist Briana Abrahms, the lead author of the study.
It has not yet been recognized to what extent the changed climate is causing humans and animals to increasingly get in each other's way.
This causes direct damage to both of them: in almost half of the cases cited, the conflicts resulted in increasing injuries or deaths of animals, a similar number on the human side.
There are also problems with the loss of livelihoods – even in temperate latitudes.
For example, barnacle geese, attracted by global warming, are competing for the grass of their pastures with Scottish sheep.
According to the paper, such conflicts are already a major cause of the decline in large mammal species.
Their threatened extinction could in turn throw other ecosystems out of balance.
The study does not predict where and how new conflicts are to be expected – but it does name factors that increase the risk.
Early warning systems and people being more aware of animal behavior could help minimize the damage.
For example, puddles created artificially in their forests could prevent Central American tapirs from invading the villages in the dry season.
California created a management system to protect the economically important crab fishery and humpback whales alike.
The marine mammals, having switched from krill to anchovies as their main diet due to warmer water temperatures, are now more likely to be in the same place at the same time as the fishing fleets and get caught in their nets.
In the meantime, however, environmental conditions such as algae blooms are recorded in real time and the fishing permit is then controlled.
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