Where are conflict- and coexistence-prone areas for pumas and humans in the Argentine Dry Chaco?
Understanding large carnivores’ interactions with humans is crucial for their conservation outside PAs. Through an integrated approach combining habitat use, human behaviour and landscape structure we identified & mapped “human-puma coexistence landscapes” in the Argentine Dry Chaco.
Our findings show that to sustain viable puma populations while minimizing local conflicts in the region we need to: (1) protect safe habitat and movement areas, (2) mitigate livestock predation in risky areas, and (3) restore connectivity in severed and matrix areas.
More generally, we show how integrating habitat and conflict risk models can reveal opportunities and challenges for human-carnivore coexistence in shared landscapes, and provide a conceptual framework that can be applied in other regions and for other conflict-prone species.