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Chinmay Sonawane

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Graduate Student Research Funding | 2021 - 2022 Academic Year

Benefits of Lions to Low-Income Farmers in Kenya

In Kenya, low-income pastoralists graze livestock on communal lands that also accommodate wildlife. Due to these close interactions, wild herbivores can: a) transmit disease to livestock and b) limit their growth via grazing competition. We hypothesize that lion predation on herbivores benefits pastoralists by reducing these two negative impacts. Here, Sonawane seeks to explore how these interactions between lions, livestock and herbivores, may enhance livestock production and increase household income for pastoralists. By comparing these benefits against the costs of livestock depredation by lions, our research here may reveal an affordable nature-based solution to improving agricultural productivity in Africa.


Chinmay Sonawane, Department of Biology

chinmay sonawane

Chinmay Sonawane is a PhD student in biology at Stanford. His research addresses how biodiversity conservation and human development can go hand-in-hand. Sonawane studies the evolutionary dependence between people and wildlife, and the ecological interactions that enable megafauna to contribute to human health, economy and equity in low-income regions. His previous research has explored human-carnivore interactions in the Deccan Plateau (India), the Terai (India & Nepal) and Tigray (Ethiopia). In his field research, Sonawane works collaboratively with local communities, and is committed to empowering young leaders, explorers and researchers from underprivileged regions of the world.

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