Human–wildlife conflict

Human–wildlife conflict (HWC) refers to the negative interactions between humans and wild animals, with undesirable consequences both for people and their resources on the one hand, and wildlife and their habitats on the other. HWC, caused by competition for natural resources between human and wildlife, influences human food security and the well-being of both humans and other animals. In many regions, the number of these conflicts has increased in recent decades as a result of human population growth and the transformation of land use.
HWC is a serious global threat to sustainable development, food security and conservation in urban and rural landscapes alike. In general, the consequences of HWC include: crop destruction, reduced agricultural productivity, competition for grazing lands and water supply, livestock predation, injury and death to human, damage to infrastructure, and increased risk of disease transmission among wildlife and livestock.
As of 2020, conflict mitigation strategies utilized lethal control, translocation, population size regulation and endangered species preservation. Recent management now uses an interdisciplinary set of approaches to solving conflicts. These include applying scientific research, sociological studies and the arts to reducing conflicts. As human-wildlife conflict inflicts direct and indirect consequences on people and animals, its mitigation is an important priority for the management of biodiversity and protected areas. Resolving human-wildlife conflicts and fostering coexistence requires well-informed, holistic and collaborative processes that take into account underlying social, cultural and economic contexts.
In 2023, the IUCN SSC Human-Wildlife Conflict & Coexistence Specialist Group published the IUCN SSC Guidelines on human-wildlife conflict and coexistence that aim to provide foundations and principles for good practice, with clear, practical guidance on how best to tackle conflicts and enable coexistence with wildlife.
As of 2013, many countries have started to explicitly include human-wildlife conflict in national policies and strategies for wildlife management, development and poverty alleviation. At the national level, collaboration between forestry, wildlife, agriculture, livestock and other relevant sectors is key.
Human–wildlife conflict has been defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in 2004 as "any interaction between humans and wildlife that results in negative impacts of human social, economic or cultural life, on the conservation of wildlife populations, or on the environment". The Creating Co-existence workshop at the 5th Annual World Parks Congress (8–17 September 2003, Montreal) defined human-wildlife conflict in the context of human goals and animal needs as follows: “Human-wildlife conflict occurs when the needs and behavior of wildlife impact negatively on the goals of humans or when the goals of humans negatively impact the needs of wildlife."
A 2007 review by the United States Geological Survey defined human-wildlife conflict in two contexts; firstly, actions by wildlife conflict with human goals i.e. life, livelihood and life-style, and secondly, human activities that threaten the safety and survival of wildlife. However, in both cases outcomes are decided by human responses to the interactions.
The Government of Yukon defined human-wildlife conflict simply, but through the lens of damage to property, i.e. "any interaction between wildlife and humans which causes harm, whether it’s to the human, the wild animal, or property." Here, property includes buildings, equipment and camps, livestock and pets, but does not include crops, fields or fences.
In 2020, the IUCN SSC Human-Wildlife Conflict Task Force described human-wildlife conflict as "struggles that emerge when the presence or behaviour of wildlife poses actual or perceived, direct and recurring threat to human interests or needs, leading to disagreements between groups of people and negative impacts on people and/or wildlife".
Human-wildlife interactions have occurred throughout man's prehistory and recorded history. An early form of human-wildlife conflict is the depredation of the ancestors of prehistoric man by a number of predators of the Miocene such as saber-toothed cats, leopards, and spotted hyenas.
Fossil remains of early hominids show evidence of depredation; the Taung Child, the fossilized skull of a young Australopithecus africanus, is thought to have been killed by an eagle from the distinct marks on its skull and the fossil having been found among egg shells and remains of small animals.
A Plio-Pleistocene horned crocodile, Crocodylus anthropophagus, whose fossil remains have been recorded from Olduvai Gorge, was the largest predator encountered by prehistoric man, as indicated by hominid specimens preserving crocodile bite marks from these sites.
Another 12,000 year old example is the buffalo jump cliff sites found in the western United States. These sites occurred as a result of humans exploiting an animal's herding behavior and predator-flight instincts.
The extinction of the passenger pigeon is another example.
In 2023 alone, over 1.8 million distinct human-wildlife conflicts occurred as animal involved auto accidents on roadways, seen as roadkill. Understanding bird strike frequency is important to Aircraft safety engineers. Reducing the frequent animal collisions (strikes) from automobiles on roadways are shared concerns of biologists, civil engineers, and automobile safety designers.
As of 2020, with specific reference to forests, a high density of large ungulates such as deer, can cause severe damage to the vegetation and can threaten regeneration by trampling or browsing small trees, rubbing themselves on trees or stripping tree bark. This behavior can have important economic implications and can lead to polarization between forest and wildlife managers.
As a tropical continent with substantial anthropogenic development, Africa is a hotspot for biodiversity and therefore, for human-wildlife conflict. Two of the primary examples of conflict in Africa are human-predator (lions, leopards, cheetahs, etc.) and human-elephant conflict. Depredation of livestock by African predators is well documented in Kenya, Namibia, Botswana, and more. African elephants frequently clash with humans, as their long-distance migrations often intersect with farms. The resulting damage to crops, infrastructure, and at times, people, can lead to the retaliatory killing of elephants by locals.
In 2017, more than 8 000 human-wildlife conflict incidents were reported in Namibia alone (World Bank, 2019). Hyenas killed more than 600 cattle in the Zambezi Region of Namibia between 2011 and 2016 and there were more than 4 000 incidents of crop damage, mostly caused by elephants moving through the region (NACSO, 2017a).
With a rapidly increasing human population and high biodiversity, interactions between people and wild animals are becoming more and more prevalent. Like human-predator in Africa, encounters between tigers, people, and their livestock is a prominent issue on the Asian continent. Attacks on humans and livestock have exacerbated major threats to tiger conservation such as mortality, removal of individuals from the wild, and negative perceptions of the animals from locals. Even non-predator conflicts are common, with crop-raiding by elephants and macaques persisting in both rural and urban environments, respectively. Poor disposal of hotel waste in tourism-dominated towns have altered behaviours of carnivores such as sloth bears that usually avoid human habitation and human-generated garbage. For example, as a result of the Human-elephant conflict in Sri Lanka each year as many as 80 people are killed by elephants and more than 230 elephants are killed by farmers. The Sri Lankan elephant is listed as endangered, and only 2.500–4.000 individuals remain in the wild. As of 2021, in India and Kerala the conflict is exceedingly acute because of the country's Wildlife Protection Act.
Moreover, In Asia, wildlife is considered sacred as a messenger of God, and in some cases, religious and political protections are implemented, which can cause conflicts. For example, in Nara City, Japan, the sacred Japanese sika deer (Cervus nippon), protected for over a millennium, has recently seen a population surge around Nara Park. Genetic analysis reveals mixing between sacred deer from the sanctuary and common lineage deer, posing a risk to the sacred deer's unique genetics. This situation presents a complex challenge where excluding surrounding deer populations is necessary to maintain the genetic uniqueness of a sacred deer population that humans have protected for a long time.
In Antarctica the first known instance of death due to human-wildlife conflict occurred in 2003 when a leopard seal dragged a snorkelling British marine biologist underwater where she drowned.
Human–wildlife conflict in Europe includes interactions between people and both carnivores and herbivores. A variety of non-predators such as deer, wild boar, rodents, and starlings have been shown to damage crops and forests. Carnivores like raptors and bears create conflict with humans by eating both farmed and wild fish, while others like lynxes and wolves prey upon livestock. Even less apparent cases of human-wildlife conflict can cause substantial losses; 500,000 deer-vehicle collisions in Europe (and 1-1.5 million in North America) led to 30,000 injuries and 200 deaths.
Instances of human-wildlife conflict are widespread in North America. In Wisconsin, United States wolf depredation of livestock is a prominent issue that resulted in the injury or death of 377 domestic animals over a 24-year span. Similar incidents were reported in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, with reports of wolves killing pets and livestock. Expanding urban centers have created increasing human-wildlife conflicts, with interactions between human and coyotes and mountain lions documented in cities in Colorado and California, respectively, among others. Big cats are a similar source of conflict in Central Mexico, where reports of livestock depredation are widespread, while interactions between humans and coyotes were observed in Canadian cities as well.
On K'gari-Fraser Island in Australia, attacks by wild dingoes on humans (including the well-publicized death of a child) created a human-wildlife crisis that required scientific intervention to manage. In New Zealand, distrust and dislike of introducing predatory birds (such as the New Zealand falcon) to vineyard landscapes led to tensions between people and the surrounding wildlife. In extreme cases large birds have been reported to attack people who approach their nests, with human-magpie conflict in Australia a well-known example. Even conflict in urban environments has been documented, with development increasing the frequency of human-possum interactions in Sydney.
As with most continents, the depredation of livestock by wild animals is a primary source of human-wildlife conflict in South America. The killings of guanacos by predators in Patagonia, Chile – which possess both economic and cultural value in the region – have created tensions between ranchers and wildlife. South America's only species of bear, the Andean Bear, faces population declines due to similar conflict with livestock owners in countries like Ecuador.
While many of the causes of human-wildlife conflict are the same between terrestrial and marine ecosystems (depredation, competition, human injury, etc.), as of 2019, ocean environments have been less studied and management approaches often differ. As with terrestrial conflict, human-wildlife conflict in aquatic environments is diverse and extends across the globe. In Hawaii, for example, an increase in monk seals around the islands has created a conflict between locals who believe that seals “belong” and those who do not. Marine predators such as killer whales and fur seals compete with fisheries for food and resources, while others like great white sharks have a history of injuring humans.
In the summer of 2022, a 1,300-pound walrus appeared in Oslo harbor and moved in highly populated areas. Norwegian authorities declared her a threat to human safety as she had moved onto boats, threatened to sink them and she was euthanized. In April 2023, a life sized bronze sculpture of her was installed at Kongen Marina to "create a historic document about the case".
Mitigation strategies for managing human-wildlife conflict vary significantly depending on location and type of conflict. The preference is always for passive, non-intrusive prevention measures but often active intervention is required to be carried out in conjunction. Regardless of approach, the most successful solutions are those that include local communities in the planning, implementation, and maintenance. Resolving conflicts, therefore, often requires a regional plan of attack with a response tailored to the specific crisis. Still, there are a variety of management techniques that are frequently employed to mitigate conflicts. Examples include:
Human wildlife conflict also has a range of hidden dimensions that are not typically considered when the focus is on visible consequences. These can include health impacts, opportunity costs, and transaction costs. As of 2013, case studies have included work on elephants in Uttarakhand, northeast India, where human-elephant interactions are correlated with increased imbibing of alcohol by crop guardians resulting in enhanced mortality in interactions. and issues related to gender in northern India. In addition, research has shown that the fear caused by the presence of predators can aggravate human-wildlife conflict more than the actual damage produced by encounters.
This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO (license statement/permission). Text taken from The State of the World’s Forests 2020. Forests, biodiversity and people – In brief​, FAO & UNEP, FAO & UNEP.