Christine Wilkinson is a conservation scientist specializing in carnivore and urban ecologies. They received their PhD at UC Berkeley and obtained 
funding for their dissertation research through Rocca fellowships offered by the Center for African Studies at Berkeley. In 2016 they received the pre-dissertation Rocca fellowship, which helped begin preliminary research at wildlife dispersal areas in various locations within Kenya and Tanzania. Their goal was to find ways to mitigate human-wildlife conflicts with “community-based solutions” in the context of human-altered landscapes in East Africa. A shift from pastoralism to agriculture in East Africa has led to the increased subdivision and development of wildlife dispersal lands and migratory corridors; such dispersal lands that surround protected national parks are integral for supporting the wildlife, which tends to roam mostly on the dispersal lands rather than in the parks. Despite government and NGO efforts, community members may not always feel as if the government is prioritizing their needs in relation to human-wildlife conflicts. “If a person kills a lion, the government will be here in a couple of days to arrest that person, but if a lion kills a person, the government may never come and show any sort of acknowledgment or provide compensation,” Wilkinson recalls hearing from a local community member, which motivated them to help people facing these challenges.
Wilkinson’s preliminary research plans focused on spotted hyenas, who are often misunderstood but are implicated in many livestock depredations in the region connecting Lake Nakuru National Park in Kenya and the nearby Mau Forest and Lake Elmenteita.
“The reason for why I decided to work in Nakuru county was because, for one, the government of Kenya asked if I could do work there in particular, because there’s a whole Rift Valley ecosystem in that area where very few researchers are conducting work on human-wildlife interactions or carnivore movement in this developing place. Everyone was more focused on the more famous areas like the Maasai Mara National Reserve and other areas of southern Kenya.”
Wilkinson spoke with the lead carnivore director of the country at the time and asked what the country wanted them to do, given their ability to work in a broad diversity 
of landscapes. An additional complication of the Nakuru region that Wilkinson investigated pertains to the use of fencing for conservation purposes, a debated topic. While some have reported that fencing lion populations better maintains carrying capacity, others, such as professor of ecology Scott Creel, have found that more lions are conserved per dollar invested in unfenced ecosystems, noting that fenced populations are often above carrying capacity. Yet conservation fencing can prevent or reduce human-wildlife conflicts, making this topic nuanced regardless of which way one perceives it. This issue of fencing provided another motivation for Wilkinson to select the Nakuru region for their dissertation work, sparking what they describe as their “fence ecology awakening” after observing the interaction between a lioness with a fence during their initial visit.
Wilkinson relates how during their first stay, a livestock conservancy comprising part of the field site, Soysambu Conservancy, had acquired and collared two lions for observation since one of them had cubs. There was a hole in the electric fence separating the lions from the conservancy. Since the cubs were almost fully grown, the mother lioness left the cubs and made her way through the hole in the fence. Wilkinson speculates she may have gone looking for another mate. Before the lioness returned, park officials covered the hole in the fence with a boulder, a routine practice. The data from the lioness’s collar revealed that she had been pacing back and forth along the fence, indicating her anxiety to return to her cubs. When officials managed to return her to the other side, she was emaciated and hadn’t hunted. This led Wilkinson to ask: what are the effects of fencing on a larger scale? What is its impact on how carnivores navigate the landscape, and on the region’s ecology? And how does fencing interact with human-carnivore conflict and coexistence? Wilkinson credits this initial experience, made possible by the Rocca grant, for the research that developed into part of their dissertation.
Wilkinson designed their research study using remote sensing GPS data in conjunction with community participatory mapping to understand the landscape permeability for mammalian carnivores better in addition to the needs of this human-carnivore intersection. Three different elements constitute the core of Wilkinson’s dissertation, which focuses on understanding how mammalian carnivores move through the developing landscape from the perspective of both people and wildlife. First, Wilkinson analyzes the data obtained from the GPS collaring of spotted hyenas that shows how the animals move through the landscape. Second, Wilkinson examines data from “camera traps,” or motion-sense cameras, to study how and where mammals cross national park fences, seeking predictors for why these crossings happen and when they happen. Third, Wilkinson analyzes data from participatory mapping and interviews conducted with around 400 community members from the sixteen villages adjacent to the two protected areas—the conservancy and the national park—in order to understand and elevate their spatial experiences with carnivores and other species. This inclusion of community members in the mapping of the landscape was particularly important for Wilkinson since “maps are tools of power that are often used from the top-down and not from the bottom-up,” they point out.
With data accumulated from GPS collar tracking, Wilkinson constructed movement models for spotted hyenas that go beyond the typical habitat metrics used to predict animal movement, such as vegetation and water availability, to include human infrastructure like roads and fences.
“We took it a step further, because my thought has always been that human activity should in theory be influencing animal movement as well, for animals in general but especially ones that live alongside people, but human activity has historically not been included very often in movement models. Human perceptions and those sorts of things that can be proxies for how these animals are treated in space, whether it’s lethal control or non-lethal hazing—whatever is used to scare these animals off—should be included in these models as well.”
Wilkinson’s movement models proved to be more effective at predicting animal movement than models that forgo taking human infrastructure and interactions into account. Wilkinson discovered that, of the approximately thirty-six mammal species that approached fences, cameras caught twenty-seven trying to
cross the fence at least once. Hyenas were most likely to cross out of the park into community lands, which was unexpected considering how well-protected the park is with few threats from people, says Wilkinson. Working with wardens, government employees at the national park, and people at the conservancy, Wilkinson questioned why the animals desire to get out, focusing on this inquiry for ameliorating human-wildlife conflict rather than simply exploring ways to make the fencing more robust. For a solution that may benefit both people and animals, they are considering working with communities to design a wildlife corridor that connects the protected areas. The consideration of human infrastructure and the participatory mapping data from the local community to arrive at these solutions to human-wildlife conflict reflects the idea of “social-ecological connectivity,” offering an empirical understanding of how human-wildlife interactions might play out.
While plenty more is left to unpack from the participatory mapping data, Wilkinson’s analysis found a spatial disparity when comparing community experiences and perceptions of wildlife conflict with government logs. That is to say that approximately 27% of the space where community members stated they experienced conflict with wildlife carnivores does not overlap with the government’s records, which indicates that the government could provide more resources to assessing this area. For Wilkinson, this was an unexpected discovery as well with possible implications for how to approach community engagement in the region. Wilkinson also noted how, due to the limited number of adults with cars in the region, the protected areas are most accessible for visitation to children thanks to educational bus trips conducted by schools. Those who visited the park typically hold a more positive attitude toward the often-vilified hyenas, so Wilkinson has embarked on a project of coordinating scavenging species safaris, using a newly acquired grant to fund trips for community members to learn explicitly about misunderstood animals.
Wilkinson is now a member of Kenya’s Large Carnivore Technical Committee, a government committee that creates monitoring and intervention efforts for the carnivores of the country. They are the sole representative of hyenas on the committee, given the general lack of funding for studying these misunderstood animals, but they hope that more Kenyan hyena scientists will emerge in the coming years. A Humans and Hyenas Alliance initiative also emerged out of Wilkinson’s work and the conversations they’ve had with government officials and conservationists in the region, which will hopefully develop into a Kenyan-led non-governmental organization. Ideally, the Humans and Hyenas Alliance will create a community ambassador program in which people would be paid to help monitor the scavenging species. With a second new grant from the National Geographic Society, Wilkinson’s next research project aims to shift the narrative from conflict to the benefits people receive from scavenging animals like vultures and hyenas that provide ecological benefits but are often persecuted. This project allows Wilkinson to study interactions between avian and mammalian species as well, which aren’t often studied together. Wilkinson plans to continue working with community members as they investigate and gather empirical data on how such species contribute to carcass and disease removal. For more on Wilkinson and their work, visit the Scrappy Naturalist.
Portrait photo of Christine Wilkinson: Jessica Ortiz
Hyena photos: Christine Wilkinson
Explorer Classroom video image: National Geographic