Two new UC Davis studies should help efforts to protect both human livelihoods and wild carnivores' lives in African ranching communities.

The studies were conducted in northern Kenya by UC Davis conservation biologist Rosie Woodroffe, who has studied wildlife populations in eastern Africa, England and California for 15 years. Woodroffe notes in the new studies that she had "extraordinary" cooperation from African families raising cattle, sheep and goats, and much of the data collection was done by community members.

One study tracked the movements of African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus), which are endangered. The dogs' normal prey is antelope, but in the study area they sometimes kill goats, leading farmers to kill them. Woodroffe and her co-authors, researchers at the Samburu-Laikipia Wild Dog Project of the Mpala Research Centre in Kenya, determined that wild dogs attacked livestock least often in areas where two factors were at work: First, there were sufficient numbers of wild prey animals; second, farmers practiced traditional herding methods of staying in close contact with their animals at all times and secured them at night in thornbush corrals (called bomas).

The other study tracked African lions (Panthera leo) and was co-authored by carnivore expert Laurence Frank of UC Berkeley. It, too, found marked benefits from traditional herding practices. On lands where thorn bomas were used, lions were killed for attacking livestock one-third as often as they were on a ranch using wire bomas. (Thorn bomas had become a problem on the ranch because they led to parasite infestations and tangles in sheep's wool. When the ranch manager began using more secure bomas, the number of lions killed for predation declined.)

Woodroffe and Frank dedicated the lion research paper to two lion trackers killed in a plane crash during the study. It was published in the February issue of the scientific journal Animal Conservation and is available online at http://journals.cambridge.org. The wild-dog study will be published in the July 2005 issue of the journal Biological Conservation and is available online at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00063207.

The research was funded by the Wildlife Conservation Society and many other organizations.

In August, a new book co-written by Woodroffe, titled "People and Wildlife: Conflict or Coexistence?" will be published by Cambridge University Press. It was written for conservation biologists, wildlife managers, and upper-division and graduate students.