Ponente
Descripción
The Paraguayan Chaco represents one of the last major Conservation Units for the jaguar (Panthera onca) while simultaneously constituting a frontier of rapid cattle ranching expansion. This spatial overlap generates a persistent socio-ecological conflict in which livestock predation produces economic losses for ranchers, often leading to retaliatory killing of jaguars. These dynamics threaten both biodiversity conservation and the long-term sustainability of livestock production systems. Addressing this dilemma requires moving beyond purely biological approaches toward a strategic analysis of stakeholder incentives.
The model evaluates four discrete equilibrium scenarios, with particular emphasis on the mutual cooperation state, considered the ideal coexistence regime. Under this configuration, the government provides institutional incentives such as compensation programs, tax benefits, and “Jaguar-Friendly” certification schemes, while ranchers adopt preventive non-lethal management practices. Stability analysis of this equilibrium reveals that baseline production costs cancel algebraically, implying that system stability depends primarily on marginal incentive structures rather than fixed operational expenses. In this context, the combined benefits associated with compensation mechanisms, market premiums, and avoided legal sanctions must outweigh anti-predatory investments and residual predation losses for cooperative behaviour to persist.
Preliminary results indicate that the stability of the cooperative equilibrium is strongly determined by the balance between economic incentives, enforcement mechanisms, and reputational effects. Cooperation emerges as a viable long-term outcome only under parameter regimes where market-based incentives and institutional support exceed the economic costs associated with coexistence. These findings suggest that long-term coexistence between livestock production and jaguar conservation is not structurally guaranteed but instead depends on how incentive structures reshape stakeholder behaviour over time.
The remaining peripheral equilibria, corresponding to asymmetric cooperation or full defection by one or both actors, remain under active investigation. Current work focuses on characterizing their stability properties, transition dynamics, and sensitivity to changes in policy instruments and market conditions.
This work provides a formal evolutionary game-theoretic framework for understanding cooperation in human–wildlife conflict systems, emphasizing that coexistence between jaguar conservation and livestock production is not merely a biological possibility but a manageable strategic outcome.
Keywords: evolutionary game theory; replicator dynamics; human–wildlife conflict; jaguar conservation; Great Chaco, sustainable cattle ranching; discrete dynamical systems.