Human activities are the main current driver of global change. From hunter-gatherers through to Neolithic societies–and particularly in contemporary industrialised countries–humans have (voluntarily or involuntarily) provided other animals with food, often with a high spatio-temporal predictability. Nowadays, as much as 30–40% of all food produced in Earth is wasted. We argue here that predictable anthropogenic food subsidies (PAFS) provided historically by humans to animals has shaped many communities and ecosystems as we see them nowadays. PAFS improve individual fitness triggering population increases of opportunistic species, which may affect communities, food webs and ecosystems by altering processes such as competition, predator–prey interactions and nutrient transfer between biotopes and ecosystems. We also show that PAFS decrease temporal population variability, increase resilience of opportunistic species and reduce community diversity. Recent environmental policies, such as the regulation of dumps or the ban of fishing discards, constitute natural experiments that should improve our understanding of the role of food supply in a range of ecological and evolutionary processes at the ecosystem level. Comparison of subsidised and non-subsidised ecosystems can help predict changes in diversity and the related ecosystem services that have suffered the impact of other global change agents.

/pdf/ecological-and-evolutionary-implications-of-food-subsidies-1k5aqzo1bv.pdf

Ecological and evolutionary implications of food subsidies from humans

Since the origin of early Homo species during the Late Pliocene, interactions of humans with scavenging birds and mammals have changed in form through shifting ecological scenarios. How humans procured meat during the Quaternary Period changed from confrontational scavenging to hunting; shepherding of wild animals; and, eventually, intensive husbandry of domesticated animals. As humans evolved from carcass consumers to carcass providers, the overall relationship between humans and scavengers shifted from competition to facilitation. These changing interactions have translated into shifting provisioning (by signaling carcass location), regulating (e.g., by removing animal debris and controlling infectious diseases), and cultural ecosystem services (e.g., by favoring human language and social cooperation skills or, more recently, by enhancing ecotourism) provided by scavenging vertebrates. The continued survival of vultures and large mammalian scavengers alongside humans is now severely in jeopardy, threatening the loss of the numerous ecosystem services from which contemporary and future humans could benefit.

/pdf/humans-and-scavengers-the-evolution-of-interactions-and-30nzyahog8.pdf

Humans and Scavengers: The Evolution of Interactions and Ecosystem Services

Birds of prey have been, in comparison to other avian groups, an uncommon study model, mainly due to the limitations imposed by their conservative life strategy (low population density and turnover). Nonetheless, they have attracted a strong interest from the point of view of conservation biology because many populations have been close to extinction and because of their recognised role in ecosystems as top predators and scavengers and as flagship species. Today, after more than a century of persecution, and with the exception of some vultures still very much affected by illegal poisoning, many populations of birds of prey have experienced significant recoveries in many regions of Spain and the European Mediterranean. These changes pose new challenges when addressing the conservation of raptors in the coming decades. On this basis, and from a preferentially Mediterranean perspective, we have focused our attention on the need of describing and quantifying the role of these birds as providers of both regulating (rodent pest control and removal of livestock carcasses) and cultural ecosystem services. Moreover, we revisited persisting conflicts with human interests (predation of game species) and call attention to the emergence of new conflicts with a strong social and media component such as the predation on live cattle by vultures. Also, the rampant humanization of the environment determines the need for new solutions to the growing, yet scarcely explored, problem of accidents in new infrastructures such as mortality in wind farms. Finally, we explored in depth the ecological response of birds of prey to large-scale habitat changes such as urbanisation and abandonment of marginal lands that are also expected to increase in the near future. We urgently need more scientific knowledge to provide adequate responses to the challenge of keeping healthy populations of avian predators and scavengers in a rapidly changing world.

/pdf/roles-of-raptors-in-a-changing-world-from-flagships-to-48limkx83l.pdf

Roles of Raptors in a Changing World: From Flagships to Providers of Key Ecosystem Services

Rewilding European Landscapes

THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON (ZSL), a charity founded in 1826, is a worldrenowned centre of excellence for conservation science and applied conservation. ZSL’s mission is to promote and achieve the worldwide conservation of animals and their habitats. This is realised by carry ing out fi eld conservation and research in over 50 countries across the globe and through education and awareness at our two zoos, ZSL London Zoo and ZSL Whipsnade Zoo, inspiring people to take conservation action. WWW.ZSL.ORG

Wildlife comeback in Europe: the recovery of selected mammal and bird species

Human–wildlife conflict is emerging as an important topic in conservation. Carnivores and birds of prey are responsible for most conflicts with livestock and game but since the mid 1990s a new conflict is emerging in south-west Europe: the presumed killing of livestock by griffon vultures Gyps fulvus. Lack of scientific data and magnification of the problem by the media are increasing alarm amongst the public, and political pressures to implement management decisions have not been based on scientific evidence. We compiled information on 1,793 complaints about attacks by griffon vultures on livestock, lodged with Spanish authorities from 1996 to 2010. Spain is home to the majority (95%) of griffon vultures and other scavengers in the European Union. Most of the cases occurred in areas of high livestock density, affected principally sheep (49%) and cows (31%), and were associated with spring birthing times (April–June). On average 69% of the complaints made annually were rejected because of a lack of evidence about whether the animal was alive before being eaten. The total economic cost of compensation was EUR 278,590 from 2004 to 2010. We discuss possible ways to mitigate this emerging human–wildlife conflict. These need to include the participation of livestock farmers, authorities, scientists and conservation groups.

/pdf/vultures-vs-livestock-conservation-relationships-in-an-4yerio3yoy.pdf

Vultures vs livestock: conservation relationships in an emerging conflict between humans and wildlife

As far as we can tell, given the damage to the Salvator Mundi, the garments behind the sphere are indeed undistorted (Nature 479, 174–175; 2011). But it is wrong to assume that Leonardo da Vinci painted all of the optical phenomena he knew about. No painters at the time depicted such things as the blur of fast-moving objects or the refraction of limbs in water, because that would have been bad pictorial etiquette. The first blurring in a painting is not seen until more than 100 years later, in the work of Diego Velásquez. Leonardo specifically said that such extreme effects are for the speculatori (natural philosophers), not the painters. To show the full effects of the sphere on the drapery behind would have been grotesque in a functioning devotional image. Contrary to what has become a common belief, Leonardo did not aspire to represent his subjects as if he were a scientist recording natural phenomena. Rather, he was remaking nature synthetically in the functional context of specific paintings (M. Kemp Leonardo revised edition, Oxford University Press; 2011). The birefringence is a side issue and not important for the attribution. The conservator of the picture cannot tell whether the double heel of Christ's hand is deliberate, a result of damage or a pentimento. Martin Kemp suggests that Leonardo da Vinci's knowledge of optics and minerals is evident in the representation of the orb in the Salvator Mundi painting But I question his interpretation that the double contour of the heel of the hand holding the orb depicts the birefringence (double refraction) arising in a calcite orb. The painting shows no optical distortion in the folds of the clothes, for example, as would be expected from refraction by an orb of calcite, quartz or glass, or even a water-filled glass vessel. In reality, an inverted and nonlinearly reduced image of most of the chest, arm and shoulder would appear within the orb's outline; the heel of the hand would appear in the top half of this image. An additional image (nonlinearly enlarged and upright) would open up within the inverted first image if part of the hand or cloth were near the central back surface of the orb. Such refractive effects would be more obvious than any due to birefringence in calcite. The double contour of the hand continues slightly outside the orb, hence it could be due to a previous …

/pdf/scavenger-turned-predator-european-vultures-altered-9pwg6ynlzp.pdf

Scavenger turned predator: European vultures' altered behaviour

Buitres, muladares y legislación sanitaria: perspectivas de un conflicto y sus consecuencias desde la biología de la conservación

Human-wildlife conflict is emerging as an important topic in conservation. Carnivores and birds of prey are responsible for most conflicts with livestock and game but since the mid 1990s a new conflict is emerging in south-west Europe: the presumed killing of livestock by griffon vultures Gyps fulvus. Lack of scientific data and magnification of the problem by the media are increasing alarm amongst the public, and political pressures to implement management decisions have not been based on scientific evidence. We compiled information on 1,793 complaints about attacks by griffon vultures on livestock, lodged with Spanish authorities from 1996 to 2010. Spain is home to the majority (95%) of griffon vultures and other scavengers in the European Union. Most of the cases occurred in areas of high livestock density, affected principallysheep (49%)andcows(31%),andwereassociated with spring birthing times (April-June). On average 69 %o f the complaints made annually were rejected because of a lack of evidence about whether the animal was alive before being eaten. The total economic cost of compensation was EUR 278,590 from2004 to 2010. We discuss possible waysto mitigate this emerging human-wildlife conflict. These need to include the participation of livestock farmers, authorities, scientists and conservation groups.

Vultures vs livestock: conservation relationships in an emerging conflict between humans and wildlife A NTONI M ARGALIDA ,D AVID C AMPIÓN and J OSÉ A. D ONÁZAR

In Spain, over the last 30 years, the Eurasian griffon vulture Gyps fulvus population has grown exponentially. However, over the last few years, the change in the management and handling of domestic livestock and the application of a very strict public health regulation following the appearance of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) at the end of the 1990s, have drastically reduced the availability of trophic resources in the field. This has led to a conflict of unknown dimensions: the attribution of attacks on domestic livestock to griffon vultures. This chapter provides a preliminary assessment of this phenomenon in two different scenarios in northern Spain (Navarra and Catalonia), with regards the population density of the griffon vultures and the management of domestic livestock. Preliminary results suggest that most of these interactions take place during the spring (AprilJune), in exploitations of extensively-reared livestock where surveillance of the livestock is minimal or non-existent, and that they are associated with birthing times, generally affecting young animals and mothers simultaneously (cows and horses in the case of Catalonia and sheep in Navarra). The temporal pattern in these zones is not the same. Whilst in Catalonia (and in other areas such as Aragón, the Basque Country and the French Pyrenees), the number of complaints lodged increased significantly in 2007, in Navarra this pattern has presented an irregular trend since 1996. The results suggest that the conflict seems to have a social and media basis rather than a biological one. In the future, it will be necessary to tackle this problem from a broader spatial perspective in order to evaluate the problems and the real dimensions of this emerging phenomenon more objectively. Possible solutions should be agreed on by all stakeholders involved after sound information, allowing technical and scientific approaches to be adopted to solve the problem, has been obtained. In this regard, livestock farmers, authorities, scientists and conservation groups should all participate in order to design and implement the future strategy for managing carcasses and conserving vultures.

/pdf/interacciones-agresivas-entre-buitres-leonados-gyps-fulvus-y-18ekvyl1lb.pdf

David Campión

Papers

Vultures vs livestock: conservation relationships in an emerging conflict between humans and wildlife

Scavenger turned predator: European vultures' altered behaviour

Buitres, muladares y legislación sanitaria: perspectivas de un conflicto y sus consecuencias desde la biología de la conservación

Vultures vs livestock: conservation relationships in an emerging conflict between humans and wildlife A NTONI M ARGALIDA ,D AVID C AMPIÓN and J OSÉ A. D ONÁZAR

Interacciones agresivas entre buitres leonados "Gyps fulvus" y ganado: aspectos ecológicos y económicos de un conflicto emergente