Abstract
Despite the increasing frequency and magnitude of extreme climate events, little is known about how their impacts flow through social and ecological systems or whether management actions can dampen deleterious effects. We examined how the record 2014–2016 Northeast Pacific marine heatwave influenced trade-offs in managing conflict between conservation goals and human activities using a case study on large whale entanglements in the U.S. west coast's most lucrative fishery (the Dungeness crab fishery). We showed that this extreme climate event diminished the power of multiple management strategies to resolve trade-offs between entanglement risk and fishery revenue, transforming near win–win to clear win–lose outcomes (for whales and fishers, respectively). While some actions were more cost-effective than others, there was no silver-bullet strategy to reduce the severity of these trade-offs. Our study highlights how extreme climate events can exacerbate human–wildlife conflict, and emphasizes the need for innovative management and policy interventions that provide ecologically and socially sustainable solutions in an era of rapid environmental change.
Highlights
Extreme climate events wreak havoc on social and ecological systems [1,2], and these threats are growing in frequency and magnitude [3]
We quantified changes in the number of blue and humpback whales reported as entangled in California Dungeness crab fishing gear over the period 2009– 2019 using the database described by Saez et al [27]
If climate extremes stress both the human system and the wildlife system, the outer bound of points reflecting all possible combinations of social and ecological outcomes on a trade-off surface may move inward, reducing the opportunity for substantive win–wins
Summary
Extreme climate events wreak havoc on social and ecological systems [1,2], and these threats are growing in frequency and magnitude [3]. Relatively little is known about how climate extremes influence links between biophysical and human components of ecosystems, even though there is strong potential for them to exacerbate conflict between people and wildlife [7]. Heatwaves—discrete and prolonged warming events [2]—are prominent examples, as they can alter proximity of wildlife to areas used by people for food production. These ecological responses heighten societal concerns related to public safety, competition (for crops or fisheries), predation and incidental capture [7,8]. Even less well understood than the intensification of such conflicts is how interventions designed to mitigate effects of climate extremes may have unintended costs for society and ecosystems. Severe environmental conditions have the potential to fundamentally alter the effectiveness of management strategies attempting to balance benefits and costs, or trade-offs, within social–ecological systems [10]
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