Desert Ecology Research Group, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney, Camperdown, Australia.
Grimsö Wildlife Research Station, Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Riddarhyttan, Sweden.
PLoS Biol. 2018 Sep 18;16(9):e2005577. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.2005577. eCollection 2018 Sep.
Carnivore predation on livestock often leads people to retaliate. Persecution by humans has contributed strongly to global endangerment of carnivores. Preventing livestock losses would help to achieve three goals common to many human societies: preserve nature, protect animal welfare, and safeguard human livelihoods. Between 2016 and 2018, four independent reviews evaluated >40 years of research on lethal and nonlethal interventions for reducing predation on livestock. From 114 studies, we find a striking conclusion: scarce quantitative comparisons of interventions and scarce comparisons against experimental controls preclude strong inference about the effectiveness of methods. For wise investment of public resources in protecting livestock and carnivores, evidence of effectiveness should be a prerequisite to policy making or large-scale funding of any method or, at a minimum, should be measured during implementation. An appropriate evidence base is needed, and we recommend a coalition of scientists and managers be formed to establish and encourage use of consistent standards in future experimental evaluations.
肉食动物捕食牲畜往往会导致人们进行报复。人类的迫害是肉食动物在全球范围内受到威胁的主要原因。防止牲畜损失将有助于实现许多人类社会共同的三个目标：保护自然、保护动物福利和保障人类生计。在 2016 年至 2018 年期间，四项独立的评估对 40 多年来关于减少牲畜捕食的致命和非致命干预措施的研究进行了评估。从 114 项研究中，我们得出了一个惊人的结论：对干预措施的定量比较很少，对实验对照的比较也很少，这使得很难对方法的有效性进行有力推断。为了明智地投资于保护牲畜和肉食动物的公共资源，有效性证据应该是制定政策或为任何方法提供大规模资金的前提条件，或者至少应该在实施过程中进行衡量。需要有一个适当的证据基础，我们建议成立一个由科学家和管理者组成的联盟，以建立和鼓励在未来的实验评估中使用一致的标准。
