Mobile Pastoralists know how to Coexist with Wildlife (Day 13)

Guardian herding dogs are a mobile pastoralist’s best friend. The Bacak family think that this young pup, that they have been training to protect the herd against wolf attacks, is a promising one. Living with carnivores on a daily basis have enabled mobile pastoralists to uncover methods for coexisting. Rather than taking reactive measures after incidents occur, they give emphasis to preventing attacks with adequate techniques. The traditional use of livestock guarding dogs in Turkey such as Kangal (AKA Anatolian shepherd dog) and Akbaş breeds is a good example. Specific traditional ecological knowledge regarding how to train a guardian dog, how to manage them, which breed is efficient in which condition / environment, the behavioral differences between breeds and so on, is an important source of information that can contribute actions against this conflict with context-specific and empirically-grounded recommendations.

Fragmentation or habitat loss threaten both mobile pastoralists and nature. These are also the main drivers of the decrease in the abundance of wild preys for carnivores, which may lead them to increase their foraging ranges and predation on livelihoods. These conflicts needs to be addressed in overall nature conservation policies, taking their root causes into account – such as the recovery of wild ungulate populations. It’s also crucial to generate solutions at local level that incorporate both concerns for human safety and livelihoods, and nature conservation.