FAUNA AND FLORA INTERNATIONAL TEAMS UP WITH AUA ACOPIAN CENTER TO STUDY HUMAN-WILDLIFE CONFLICT IN ARMENIA
States News Service
September 4, 2013 Wednesday
WASHINGTON, DC
The following information was released by Fauna & Flora International
(FFI):
The abundance of livestock and other foodstuff, coupled with proximity
to wildlife habitats makes villages vulnerable to animals like wolves
and bears. With very few exceptions, the threat is not directly
against people but against their economic assets. Wolves kill sheep,
cows and fowl, while bears damage fruit trees, destroy bee hives and
deplete honey supplies.
Over time these types of interactions can take a heavy economic toll
on villages that, often, are already struggling to survive on meagre
resources. It is no surprise, then, that the first response of the
farmers is to resort to killing wolves or bears, dealing a significant
blow to an already tattered ecosystem.
Fauna and Flora International (FFI) has recently partnered with the
American University of Armenia Acopian Center for the Environment (AUA
Acopian Center) to launch a baseline study that will help scientists
better understand conflicts between people and wildlife in Armenia
and develop new approaches for mitigating them.
The AUA Acopian Center researchers, all of whom are AUA students,
will study nine rural communities across Armenia, as well as the
habitat conditions of the wildlife. “It’s important to recognise
that there is no single solution across all communities in addressing
this problem,” says Dr Karen Aghababyan, chief scientist of the AUA
Acopian Center and the manager of the project. “Each rural community
has its own set of unique conditions that will impact the nature of
the conflict and the availability of favourable solutions,” he says.
FFI has been involved in human-wildlife conflict mitigation projects
for many years, working extensively in Africa, Southeast Asia,
Eastern Europe and most recently in the Republic of Georgia.
In Georgia, FFI worked very closely with the Tusheti people
(traditional sheep farmers who move their flocks between summer and
winter pastures) and has seen a marked improvement in the attitudes
of livestock farmers towards wolves, thanks to a programme of direct
intervention, awareness raising and market-based innovation. Much
is yet to be done there, and FFI hopes, along with the Georgian NGO
NACRES, to expand the programme to other parts of the country over
the coming years.
Grey wolves are most commonly found in packs, usually numbering around
five to 12 related individuals. Credit: Gareth Goldthorpe/FFI.
“Improving access to alternative markets is increasingly becoming a
favoured approach to mitigating the negative impacts of human-wildlife
conflict,” explains Gareth Goldthorpe, FFI’s technical coordinator
for the Caucasus. “For the people involved, conflict with wildlife
is primarily an economic issue; whether it is wild boar eating crops
or wolves attacking sheep, there is a loss of earnings for the farmers.
“However, in many cases there are other external factors that may
be limiting access to markets and therefore incomes. Our approach
is to take the whole system into account and explore ways that such
access can be improved. By taking the pressure off the farmers in
this respect, they are able to better tolerate reasonable losses from,
in this case, large carnivores.”
FFI will draw on its extensive experience, both regional and
international, to help the AUA Acopian Center develop and implement
a rigorous and effective programme of work that will unravel the
complexities of the system: from wildlife to farmer, and from market
to consumer.
The Armenian team has begun conducting pilot interviews with
community members. Credit: Levon Demirchyan/AUA Acopian Center for
the Environment.
“For humans it is very easy to demonize other animals when they attack
our interests. This is a morally blind and an ecologically dangerous
tendency on our part. Wolves and bears often approach human communities
for food because their habitats and food supplies have been destroyed,
usually by humans. And the humans that do the destroying are often
not the villagers but instead economic interests in logging, mining,
agriculture, or urban sprawl,” says Alen Amirkhanian, Director of
the AUA Acopian Center for the Environment.
“So, it’s incumbent on us to figure out solutions both at the local and
at the national level,” suggests Amirkhanian. At later, more advanced
stages of the study Amirkhanian will look to engage relevant regional
and national authorities.
To begin the process, the FFI team organised a kick-off meeting
in Tbilisi, Georgia, where the gaps in knowledge, and the main
information sources were identified. Following on from this, the
Armenian team has developed a set of question sheets that will form
the basis of interviews with targeted groups and individuals, and
has begun piloting these in villages.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress