The productive, ecological, and perception problem of the “unacceptable” livestock losses due to scavenger birds

Abstract

Very often, unsustainable production systems consider wildlife species affecting productivity harmful, malicious, or pests enhancing hostile attitudes towards them. Regrettably, in many cases, these attitudes obey to perceptions based on the lack of proper information and scientific evidence. We have recently shown that the existing conflict between obligate/facultative scavenger birds and humans in Patagonian farms is not what farmers mostly perceive, as livestock losses due to scavengers are low (Ballejo et al., 2020). The ca. 4% of newborn losses we found represent 0.1% of sheep stock in the studied farms. Moreover, scavenger birds did not affect any other age-category than newborn lambs. In our article, we also proposed solutions to mitigate this conflict (Ballejo et al., 2020). Swan et al. (2020) suggest that those losses can be “unacceptable” for farmers, that estimations could be conservative, and that scavengers could be perceived as “cruel”. Here, we argue that those comments lack at least four key important aspects: 1) knowledge about livestock production in extensive systems, 2) scientific support, 3) proper data interpretation, and 4) comprehensive ecological evaluation.