Human population increase, intensified land use and attitudes
to wildlife, as well as habitat losses, hunting and pollution have devastated
the global biodiversity, even in ecological “hotspots” such as Central America.
Of all wild mammal species, half have declining populations
and one quarter is threatened with extinction. Large carnivores are particularly
affected, due to low population densities, human fear and attitudes, physical conflict, their
mobility and requirement of large tracts of land and wide ranging prey species,
and consequent difficulties of conservation.
Consequently, the creation of reserves may be fruitless, due
to land use conflicts with other pressing requirements, such as urbanization
and agriculture, and the difficulty of restricting large carnivores to land
inside the reserves.
