Abstract
Coming from the vantage point of managing human relations to potentially problematic wildlife, we bring the following questions: Where do people’s emotionally vigorous and polarized reactions originate? Why do these reactions to different scenarios of human-wildlife conflict appear similar? In this paper we provide the findings from an eclectic review of purposefully sampled literature on human relations to wolves, corvids and spiders. Based on this synthesis, we propose three answers to those questions: 1). The emotional vigor inherent in human-wildlife conflicts is caused by the activation of deep-seated and emotionally loaded factors, specifically worldviews on human-nature relations more broadly, an integral human motivation for seeking control, and symbolic associations to darkness. 2). The opposing attitudes on human-wildlife relations derive from people’s diverging worldviews and different degrees of wanting control in a situation of human-wildlife conflict. 3). Despite ecological specificities, various cases of human-wildlife conflicts may evoke similar mental processes and, accordingly, the same reactions in people. Consequentially, it is possible to develop transferable solutions that may contribute to managing challenges in different instances of human-wildlife encounters.
Highlights
Many forms of conflict arise between human society and wildlife
Summary on Corvids Corvids who resettle in human spaces or whose voraciousness arguably contributes to increasing the economic hardships of farming professions, pinpoint how natural and human-made realms are interwoven
Ecological Facts on Spiders There are at present thought to be 120 families, 4,149 genera, and 48,307 species of spiders (World Spider Catalogue 2019 https:// wsc.nmbe.ch)
Summary
Many forms of conflict arise between human society and wildlife. They are as varied as wild boars ravaging parks, wolves and lynx preying on livestock, spiders roaming in basements and bathtubs, or deer affecting crops and forests by browsing. In mediating the conflicts between proponents and opponents of urban rookeries and in creating win-win solutions, she learned about people’s motives toward human-rook coexistence. It occurred to her that people’s reactions, and the challenges that she encountered in managing the human and non-human dimensions of conflict, seem to correspond to those in other human-wildlife conflicts. Themes portrayed in media reports include: wildlife invading the human sphere, Similar Reactions to different Wildlife challenging human dominion and terrorizing people; and reflections on animals’ right to exist (e.g. Dame, 2012; Grünberg, 2018; Satorius, 2018; Schäfli, 2014; Schröder and Hesse, 2015)
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