discussion / Human-Wildlife Conflict  / 13 November 2020

Tech, Evidence and Financial Compensation for livestock losses due to predators

Hi there,

 

I am working on Smart devices to prevent Jaguar attacks on livestock, as a collateral effect, those devices can generate early alerts and evidence to implement a financial compensation if Jaguars attack domestic animals. More info will be publish here soon: https://www.wildedge.info/bcb-and-dnna

From a human perspective I heard some stories about tricky human behaviors that prevent insurance companies to adopt this kind of compensation schemes, some of you believe that a model change is needed and I would love to hear how tech and new models can prevent this situation that causes the lost of protected species like Jaguars, Leopards, etc.

 

Cheers,

 

PS: This is the month of the Jaguar!!! Fight for them!

 




Hi Carlos,

The biggest issue with either compensation or insurance, is that the farmers who take care to protect their livestock are placed at a disadvantage compared to those who "feed" their livestock to the predators. If I can get market price for my livestock in compensation/insurance, without any marketing and transport costs, why should I protect my livestock? The opposite problem is if the compensation is much lower than the value of the livestock that are lost... why bother with compensation or insurance at all (especially if their is a lots of paperwork and a time delay)? The only way that I have seen in the literature, is if the farmers themselves are in charge of the compensation and helps to set the policy. They are the ones in the position to judge when a specific farmers has been really unlucky and deserves to be compensated for his livestock losses and when it is truly due to negligence by the farmer. They will also be in the best position to lay down the minimum protective measure that needs to be in place for a farmer to receive compensation, especially if it is their own (collective) money at stake. Compensation (and insurance) in my mind should not be for every single livestock being lost, but more specifically for those exceptional cases where a high-value animal or multiple animals are killed by predators.

Another thing to keep in mind (and I do not yet know how to use this information for compensation), is that in almost all the research I have read (and also seen in my own research), there are usually a few farmers who have extremely high livestock losses and then the vast majority who have much lower average losses. Because of this, the median is often a better measure of the "average" livestock losses to predation than the mean.

HTH

Chavoux

Chavoux....

BRILLIANT! 

 

Regarding collaring, I am developing collars for livestock, not for Jaguars. BCB detects Jaguars using Smart Cameras (smart fences are on the plans as well) and that information is inside livestock collars, so you can get early alerts if domestic animals are in dangerous zones (people here release their animals for feeding, etc). If no Smart cameras are present, you can tag the areas manually if you have the evidence from camera trapping or inhabitants (I developed simple panic buttons as a way to engage local inhabitants). I was about to test all this however the pandemic imposed trip restrictions since the early days of March!

That's regarding tech. Your views on the human side are really interesting, I will talk about this soon with Conicet Researchers, I guess more synchronization with NGOs are needed, there are a lot of political things in the middle however, this sounds quite good to me: "predator friendly meat" brand, if you want, please drop me an email at [email protected] so I can get yours or subscribe to the BCB's site (The site is to try to encourage other people to use tech and talk about the Jaguar situation here, it is not for fundraising)

 

There are some simple things that can be done to make a huge difference, tech is only an enabler in my opinion. I collected a few tips also here (not mine, I'm a tech guy but I liked the drawings, they were made with love for Jaguars!)

 

www.wildedge.info/jaguarcampaigni

Warm regards Chavoux! I hope other people will read your words as well!

Hello Carlos and Chavoux, 

Interesting exchange, thank you! Working on HWC, boh locally on Human-Jaguar coexistence in French Guyana and globally through the ENCOSH platform, it would great to learn more from your initiatives and  experiences!

An opportunity to do so is to join us and contribute to the ENCOSH platform: https://encosh.org/en/

It is a recent international collaborative platform to promote the exchange of knowledge, experiences and ideas among all stakeholders worldwide to better tackling Human-Wildlife coexistence issues. A forum will be very soon included also. 

Your contribution would be meaningful by submitting some of your initiatives to this community. Besides, you could find and make comments on a list of almost 100 extant initiatives used to enhance Human-Wildlife interactions worldwide. 

I remain available if you need further information or guidance. 

All the best 
Tommy Gaillard

This is an awesome thread and very enlightening. Thank you! I started reading this as Oregon recently had an entire pack of wolves poisoned, and I wanted to understand the viewpoints that go into these conversations. Thank you!