Attributions and implications of human and wild boar conflicts in China’s Cities: A case study of Nanjing City, China

Abstract

Under the context of socio-economic and ecological changes, frequent human-wildlife conflicts (HWCs) have occurred worldwide in recent years. To identify the drivers of human-wildlife conflicts and establish effective management measures, the human-wild boar conflicts in typical city of China were used to conduct empirical study. This study built a database of human-wild boar conflicts (also known as wild boar damage incidents) using 102 wild boar damage incidents occurred in the urban area of Nanjing from 2000 to 2022 to identify the spatiotemporal patterns, hazards and driving factors of these incidents by employing exploratory spatial analysis and geographical detector model. The results showed that the increase in wild boar damage incidents was influenced by a combination of rapid urbanization, habitat fragmentation, vegetation recovery, topography and other aspects. Among them, the root cause is the continuous expansion of built-up areas into the mountainous areas within cities and even encroachment on the mountains, resulting in the fragmentation and shrinkage of wildlife living space. Thus wildlife (represented by wild boars) had to move out and even invade the living space of humans, intensifying conflicts between humans and wild boars. HWCs are a symptom of the imbalance between socioeconomical systems and ecosystems within cities. The government should take some management measures to mitigate these conflicts and promote the harmonious coexistence between humans and nature within cities. For example, limit development, take defragmentation actions and improve compensation mechanism. The process of driving factor analysis of human-wild boar conflicts and related management measures in this paper would be helpful to address similar issues in other cities.