Tutilo Mudumba

Michigan State University | MSU · Department of Fisheries and Wildlife

Monitoring wildlife populations at scale is fraught with logistical and resource constraints. Despite this, estimating wildlife population state variables and vital rates remains crucial for science, and to assess conservation investment and effort. The veracity and transparency of results also helps prevent politicization of wildlife populations....

Regular population monitoring of imperilled charismatic species such as large carnivores is critical for conservation. However, the role of monitoring in conservation is frequently diminished due to: 1) surveys being implemented in isolation, 2) limited on-ground-capacity leading to infrequent monitoring, and 3) inappropriate methods being applied....

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is an extinction risk assessment tool that has guided species conservation over the last five decades. However, as wildlife scientists and conservationists, we argue that its influence on the global conservation agenda can hinder effective species conservation efforts. Here, we review the limitations of the R...

Lions are one of the world’s most iconic species but are threatened with extinction. Developing effective range-wide conservation plans are crucial but hampered by the relative lack of knowledge on specific threats facing each population and the socio-political context for conservation. Here, we present a range-wide examination of the relative frag...

Global dependence upon fossil fuels persists in the 21st century. With known deposits of oil diminishing, technological advancements and alternative financing have facilitated explorations into a number of sensitive habitats around the world. Such pursuits challenge global priorities relating to the ideals of energy production versus those of biodi...

Subsistence poaching threatens the persistence of wildlife populations worldwide and the well-being of people who participate in poaching. We conducted interviews around Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda to assess the acceptability of poaching. Conflict with wildlife was the most important factor determining attitudes towards poaching and the t...

Because biodiversity loss has largely been attributed to human actions, people, particularly those in the Global South, are regularly depicted as threats to conservation. This context has facilitated rapid growth in green militarization, with fierce crackdowns against real or perceived environmental offenders. We designed an undergraduate course to...

Both African elephants ( Loxodonta spp.) and the Asian elephant ( Elephas maximus ) across their range come into conflict with people because of their crop-raiding behavior, which presents profound impediments to farmer livelihoods. In response, a series of interventions, designed to reduce elephant crop raiding have been applied. Based on an exten...

Poaching of wildlife presents one of the biggest conservation challenges in the 21st century. Snaring is one of the primary means of capturing target animals. To prioritise interventions intending to reduce snaring, we describe an approach for quantifying the configuration and lethality of snares. We conducted transect surveys in Murchison Falls Na...

Conservation projects subscribing to a community‐based paradigm have predominated in the 21st century. We examined the context in which the phrase was coined and traced its growth over time. Community‐based conservation first appeared in the literature in the early 1990s; but grew little until after the 5th World Parks Congress in 2003. Thereafter,...

Wicked socio-ecological problems are inherently complex and require an interdisciplinary approach for mitigation. Here, we investigated the many drivers of human-lion conflict in East Africa and present a novel conceptual model illustrating the intricate interactions within and between the five main dimensions of conflict. We highlight the importan...

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly called drones, have generated a great deal of controversy, partly because of their use for military and police purposes and because of concerns that they pose threats to privacy and safety. At the same time, environmental scientists are finding drones to be a powerful research tool. Because the use of drone...

Lions (Panthera leo) have experienced dramatic population declines in recent decades and today, inhabit just a fraction of their historic range. The reasons behind these declines are many, but conflict with humans, principally motivated by lion depredation of livestock, is among the most influential. Recent calls within the scientific community hav...

Predators affect prey by killing them directly (lethal effects) and by inducing costly antipredator behaviours in living prey (risk effects). Risk effects can strongly influence prey populations and cascade through trophic systems. A prerequisite for assessing risk effects is characterizing the spatiotemporal variation in predation risk. Risk effec...

This report summarises the findings of an 18 month study of radio-collared elephants in the Murchison Falls National Park (MFNP) in western Uganda. The radio collaring study was made to assess the impacts of oil exploration activities on ranging patterns of elephants in MFNP, and was funded by Total Exploration and Production, Uganda (TEP Uganda).....

This report summarises the findings of a biodiversity survey of Murchison Falls Protected Area (MFPA - including Murchison Falls National Park, Bugungu and Karuma Wildlife Reserves). The survey shows that MFPA is rich in species and biodiversity with a total known list of 144 mammal species, 556 bird species, 51 reptile species, 28 known amphibian...

The sizes of African lion home ranges vary widely but tend to correlate with characteristics of the prey populations (e.g. prey density and preferred prey weight). Lion home ranges should be expected to temporally fluctuate according to changes in prey biomass. Here we quantified and compared the home range sizes of lions in Uganda with data collec...

This report summarises the findings of a biodiversity survey of Murchison Falls Protected Area (MFPA - including Murchison Falls National Park, Bugungu and Karuma Wildlife Reserves). The survey shows that MFPA is rich in species and biodiversity with a total known list of 144 mammal species, 556 bird species, 51 reptile species, 28 known amphibian...

Despite .60 years of conservation in Uganda’s national parks the populations of lions and spotted hyaenas in these areas have never been estimated using a census method. Estimates for some sites have been extrapolated to other protected areas and educated guesses have been made but there has been nothing more definitive. We used a lure count analys...