Abstract:
Throughout their range, wild felids in the Americas prey on livestock and
this sometimes leads to retaliatory killing. Recently, conservation and
research programs focused on such conflicts have recommended mitigation
and prevention measures to producers, but these programs sometimes lack
guidelines to direct implementation. We developed an index of risk of felid
predation on cattle based on data from 52 ranches in Northwest Costa Rica.
We evaluated the following as potential indicators of risk: climate, proximity
to protected areas, distance to riparian forest, and wildlife occurrence as
landscape factors, and cattle management efforts, and average livestock
weight as anthropogenic factors. As a result, the index was defined as a
hierarchical classification of these variables that provides a planning tool
to identify and address the vulnerability of livestock at cattle ranches to
felid predation events.
