Retaliation on carnivores is driven by the proportion of livestock lost, not necessarily the frequency of conflict (Mishra 1997). Lions, like other carnivores, can cause substantial losses to human populations or households living adjacent to protected areas like Amboseli National Park. In retaliation, herders in the Amboseli region “who are mostly Maasai” resort to killing, snaring, and poisoning predators, a situation which has led to mass predator deaths in recent years (Frank et al. 2006)
The cost of livestock lost to lions and other wildlife species in the Amboseli ecosystem, Kenya