Is lethal control of predators an effective strategy against livestock losses? Ceres Hunting Club: 1979 to 1987 

On Wednesday at 13h00, Dr Beatrice Conradie, will present a seminar: Is lethal control of predators an effective strategy against livestock losses? Ceres Hunting Club, 1979 to 1987. This is a Zoology Department seminar.

Abstract: Farmers the world over get emotional about predators. In South Africa an absolute war erupted around CapeNature's recent restriction of the lethal control options available to farmers. The farmers' position is that they cannot afford to stop hunting predators, while CapeNature has indicated that indiscriminate killing must be stopped for predator populations to have any chance of stabilising. In the face of these widely diverging opinions we have surprisingly little hard evidence of the effect of predator hunting on subsequent livestock losses in South Africa. This paper uses a 152-farm nine-year panel of predator hunting and livestock loss data to explore whether lethal control is effective in reducing farm-level livestock losses. Results show a positive relationship between lethal control and subsequent livestock losses which provides some support for the CapeNature position.

Beatrice Conradie is Director of the Sustainable Societies Unit in the Centre for Social Science Research, School of Economics, UCT. Beatrice has an undergraduate degree in Agriculture and an honours degree in Agricultural Economics from Stellenbosch University. Her masters, also from Stellenbosch, was on the potential for land reform in the apple industry. Her PhD from Colorado State University was on efficient water allocation in the Fish-Sundays irrigation scheme of the Eastern Cape.

The seminar is this coming Wednesday, 10 October, in the Museum on the 3rd floor of the Department of Zoology, from 13h00 to 14h00. If you are coming from off-campus, remember that it is term time, and you need to allow plenty of time to find parking!

Les Underhill
2012-10-08

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