Research overview: drought-driven resource scarcity and human-cat conflict

Drought intensifies competition between people and predators for scarce water, forage, and livestock, often heightening human-wildlife conflict. This overview surveys how dry periods push cats toward livestock as wild prey declines, concentrate wildlife and herders around water, and erode the tolerance that underpins coexistence. It reviews evidence from lion, leopard, and puma systems and the conflict-mitigation responses deployed during droughts. The synthesis frames conflict as a social consequence of climate stress, explaining why drought can translate into spikes in retaliatory killing of cats even without permanent habitat loss, and why building resilience to climate variability in pastoral and farming communities is part of conserving predators through an increasingly variable climate.