CAREER: Situated Resilience and the New Geographies of Wildlife-Livestock Interactions

这个教师早期职业发展（CAREER）奖将支持一个项目，该项目侧重于了解在不断变化的生态条件和土地管理政策时代牧场的弹性和可持续性。得到资助的研究人员将调查这些生态和政治变化对保护生物多样性和社会经济生计可持续性的驱动因素和后果。该项目将提供有价值的新型基础知识。通过组织研究来解释牧场管理的不同方式，研究者将能够评估野生动物和牲畜共享同一空间的程度以及方式。该项目将包括人类和动物的个体和群体行为，以澄清野生动物与牲畜关系的本质，因为现有的理解低估了放牧行为在野生和家养食草动物之间的作用。这项研究的结果将对世界各地的保护和发展政策产生直接影响。将产生新的知识，以帮助作出关于在何处、何时以及在何种情况下资源管理人员可能鼓励在牲畜和野生动物放牧方面采取混合利用战略的决策。这些做法有可能提高地球上旱地的整体复原力和可持续性。该项目将为学生提供教育和培训机会，通过体验式学习提高批判性思维和解决问题的能力。该项目将使参观牧场保护区的游客能够获得有关公园内外人和自然系统的更准确和相关的信息。该项目还有望提供新的信息和见解，以避免根深蒂固的支持牲畜或支持生物多样性的立场，从而降低这些立场的巨大经济和生态成本。牧场是数百万牲畜的家园，饲养着牧民，维持着大量的野生动物密度和分布。最近，由于野生动物和家畜放牧地点的变化以及放牧的物理影响，牧场保护区的恢复能力正受到威胁。季节性的变化进一步限制了旱地的恢复能力。目前关于人、野生动物和牲畜如何在牧场相互作用的理解缺乏适当的社会、政治和生态背景。因此，人们对牧场保护区内野生动物和牧民牲畜之间的相互作用了解有限。为了更好地了解这些动态，研究者将评估不同的管理制度如何影响野生动物和牲畜资源利用模式。他将确定资源模式受人类和动物行为影响的幅度和程度，并将评估野生动物和牲畜资源利用模式如何影响牧场生态。为了实现这些目标，研究者将采用混合方法，结合肯尼亚南部马拉生态系统长期研究地点的生态、社会和空间领域方法。虽然是在当地进行的，但通过该项目获得的见解将增强对更广泛地区的基本认识，包括美国的许多地区，在这些地区，个人和团体管理家养放牧动物与野生动物共享相同的栖息地。

This Faculty Early-Career Development (CAREER) award will support a project that focuses on understanding the resilience and sustainability of rangelands in an era of changing ecological conditions and land management policies. The investigator whose work will be supported will investigate the drivers and consequences of these ecological and political changes for the conservation of biodiversity and sustainability of socioeconomic livelihoods. The project will provide valuable new kinds of basic knowledge. By structuring the research to account for the different ways in rangelands are managed, the investigator will be able to assess degree to which as well as how wildlife and livestock share the same spaces. The project will embrace both human and animal individual and group behaviors to clarify the nature of wildlife-livestock relationships, because existing understandings underestimate the role of grazing actions among both wild and domestic grazers. The results of this research will have a direct bearing on conservation and development policies around the world. New knowledge will be generated to aid in decision making regarding where, when, and under which contexts resource managers might encourage mixed use strategies with respect to livestock and wildlife grazing. These practices have the potential to increase the overall resilience and sustainability of drylands around the Earth. The project will provide education and training opportunities for students to enhance critical thinking and problem solving skills through experiential learning. The project will enable tourists visiting rangeland protected areas to obtain more accurate and relevant information regarding people and natural systems in and around parks. The project also is expected to provide new information and insights regarding ways to avoid entrenched pro-livestock or pro-biodiversity positions, thereby reducing the large economic and ecological costs of these positions. Rangelands are home to millions of livestock keeping pastoralists and sustaining large densities and distributions of wildlife. More recently, the resilience of rangeland protected areas is being threatened because of changes in where both wildlife and domestic livestock can graze, and the physical effects of grazing. Changes in seasonality have further constrained the resiliency of drylands. Current understandings about how people, wildlife, and livestock interact in rangelands have been devoid of appropriate social, political, and ecological contexts. As a result, there is limited knowledge about the interactions between wildlife and pastoralists' livestock inside rangeland protected areas. In order to better understand these dynamics, the investigator will evaluate how different management regimes influences patterns of wildlife and livestock resource use. He will determine the magnitude and extent to which resource patterns are influenced by both human and animal behaviors, and he will assess how wildlife and livestock resource-utilization patterns influence the ecology of rangelands. To achieve these objectives, the investigator will employ mixed methods approaches that combine ecological, social, and spatial field methods from a long-term study site within the Mara ecosystem in southern Kenya. Although conducted in this locale, the insights developed through this project will enhance basic understanding in a much broader range of locations, including many in the United States, where individuals and groups managing domesticated grazing animals share the same habitats with wild animals.