The future of coexistence: resolving human–wildlife conflicts in a changing world

Abstract

INTRODUCTION In this volume, we have sought solutions to the pervasive problem of conflict between people and endangered wildlife. There can be no doubt that human–wildlife conflict has driven global declines of many species (Woodroffe et al ., Chapter 1). Equally, there can be no doubt that such animals – even beautiful animals, even endangered animals – can and do cause serious damage to human lives and livelihoods (Thirgood et al ., Chapter 2). That much is clear. The question is: what to do about it? The authors of the chapters in this volume have provided a myriad of possible solutions, some of them successful, some of them informative failures, which we hope will help wildlife managers to understand and resolve conflicts. In this concluding chapter, we draw general conclusions from the chapters concerning the conditions underlying human–wildlife conflicts, the most effective means to resolve them, and how we may expect the patterns of conflict to change in future years. Is coexistence achievable? For as long as there has been literature, conflicts between people and wildlife have been documented. As early as the eighth century BC, Homer noted how lions ‘plunder men's steadings, seizing on their cattle and sturdy sheep, until they too are killed, cut down by the sharp bronze in the men's hands’ ( Iliad V: 548–50). Perhaps the first documentation of a wish to resolve such conflicts came later the same century, when Isaiah prophesied a halcyon future when ‘the wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard lie down with the kid; the calf and the young lion will feed together … the cow and the bear will be friends …’ (Isaiah 11: 6–7).