Urban dog densities reveal environmental inequities in Santiago, Chile.

Dogs can negatively affect the wellbeing of people and nature, but if this changes along a socioeconomic gradient, then social inequity might be at fault. Here, we identify environmental injustice at the city scale by modeling differences in the density of urban dog populations according to varying levels of socioeconomic development across municipalities of Chile's capital, Santiago. Our analysis demonstrates a strong relation between dog density and social inequity, specifically because dog density increases along with poverty, but decreases in municipalities with higher municipal income. We offer specific proposals to ameliorate and reverse this inequity. These results expose another aspect of the impacts people and nature are subjected to by dogs, adding a new social lens to address the dog problem worldwide.

Reconciling farming and wild nature: Integrating human-wildlife coexistence into the land-sharing and land-sparing framework.

Land has traditionally been spared to protect biodiversity; however, this approach has not succeeded by itself and requires a complementary strategy in human-dominated landscapes: land-sharing. Human-wildlife conflicts are rampant in a land-sharing context where wildlife co-occur with crops or livestock, but whose resulting interactions adversely affect the wellbeing of land owners, ultimately impeding coexistence. Therefore, true land-sharing only works if coexistence is also considered an end goal. We reviewed the literature on land-sharing and found that conflicts have not yet found their way into the land-sharing/sparing framework, with wildlife and humans co-occurring without coexisting in a dynamic process. To successfully implement a land-sharing approach, we must first acknowledge our failure to integrate the body of work on human-wildlife conflicts into the framework and work to implement multidisciplinary approaches from the ecological, economic, and sociological sciences to overcome and prevent conflicts. We suggest the use of Conflict Transformation by means of the Levels of Conflict Model to perceive both visible and deep-rooted causes of conflicts as opportunities to create problem-solving dynamics in affected socio-ecological landscapes. Reconciling farming and nature is possible by aiming for a transition to landscapes that truly share space by virtue of coexistence.

Integration of land-sharing and land-sparing conservation strategies through regional networking: the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor as a lifeline for carnivores in El Salvador.

Nations with little remaining natural habitat and small extent are challenged when trying to achieve biodiversity targets. We show that the Central American nation of El Salvador cannot viably sustain populations of 87 % of its extant carnivores, especially in the case of large-bodied species with low population densities. Current land-sparing strategies will not suffice; therefore we propose that land-sharing strategies be implemented in tandem with protected areas to expand current conservation efforts via new regional networks. In Central America such a network can be established by linking international protected area systems in a way that implements the existing vision for the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor. Specifically, we propose a re-envisioning of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor in which land-sharing practices are adopted throughout the agricultural matrix while ensuring formal protection of the remaining natural habitat. Such an integration of land-sparing and land-sharing could result in the creation of an effective network of protected areas, thereby increasing the probability of safeguarding species with populations that overlap national borders.