Lec 33 - Human/Wildlife Conflict Notes

Human/Wildlife Conflict (HWC)

Learning Outcomes

• Understand and define human/wildlife conflict (HWC) and its impacts.
• Describe the different types of responses to HWC (ecological and social).
• Critically evaluate approaches to mitigating HWC, outlining key limitations.

What is Human/Wildlife Conflict (HWC)?

• Definition 1: “HWC occur when an action by humans or wildlife has an adverse effect on the other” – Conover, 2002
• Problem with Definition 1: Animals don’t consciously engage as antagonists.
• Definition 2: “Situations that occur when two or more parties with strongly held opinions clash over conservation objectives and when one party is perceived to assert its interests at the expense of another.” – Redpath et al., 2013
• Types of Human-Wildlife Interactions:
  • Impacts of direct interactions between humans and wildlife.
  • Conflicts between conservationists and those with other, apparently incompatible, goals (Human-human interactions).

Drivers and Underlying Causes

• Driver: The “event” that triggers the conflict (e.g., an elephant destroying crops or a lion killing livestock).
• Underlying Cause(s): The variables that cause this event to take place.
  • Ecological: Habitat loss, fragmentation, loss of prey species, etc.
  • Anthropogenic: Encroaching on wild habitat, limited prevention measures, cultural values or beliefs.

Impacts on Wildlife

• Casualty/Fatality:
  • Retaliatory killings of problem animals/problem species.
  • Loss in population size.
  • Loss in genetic diversity.
• Fragmentation
• Behavior Change:
  • Altered behaviors to avoid conflict (movement behavior, activity patterns).
• Impacts on Ecosystem Functions:
  • Removal of apex predators/keystone species.

Impacts on People

• Casualty/Fatality:
  • E.g., 800 people killed by lions in Tanzania from 1990-2004.
  • E.g., >400 people killed by elephants per year in India.
• Impact on Livelihoods:
  • Elephant damage worth around 3M per year in India.
  • €2.5M per year damage from wolves in 5 European countries.
• Hidden Costs:
  • Diminished wellbeing, opportunity costs, transaction costs.
• Social Consequence:
  • Increased polarization, decreased trust.

Impacts Conceived as Costs

• Direct Costs:
  • Loss of livestock/crops.
  • Loss of human life.
  • Loss of wildlife.
• Indirect Costs:
  • Time spent preventing wildlife damage.
  • Money spent preventing wildlife damage.
• Opportunity Costs:
  • Income foregone from activities prevented by the presence of wildlife.

Responses to Conflict

1. Ecological/Conservation Management Approach:
   • Focus on managing wildlife populations and their (mostly direct) impacts, drawing on scientific knowledge and ecological principles.
2. Social Science/Development Approach:
   • Focus on the impacts of conflict on human lives, livelihoods, and changing human behaviour.

Ecological/Conservation Management Approach

• Three Key Assumptions (Kansky and Knight, 2014):
  • The level of wildlife damage is directly related to the level of conflict.
  • The level of conflict elicits a response proportional to the level of damage.
  • Mitigation activities appropriate to the level of conflict and damage will lead to proportional support for conservation.
• Possible Solutions:
  • Lethal control
  • Translocation
  • Guard animals
  • Fencing
  • Monitoring
  • Education

Ecological/Conservation Management Approach: Direct Costs

• Direct costs are the major problem area.
• Four Major Categories of Costs (Woodroffe et al., 2005):
  1. Crop raiding
  2. Livestock depredation
  3. Predation on managed wildlife
  4. Killing humans

Challenges to Mitigating Human/Predator Conflict

• Studying human/predator conflict requires research into the movements and behaviour of humans and predators, their interactions, in time and space.
• Key Questions:
  • How do we measure and compare relevant ecological and social data?
  • What are the key ecological and social variables which indicate higher risk levels? Can we use these to improve mitigation?
  • Attack data: Do we count just the hits or the misses too?
  • Can be a disconnect between scientific literature/data and action. How do we best communicate our findings?

Social Science/Development Approach

• Ethical Dimension: Conservation interventions should at least not damage, and ideally improve, the wellbeing of the most vulnerable.
• Lots of research on the attitudes of key stakeholders impacted by damage causing wildlife.
  • Identify (and change) the negative attitudes to damage causing wildlife of specific stakeholder groups, and therefore their behaviour.
  • Design interventions more likely to be supported by stakeholders.
• Possible solutions:
  • Theory based solutions (e.g. the theory of planned behaviour) to discover the norms, beliefs and attitudes shaping behaviour (and how to change negative behaviours).
  • Quantify costs and benefits of living with wildlife.
  • Devise policies and incentives to minimize costs and maximize benefits to local people.

Human-Human Relations

• Instances where stakeholders are in direct conflict with each other.

Typology of Conflict

• Conflicts of interest: Two groups want different things from the same species or habitat, e.g., timber vs biodiversity from a forest.
• Conflicts over beliefs and values: Differing normative perceptions, e.g., of what species should be conserved, or reintroduced into an area.
• Conflicts over process: Different approaches to decision-making and fairness, e.g., consensus versus authoritarianism.
• Conflicts over information: Where information is lacking, misunderstood or perceived differently by different stakeholders, e.g., scientific versus traditional ecological knowledge.
• Structural conflicts: Regarding cultural, economic, legal and social arrangements, e.g., a rich multinational can dominate a small grass-roots organisation.
• Interpersonal conflicts: Personality differences between individuals or groups, impacting on communications and trust.

An Approach to Conflict Resolution (Redpath et al. 2013)

1. Map Conflict:
   • Identify stakeholders.
   • Map stakeholder values, attitudes, goals.
   • Gather scientific evidence.
   • Identify impacts (social, ecological).
   • Understand wider context (e.g., legislation).
2. Manage Conflict:
   • Identify appropriate process.
   • Agree aims of process.
   • Will stakeholders negotiate positions?
   • Identify alternative solutions & trade-offs.
   • Test solutions: effective?
   • Share findings widely.
   • Apply adaptive management (monitor and feed back program success/failure).
   • Establish whether stakeholders will engage with other parties?
   • If stakeholders will not engage with other parties,
     • Manage imposed conflict.
     • If solution adopted, identify appropriate trade-offs or process (repeat cycle).
     • If solution not adopted, identify alternative solutions and trade-offs.

Limitations of Current Knowledge and Approaches

• Research suggests intangible costs (e.g., psychological costs of danger) are the most important variable explaining attitudes towards dangerous wildlife (significantly more than tangible costs such as direct monetary costs).
• Positive attitudes does not necessarily translate to more sustainable management practices
• Financial incentives may be less universally applicable than originally thought
• Little is studied on the intangible benefits (aesthetics and cultural value) or living with “problem” wildlife, as well as the hidden costs

Culture

• The ways in which damage causing wildlife is viewed doesn’t always fit into analytical “stakeholder” categories
• Studies found socio-demographic variables are insignificant predictors in attitude, but culture/tribe was which suggests an importance
• European interpretations of human-wildlife conflict have often failed to comprehend the degree to which local cultural ideas about and experiences of animals are integrated with understandings of human culture and behaviour.

Lions and the Maasai

• “Western” conservation may fail to capture the complicated and often ambivalent ways in which local people relate to wildlife, particularly large predators
• Lion hunts promote positive attitudes towards lions amongst the Maasai people, where hunting a lion is part of a coming-of-age ceremony
• It’s thought that the lions represent intelligence, bravery and beauty, and the hunter who kills a lion will have these qualities bestowed upon them
• Lions are usually afforded a measure of tolerance as killers of livestock due to this cultural tie, with the idea that lions are moral and reasonable animals which only kill when hungry

How to Think About Predators

• We discussed the importance of predators to ecosystems, but there is value for the people who live alongside them.
• Aesthetic appreciation and intellectual curiosity
• Economic costs and benefits (tourism)
• Social and spiritual considerations
• Conservation interventions in human-wildlife conflicts are adding new actors to, and engaging with, long-standing, co-produced interactions among humans and animals

Different kinds of Lions

• In the Mozambican biologist Mia Couto’s novel a hunter is sent to kill a man-eating lion. The locals tell him (2015: 84): ‘There’s the bush lion … there’s the invented lion … and then there are the lion-people … and they are all real.’
• You need to know which kind of lion/s you are dealing with.