Spatial characterization of human-puma conflicts in social-ecological land systems of Argentina

Abstract

Human-carnivore conflicts arise when encounters between humans and carnivores lead to negative consequences for one or both parties. They are often complex and globally widespread, varying across social-ecological systems. In Argentina, conflicts with pumas are prevalent and can be categorized into two main types: conflicts arising from livestock depredation and trophy hunting. The former is driven by livestock depredation, which in turn generates negative attitudes and behaviors towards these carnivores and may result in retaliatory killings of the pumas. The latter is motivated by leisure or sports aspects. However, the understanding of how different social-ecological variables influence these conflicts on a broader scale is very scarce, and scientific research addressing this is lacking. This study focused on the aforementioned types of human-puma conflicts and characterized and explored the social- ecological attributes of them in different social-ecological land systems (SELS) of Argentina. Using online-news articles and scientific literature from 2017 until 2022, I identified 90 conflict locations (51 livestock depredation and 39 trophy hunting). I analyzed the influence of five spatial social-environmental variables (such as: distance to protected areas; unpaved roads; or small-livestock density) on the occurrence of each conflict type through a multinomial logarithmic model. My findings reveal that both conflicts occurred predominantly in the SELS types “low-diversity cold and temperate grassy rangeland”, and “urbanized large scale agricultural plains”, with trophy hunting dominating in the latter. While the modelled variables number of settlements and small-livestock density were influential for both conflict types, a shorter distance to protected areas characterized the occurrence of livestock depredation conflicts, while the presence of unpaved roads characterized the occurrence of trophy hunting. Overall, the location and identification of the social-ecological variables that characterize human-puma conflict types, at a regional scale, can inform efforts towards an early detection of conflicts, and thus contribute to the sustainable management of complex regions.

Please note that this MSc thesis was published as a peer-review research article: Himmelsbach, Nanni, Ypa, Piquer-Rodríguez (2025). Spatial characterization of human-puma interactions in social-ecological land systems of Argentina, Global Ecology and Conservation, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2025.e03953.