DOI: 10.5061/dryad.cc2fqz6b2
title: Residents perspectives on human-wildlife conflict management to build community resilience in Chitwan National Park, Nepal

description: Human-wildlife conflict can significantly impact economic, social, and
 ecological systems critical to promoting sustainable development.
 Effectively managing conflicts between people and wildlife that share a
 common landscape requires the implementation of effective management
 strategies that aim to reduce the impacts of HWC and promote coexistence
 as preferred by the community. However, many studies have often overlooked
 social aspects, especially the residents’ perceptions of HWC management,
 that can help build community resilience. Residents and wildlife share a
 common landscape in the Chitwan National Park in Nepal. Competition for
 resources grows as the human-modified landscape provides a new form of
 habitat for wildlife. We used Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) to
 capture the residents' (n=506) perspectives on the importance of HWC
 management strategies and their performance by park management to
 prioritize strategies that could help build community resilience. We found
 notable mean performance-importance gaps for the eight HWC management
 strategies, representing the park management’s inability to meet the
 desired need of  farmers and non-farmers. The IPA matrix grid
 shows the three strategies - skill, livelihood, and compensation - that
 need immediate attention from park management as they fall under
 high-priority strategies in quadrant II. The two-way ANOVA results
 revealed that the residents’ perspectives on importance and performance in
 all management sectors differ. We conclusively recommend developing
 site-and context-specific HWC management plans that consider the affected
 community's livelihood needs, which are essential for increasing the
 operational effectiveness of HWC management. Park management should
 prioritize strategies in sectors more vulnerable to HWCs to secure
 community support for long-term conservation goals. This study will be a
 key reference for identifying context-specific management strategies that
 incorporate community resilience in the management of human-wildlife
 conflict. This could inform HWC management policy and conservation
 planning to achieve coexistence that benefits both people and wildlife,
 particularly in low-income countries with similar socio-ecological
 settings. Overall, our findings provide a new perspective on
 human-wildlife conflict management that policymakers, researchers, and
 protected area managers around the world can use to build community
 resilience to facilitate coexistence.
description: <strong>Data collection: </strong>This study was
 carried out in the buffer zone of Chitwan National Park (CNP), Nepal. We
 conducted a quantitative survey of households in 21 buffer zone user
 committees that was spread across four sectors. We used a structured
 questionnaire to collect primary data. The survey questionnaire consisted
 of three sections. The first part accessed information related to HWC, the
 second part accessed the residents’ perception of HWC management in CNP,
 and the third section included socio-demographic information. Using
 stratified random sampling, the enumerator interviewed a total of 506
 households. Only the household members who had provided verbal consent and
 shown interest were interviewed. <strong>Data
 Analyses:</strong> The collected data were cleaned using Microsoft
 Excel 365 for Windows and systematically coded and analyzed using IBM SPSS
 Statistics for Windows, Version 26.0. First, we performed Paired t-tests,
 then plotted the importance-performance analysis grid comparing farmers
 and non-farmers, and finally conducted a two-way ANOVA test. 
description: Libre office and Sumatra PDF.