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Tools for Strategic Planning and Human-Wildlife Conflict Management

Please feel free to download and use these tools for strategic planning and for management of human-wildlife conflict. We would appreciate an email with your comments on how you used these tools, what you liked and what we can improve !

Co-managing Human-Wildlife Conflicts [download .pdf, 348k]

ABSTRACT: Conservationists now recognize the need to work beyond protected areas if they are to sustain viable populations of wildlife and large-scale ecological processes. Ambitious conservation maps extending wildlife corridors and buffer zones far beyond protected area boundaries often fail to consider the practical and political feasibility of promoting wildlife within rural landscapes. This creates conflict when wildlife forage on crops, attack livestock or otherwise threaten human security. Traditionally, humans respond to these conflicts by killing ‘problem’ wildlife and transforming wild habitats to prevent further losses. However, this traditional response is now illegal or socially unacceptable in many areas. Hence, environmental protections and non-utilitarian views of wildlife have changed a simple competitive relationship between people and wildlife into a political conflict between people and between institutions. Here we draw from experience in Bolivia, Uganda and Wisconsin to outline a strategy for mitigating human-wildlife conflict based on negotiation and participatory methods. We do not argue for participation from a purely moral stance, rather we argue that managing human-wildlife conflicts with both wildlife conservation and human welfare objectives requires numerous intrusions on people’s lives and hence sensitivity to local stakeholders’ perspectives. Incorporating local stakeholders as partners and decision-makers is essential to winning space for wildlife beyond protected area boundaries. We also show why systematic study of local people’s perceptions of risk is an irreplaceable complement to ecological research. We warn against the political manipulation of research findings and describe methods to design interventions and monitoring that meet both demands of rigorous science and political pragmatism. Because thesociopolitical setting is as influential as the biophysical one for the effective management of human-wildlife conflicts, we urge management teams to build capacity across disciplines and invest in training.

Participatory Threat Mapping [download .pdf, 393k]

ABSTRACT: Human-nature interactions shape biodiversity and natural resources. Planning conservation and engaging stakeholders in dialogues about conservation require an understanding of indirect threats arising from socioeconomic and political conditions, plus participatory methods to build consensus for action. We present a method for spatial assessment of threats, which involves stakeholders in decision-making and planning for conservation. We developed and tested the method in wildlife conservation projects in Asia, Africa, Madagascar, and Central America. The method follows a five step process: each participant lists the human activities that are the most damaging to biodiversity and natural resources in their region (direct threats) and the role that users, managers, and policy-makers play to promote or facilitate these activities (indirect threats); all participants vote to rank the worst direct threats and to map the locations of these threats at their site. The output maps are amenable to use in GIS analysis. We show how these maps help to plan, monitor, and implement interventions in wildlife conservation projects.

Intervention Planning
English version [download .pdf, 253k]

Intervention Planning
French version [download .pdf, 253k]

 

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