Our collaboration with Professor Briana Abrahms’ group at the University of Washington is uncovering new links between climate change, carnivore behavior, and human-wildlife coexistence. This research integrates novel bio-logging technologies, observation, big data analytics, and social surveys to 1) investigate how African wild dogs and lions respond to climatic variation and extreme events and 2) to assess the impacts of these responses on individual fitness, intra-guild competition, and human-carnivore conflict.

Our paper in Nature Climate Change shows that in southern Africa, and around the world, extreme climate events like droughts exacerbate human-carnivore conflict. This novel connection points to the need to liaise with government to integrate these findings into Botswana’s drought vulnerability assessments and human-wildlife conflict. Our data also shows that African wild dogs are breeding progressively later each year as the climate changes, representing important documentation of a long-term climate-driven behavioral shift for an endangered large carnivore species (see our paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). This important finding was only possible due to the long-term African wild dog population monitoring records at BPC since 1990.

Understanding large predator behaviour and space use in a changing world-:

Postdoc Kasim Rafiq uses a combination of novel conservation technologies, fieldwork, and industry collaborations to understand how the behaviors of large African predators change with climate conditions, such as increasing temperatures. By providing insight into how and why species are affected by climate changes, Kasim’s research aims to improve the future of conservation initiatives by informing on potential conflicts and the difficulties predators face

in adapting to new environments.