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1. Effects of climate, land use, and human population change on human–elephant conflict risk in Africa and Asia

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2312569121  

   Guarnieri, Mia; Kumaishi, Grace; Brock, Cameryn; Chatterjee, Mayukh; Fabiano, Ezequiel; Katrak-Adefowora, Roshni; Larsen, Ashley; Lockmann, Taylor M; Roehrdanz, Patrick R (February 2024, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   Human–wildlife conflict is an important factor in the modern biodiversity crisis and has negative effects on both humans and wildlife (such as property destruction, injury, or death) that can impede conservation efforts for threatened species. Effectively addressing conflict requires an understanding of where it is likely to occur, particularly as climate change shifts wildlife ranges and human activities globally. Here, we examine how projected shifts in cropland density, human population density, and climatic suitability—three key drivers of human–elephant conflict—will shift conflict pressures for endangered Asian and African elephants to inform conflict management in a changing climate. We find that conflict risk (cropland density and/or human population density moving into the 90th percentile based on current-day values) increases in 2050, with a larger increase under the high-emissions “regional rivalry” SSP3 - RCP 7.0 scenario than the low-emissions “sustainability” SSP1 - RCP 2.6 scenario. We also find a net decrease in climatic suitability for both species along their extended range boundaries, with decreasing suitability most often overlapping increasing conflict risk when both suitability and conflict risk are changing. Our findings suggest that as climate changes, the risk of conflict with Asian and African elephants may shift and increase and managers should proactively mitigate that conflict to preserve these charismatic animals. 

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2. Mapping the connectivity–conflict interface to inform conservation

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2211482119  

   Vasudev, Divya; Fletcher, Robert J.; Srinivas, Nishanth; Marx, Andrew J.; Goswami, Varun R. (January 2023, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   Balancing the competing, and often conflicting, needs of people and wildlife in shared landscapes is a major challenge for conservation science and policy worldwide. Connectivity is critical for wildlife persistence, but dispersing animals may come into conflict with people, leading to severe costs for humans and animals and impeding connectivity. Thus, conflict mitigation and connectivity present an apparent dilemma for conservation. We present a framework to address this dilemma and disentangle the effects of barriers to animal movement and conflict-induced mortality of dispersers on connectivity. We extend random-walk theory to map the connectivity–conflict interface, or areas where frequent animal movement may lead to conflict and conflict in turn impedes connectivity. We illustrate this framework with the endangered Asian elephantElephas maximus, a species that frequently disperses out of protected areas and comes into conflict with humans. We mapped expected movement across a human-dominated landscape over the short- and long-term, accounting for conflict mortality. Natural and conflict-induced mortality together reduced expected movement and connectivity among populations. Based on model validation, our conflict predictions that explicitly captured animal movement better explained observed conflict than a model that considered distribution alone. Our work highlights the interaction between connectivity and conflict and enables identification of location-specific conflict mitigation strategies that minimize losses to people, while ensuring critical wildlife movement between habitats. By predicting where animal movement and humans collide, we provide a basis to plan for broad-scale conservation and the mutual well-being of wildlife and people in shared landscapes. 

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3. Potential for informal guardianship in community- based wildlife crime prevention: Insights from Vietnam

   https://doi.org/10.3897/natureconservation.48.81635  

   Viollaz J, Rizzolo JB (January 2022, Nature Conservation)

   The notion that indigenous people and local communities can effectively prevent conservation crime rests upon the assumption that they are informal guardians of natural resources. Although informal guardianship is a concept typically applied to “traditional” crimes, urban contexts, and the global North, it has great potential to be combined with formal guardianship (such as ranger patrols) to better protect wildlife, incentivize community participation in conservation, and address the limitations of formal enforcement in the global South. Proactive crime prevention is especially important for illegal snare hunting, a practice that has led to pernicious defaunation and which has proved difficult to control due to its broad scope. This paper uses interview data with community members in protected areas in Viet Nam where illegal snare hunting is commonplace to 1) analyze the conditions for informal guardianship in the study locations; 2) explore how community members can become more effective informal guardians; and 3) examine how formal and informal guardianship mechanisms can be linked to maximize deterrence and limit displacement of illegal snaring. Results indicate that conditions for informal guardianship exist but that respondent willingness to intervene depends upon the location, offender activity, and type of offender (outsider versus community member). While respondents generated numerous strategies for wildlife crime prevention, they also listed crime displacement mechanism offenders used to avoid detection. We discuss how informal guardianship can be integrated with formal guardianship into an overall model of situational crime prevention to protect wildlife and incentivize community-led deterrence of illegal snaring. 

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4. An applied ecology of fear framework: linking theory to conservation practice

   https://doi.org/10.1111/acv.12629  

   Gaynor, Kaitlyn M.; Cherry, Michael J.; Gilbert, Sophie L.; Kohl, Michel T.; Larson, Courtney L.; Newsome, Thomas M.; Prugh, Laura R.; Suraci, Justin P.; Young, Julie K.; Smith, Justine A. (August 2020, Animal Conservation)

   null (Ed.)

   Research on the ecology of fear has highlighted the importance of perceived risk from predators and humans in shaping animal behavior and physiology, with potential demographic and ecosystem-wide consequences. Despite recent conceptual advances and potential management implications of the ecology of fear, theory and conservation practices have rarely been linked. Many challenges in animal conservation may be alleviated by actively harnessing or compensating for risk perception and risk avoidance behavior in wild animal populations. Integration of the ecology of fear into conservation and management practice can contribute to the recovery of threatened populations, human–wildlife conflict mitigation, invasive species management, maintenance of sustainable harvest and species reintroduction plans. Here, we present an applied framework that links conservation interventions to desired outcomes by manipulating ecology of fear dynamics. We discuss how to reduce or amplify fear in wild animals by manipulating habitat structure, sensory stimuli, animal experience (previous exposure to risk) and food safety trade-offs to achieve management objectives. Changing the optimal decision-making of individuals in managed populations can then further conservation goals by shaping the spatiotemporal distribution of animals, changing predation rates and altering risk effects that scale up to demographic consequences. We also outline future directions for applied research on fear ecology that will better inform conservation practices. Our framework can help scientists and practitioners anticipate and mitigate unintended consequences of management decisions, and highlight new levers for multi-species conservation strategies that promote human–wildlife coexistence. 

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5. The influence of social identity on attitudes toward wildlife

   https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.14243  

   Birdsong, Max H; Metcalf, Alexander L; Metcalf, Elizabeth Covelli; Nesbitt, Holly Kathleen; Gude, Justin A (August 2024, Conservation Biology)

   Abstract Wildlife conservation depends on supportive social as well as biophysical conditions. Social identities such as hunter and nonhunter are often associated with different attitudes toward wildlife. However, it is unknown whether dynamics within and among these identity groups explain how attitudes form and why they differ. To investigate how social identities help shape wildlife‐related attitudes and the implications for wildlife policy and conservation, we built a structural equation model with survey data from Montana (USA) residents (n = 1758) that tested how social identities affect the relationship between experiences with grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis) and attitudes toward the species. Model results (r² = 0.51) demonstrated that the hunter identity magnified the negative effect of vicarious property damage on attitudes toward grizzly bears (β = −0.381, 95% confidence interval [CI]: −0.584 to −0.178,p < 0.001), which in turn strongly influenced acceptance (β = −0.571, 95% CI: −0.611 to −0.531,p < 0.001). Our findings suggested that hunters’ attitudes toward grizzly bears likely become more negative primarily because of in‐group social interactions about negative experiences, and similar group dynamics may lead nonhunters to disregard the negative experiences that out‐group members have with grizzly bears. Given the profound influence of social identity on human cognitions and behaviors in myriad contexts, the patterns we observed are likely important in a variety of wildlife conservation situations. To foster positive conservation outcomes and minimize polarization, management strategies should account for these identity‐driven perceptions while prioritizing conflict prevention and promoting positive wildlife narratives within and among identity groups. This study illustrates the utility of social identity theory for explaining and influencing human–wildlife interactions. 

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