WWF works to sustain the natural world for the benefit of people and wildlife, collaborating with partners from local to global levels in nearly 100 countries.
Humans and wildlife are inextricably intertwined, sharing more than half of the Earth’s surface. Occupying the same space can lead to unfavorable interactions, which are known as human-wildlife conflict. Negative interactions can result, including damage to property and livelihoods, perceived or real threats to safety, decrease in overall wellbeing, and, in extreme cases, even loss of life. Human-wildlife conflict can also reduce people’s tolerance to wildlife which can lead to retaliation against wildlife. In addition, human-wildlife conflicts often lead to disagreements among groups of people on how to manage such conflicts and negative impacts on people and/or wildlife. Combined with other threats, human-wildlife conflict has driven the decline of once-abundant species and is pushing others to the brink of extinction.
Beyond the direct pressure that human-wildlife conflict places on people and animals, it has broader implications globally at multiple levels. For instance, it weakens production systems and other businesses, affecting the global supply chain and decreased production, and affects the food security of communities already impacted by the cost of living alongside wildlife. Therefore, it’s important to note that human-wildlife conflict is as much a development and humanitarian concern as it is a conservation challenge.
As the footprint of human development and shared spaces with wildlife grow, stopping human-wildlife conflict completely is not possible. But effective, well-planned, inclusive, sustainable management approaches can reduce conflict in the long term and create opportunities and benefits for impacted communities. This can only be done with wide-ranging partnerships and participation among stakeholders, including those impacted by and impacting human-wildlife conflict. From Indigenous Peoples and local communities to national governments, companies and development agencies, all stakeholders must work together to address this issue.
Causes
Common drivers of human-wildlife conflict
Although people have lived with wildlife for as long as they have existed on the planet, human-wildlife conflict is increasingly common and widespread, leading to greater impacts. Driven by escalating habitat loss and fragmentation, as well as other human activities, it is compounded by natural ecological shifts. These include seasonal changes, wildlife movements and behavior, and the climate crisis, driving closer contact between wildlife and people.
Human-wildlife conflict is a complex issue that is influenced by history, social dynamics, political interests, cultural beliefs, and tolerance levels, which all play a part in how people perceive and address conflicts with wildlife.
Anthropogenic Drivers
UNSUSTAINABLE AND UNPLANNED Development
As human populations continue to grow, human settlements and the associated access infrastructure like roads and railways are expanding rapidly, often without planning that addresses ways to maintain vital ecosystem services. In addition, energy transmission infrastructure such as dams and transmission lines and other barriers to wildlife movement like fences are fragmenting natural habitats and important wildlife corridors and contributing to increased wildlife mortality and diversion of wildlife into human-populated areas. Resulting habitat loss and loss of connectivity has a cascade of impacts on wildlife and is leading to more direct contact between wildlife and people, increasing human-wildlife conflict and disease transmission.
Agricultural practices When land is cleared unsustainably for agricultural use, such as plantations and crops fields, and livestock ranching, whether for small scale or large commercial operations, it can significantly impact people and the environment. Rising demand for these commodities from the world’s growing human population leads to greater risk of human-wildlife conflict.
Natural resource extraction Illegal or unsustainable logging, and the infrastructure that accompanies them, as well as other extractive industries like mining, disrupt migratory pathways and degrade important animal habitats, with impacts on nearby people and their livelihoods.
Climate change Extreme and more frequent and intense drought, storms, heat waves, rising sea levels, melting glaciers and warming oceans can directly harm animals, destroy habitats, affect people’s livelihoods, and alter entire ecosystems, bringing people and wildlife into closer proximity.
Ecological Drivers
Ecological processes like seasonal changes and animal life cycles and movement patterns are natural occurrences that keep our ecosystems healthy, but changes in behavior or movement patterns of wildlife can increase human-wildlife conflict. In some regions, growing wildlife populations resulting from ongoing conservation efforts can also lead to these conflicts. These factors, coupled with the impacts of climate change on ecosystems, lead to increased competition between humans and wildlife over space and the natural resources we all rely upon for survival. This inevitably leads to more encounters between one another and, therefore, more chances of conflict.
Impacts
Human-wildlife conflict has far-reaching effects around the world—from the communities and wildlife that live together, to production systems, businesses, regional and national economies, and sustainable development initiatives.
Impact on sustainable development goals (SDGs)
SDGs are focused on economic, social, and ecological development, and environmental sustainability. Because human-wildlife conflict has broader implications beyond immediate interactions between people and wildlife, human-wildlife conflict is as much a development and humanitarian issue as it is a conservation concern, affecting the income and well-being of farmers, herders, and artisanal fishers—particularly those with incomes below the poverty line.
Decline and potential extinction of wildlife
Human-wildlife conflict can decrease people’s tolerance for wildlife and support for conservation in general. Retaliatory killings for loss of livestock or crops or killing animals in self-defense can impact already dwindling wildlife populations and drive species to extinction. Every species fulfills a role in its ecosystem and removal of a species usually has negative consequences for the whole system. In some cases, human-wildlife conflict can have permanent impacts on ecosystems and biodiversity.
Threats to communities
Communities that live near wildlife are most directly impacted by human-wildlife conflict. The most evident and direct impacts are on human health and safety, followed by threats to livelihoods through loss of livestock, crops, or other property.
Indirect impacts can include psychological impacts like fear or change in family or gender roles if a member of the family is injured or killed. Unfortunately, the costs of living with wildlife are unevenly distributed and disproportionately fall on already vulnerable communities with incomes well below the poverty line and limited access to economic opportunities.
Disputes among people or different groups over wildlife and its management, driven by varying interests and experiences, add to the complexities surrounding human-wildlife conflict and its management.
Pressures on global supply chain and agricultural production
By adding pressure on the global supply chain and production of agricultural goods and commodities, human-wildlife conflict indirectly impacts people all over the world. Commodities lost or damaged through human-wildlife conflict could lead to decreased production and profits. The cascading effects on the entire supply chain could have impacts on food, livelihood and economic security.
What WWF Is Doing
Conflict between humans and wildlife is complex and dynamic and can vary based on the context of the interaction and interests of people involved.
Even with these complexities, human-wildlife conflict can be effectively managed if strategies address the underlying drivers of conflict and minimize the impacts on both people and wildlife while enabling people to derive benefits from living with wildlife.
The C2C: Conflict to Coexistence Approach is a participatory framework that engages all relevant parties (those impacted by and impacting HWC) and addresses human-wildlife conflict in an integrated and holistic way. This means considering the full context of the conflict, including management actions, social dynamics and drivers, to find a balance where a level of coexistence can be reached. Just as human-wildlife conflict is ever-changing, the C2C approach is meant to be adaptable to adjust with the conflict over time.
C2C is based on achieving four key outcomes:
People able and willing to live alongside wildlife
Wildlife thrives alongside human presence
Livelihoods and assets secured against presence of wildlife
Habitat sufficient to maintain viable wildlife populations.
These outcomes can be achieved through systematic planning, implementation, monitoring and adaptive management of interventions across six elements of human-wildlife conflict management: understanding interactions, prevention, response, mitigation, policy and governance, and monitoring for adaptive management.
Madre de Dios, Peru
Inclusive management with communities/stakeholders
Context of the conflict In Peru’s southeastern Amazon basin is a region known as Madre de Dios, where unsustainable anthropogenic activities such as illegal logging, agriculture, and cattle ranching have been causing high rates of deforestation and land degradation. Habitat loss and fragmentation has, in turn, led to increased interactions with wildlife, particularly large felines like jaguars and pumas.
About the project WWF Peru has been working with communities to improve coexistence through better understanding the drivers of conflict and implementing conflict reduction measures. This began with surveys conducted in Madre de Dios in 2022 and 2023, which revealed that ranchers had negative perceptions towards the big cats due to the economic losses suffered from livestock predation.
With habitat loss being a key driver of human-feline conflicts, WWF Peru, The Climate Group, and Tropical Forest Alliance created the "Alliance for Regenerative Cattle Ranching in the Peruvian Amazon" (AGRAP) in 2020 to promote regenerative cattle ranching that reduces deforestation and restores degraded soil while promoting coexistence with the felines. With sustainable forestry practices like biofertilizers and natural pesticides, for example, forests and soil are recovering with extensive areas covered in grass and trees providing shade for livestock. That means that farmers don’t have to turn to logging and burning forests to find better quality soil for pasture to feed and graze their livestock. More than 200 farmers in the southern Peruvian Amazon participate in AGRAP and implement sustainable agriculture practices and cattle raising activities. Without needing to occupy as much forest area, addressing this driver is supporting longer term sustainable management of such conflicts.
In addition, WWF collaborated with ranchers to create and improve anti-predator strategies like installing motion-sensor lights and improving fencing to deter the felines from entering ranchers' properties. More than 60 camera traps have been installed to monitor jaguar presence on farms.
WWF is also fostering information exchange; building capacity of local authorities; raising awareness of the importance and benefits of coexistence; and providing education modules to help farmers recognize different predator incidents and the important role the big cats play in the wider ecosystem.
Ensuring the communities affected by human-wildlife conflict are included from the beginning in the development of broad management interventions fosters long-term commitment from the communities while also demonstrating that the value of living with wildlife outweighs its costs.
Context of the conflict In the KAZA region, around 2.7 million people—mostly subsistence farmers—live in the area alongside a significant wildlife population. However, with expanding human populations and in some areas, wildlife populations, sustainable and well-planned landscape development practices are vital to managing human-wildlife conflict.
About the project In the Okavango Panhandle in Botswana, WWF Namibia and Ecoexist Trust facilitated a local land-use planning process that incorporates sustainable development and wildlife coexistence. After identifying areas that are frequented by elephants, various stakeholders and village representatives came together and agreed to avoid future land use developments in these areas.
The land use planning work secured 160,000 acres of productive agricultural land designated for farming, and 84,000 acres of land for settlement expansion away from elephant corridors. Farmers who support Ecoexist’s ‘Elephant Aware’ farming avoid farming in elephant corridors, protect fields with electric fences and chili deterrents, and use conservation farming techniques that encourage early maturing and more resilient crop varieties. Farmers are also registered in a co-op and connected to new markets through a value chain that promotes elephant-themed business development, supporting livelihood opportunities.
The holistic approach being implemented by WWF and Ecoexist combines sustainable development practices and conservation management to bring economic opportunities to communities as a direct result of living with elephants.
Ensuring that the needs of both wildlife and communities are considered in the planning process can bring food security and livelihood opportunities for communities and conservation benefits for wildlife, ultimately improving coexistence between people and wildlife.
Sabah, Malaysia
Improving business practices and impact
Context of the conflict In Sabah, oil palm plantations cover around 23% of the land, and due to the resulting habitat loss, many elephants move through or live in them. As elephants can damage the crops and experience conflict with plantation workers, losses for plantations can be significant.
About the project Sabah Softwoods Berhad (SSB), an industrial tree and oil palm plantation company located between two forest patches, had a regular elephant presence as they moved through the plantation to get from one patch to the other. To prevent financial losses from the damage done by elephants, SSB worked with WWF Malaysia to find long-term but cost-effective ways to manage human-elephant conflict.
SSB allocated around 2,600 acres of the company’s land as a wildlife corridor that connects the forest patches, allowing elephants to freely move through. They also built strategic electric fencing based on the movements of satellite-collared elephants. This was done to funnel them through the corridor and around the vulnerable areas, protecting young palm trees that are edible for elephants.
SSB has seen a significant reduction of crop loss and less money spent preventing and mitigating the conflict, while elephants and other wildlife species were able to move through the corridor.
By considering wildlife movements from the early stages of plantation development, both wildlife and businesses can benefit from effective and integrated human-wildlife conflict management through increased revenues and better worker safety, while also providing far-reaching benefits to regional economies and wildlife survival.
India
Advancing effective management with policy support
Context of the conflict In India, significant populations of wildlife like elephants and tigers living alongside growing human populations has resulted in human-wildlife conflict becoming a pressing concern.
It is one of the few countries in the world that has explicitly addressed coexistence conflict in their national laws. And most of India’s states have some form of human-wildlife conflict management policy in place. These include advisories issued by government and compensation given for loss of cattle, crops, and injuries or death from conflict with wild animals.
There are also government-led national development schemes like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, a livelihood security initiative that provides at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment for unskilled manual labor work.
About the project WWF India has been supporting government agencies with the training and logistical support required to organize awareness campaigns among community groups. For example, in areas like the Terai Arc Landscape, WWF India has conducted awareness drives to sensitize cattle owners about wildlife and stray cattle. In cases of a tiger attacking cattle, financial support is provided under an interim relief scheme introduced by WWF India with the backing of the respective forest department. This scheme has been introduced to support the state government-run ex-gratia program that usually takes 60 to 90 days to disburse relief funds. The program is designed to provide immediate relief from the loss, which prevents retaliatory actions and increases community tolerance towards predators. It was initiated around the Corbett tiger reserve and is now being expanded to other states.
WWF India is also partnering with the forest departments to inform villages about the process of accessing relief funds to prevent retaliatory killings.
Policies that enable successful human-wildlife conflict management can benefit the communities living with wildlife. With the negative impacts from conflict reduced, people will be more incentivized to conserve wildlife and nature.
Connecting landscapes through community incentives
Context of the conflict Namibia’s conservation efforts have helped increase wildlife populations—particularly large animals such as elephants and predators like lions, leopards, and cheetahs. However, as these populations grow and their ranges expand, they come into more frequent contact with communities, and this is exacerbated by a lack of connected landscapes that enable unimpeded movement.
About the project Since 2013, WWF and partners have been working with conservancies in Namibia through a conservation performance payment system called Wildlife Credits, which rewards communities for proactive protection of wildlife and enabling movement wildlife movement through corridors on communal lands.
In the Sobbe Conservancy in northeast Namibia, thanks to an initial investment by Distell Namibia and Amarula in 2018, Wildlife Credits supported the protection of a critical wildlife corridor for elephants, keeping them away from homesteads. Based on independently verified data that the conservancy is protecting this corridor through avoiding planting crops and building structures along it, Sobbe continues to receive annual Wildlife Credit payments from various funding sources.
In 2019, the funds received by the conservancy were invested into an electricity grid to connect six villages in this remote area. The corridor now functions as a transit highway for elephants moving between Angola, Zambia, Namibia, and Botswana, and is also used by many other wildlife species like African wild dogs, civets, bush pigs, roan antelope, side-striped jackals, zebras, giraffes and porcupines.
Enabling connectivity through incentives not only allows for safe movement of wildlife but also reduces human-wildlife conflict while bringing in income for local communities.
Going forward
Human-wildlife conflict has largely traditionally been addressed through piecemeal and short-term management efforts that are reactive and only tackle the immediate effects of the conflict. Integrated and holistic approaches to human-wildlife conflict management can help achieve longer-term coexistence that benefits both wildlife and people. Understanding the underlying causes and complexities and developing context-specific solutions at scale that address drivers and the needs of both people and wildlife can help us move from conflict to coexistence. To achieve this, we need more research and systematic monitoring to better understand processes, drivers, and impacts of human-wildlife conflict. In turn, this will help us develop new approaches to human-wildlife conflict management.
Funding and resources allocated to address human-wildlife conflict at scale is key if we are to sustainably manage such conflicts to benefit both people and wildlife. Wide-ranging partnerships that are inclusive and collaborative among all stakeholders involved are necessary to sustainably manage and reduce human-wildlife conflict. All of these measures need to be underpinned by both regional and national policies that deter negative behavior toward wildlife and promote tolerance while providing tangible benefits to rural communities.
Nilanga Jayasinghe
Manager, Asian Species, Wildlife Conservation
