Human - Animal Conflict

The Problem

As human populations expand and natural habitats shrink, people and animals are increasingly coming into conflict over living space and food.

The impacts are often huge.

People lose their crops, livestock, property, and sometimes their lives. The animals, many of which are already threatened or endangered, are often killed in retaliation or to 'prevent' future conflicts.

Human-wildlife conflict is one of the main threats to the continued survival of many species, in many parts of the world, and is also a significant threat to many local human populatons. And, if solutions to conflicts are not adequate, local support for conservation also declines.

How would you react to an elephant in your backyard or a bear in your garden?

Human-wildlife conflict is occurring more and more and affecting many different species. From baboons in Namibia attacking young cattle, to the greater one-horned rhino in Nepal destroying crops, orang-utans in oil palm plantations or European bears and wolves killing livestock, the problem is universal, affects rich and poor and is bad news for all concerned.

 

Solutions

WWF and its partners have a number of projects around the world to reduce human-wildlife conflict and improve the livelihoods of the people affected.

The solutions are often specific to the species or area concerned, and are often creative and simple. An important aspect of the work is that it benefits both the animals and local human communities, and actively involves these communities. This is about finding solutions that lead to mutually beneficial co-existence.

In most cases, the work has often led to people being more enthusiastic and supportive of conservation, and has demonstrated that people can live alongside wildlife while developing sustainable livelihoods.
 

Tigers

In Asia , tigers are suffering not only from significant loss of habitat but also from a decline in their prey species. As a result, more and more tigers are forced to search for food among the domestic livestock that many local communities depend on heavily for their livelihood. When livestock predation occurs, tigers are often captured, killed in retaliation or actively persecuted in an effort to prevent similar events happening in the future.

Sometimes the carcasses of livestock killed by tigers are baited in order to poison the tiger when it returns to its kill, also killing any other animal that chooses to opportunistically feed on the carcass. Tiger prey species are also killed by villagers in retaliation for destroying essential crops, further exacerbating the problem by reducing the availability of the tiger’s natural source of food.

Human-tiger conflicts are not only one of the biggest threats to the world’s remaining tigers, but pose a major problem for communities living in or near tiger habitat, and tiger attacks on humans have also increased in recent years. WWF is committed to working with these communities to find solutions which will allow them to live alongside tigers without conflict.

A wide range of different projects to mitigate human-tiger conflicts have been established by WWF and many other conservation organisations, in partnership with governments throughout the Asian region. To increase the conservation impact, programmes are normally developed in critical tiger habitats such as around a protected area or in a corridor between protected areas or key habitats.

The simplest mitigation measures involve the establishment of compensation schemes to reimburse villagers that have lost livestock to tigers, however it is also important to address the root cause of the conflicts. For example, WWF is currently working to change livestock management to prevent tiger kills, and to provide livelihood alternatives to local communities to reduce their dependence on forest resources, thus reducing the likelihood of tiger attacks on humans. In addition, several crop-protection initiatives are also in place to reduce crop loss to wild ungulates.

Ideally, over the long term, the affected communities will take on increasing levels of control over the programme, which eventually becomes as internally regulated and self-sustaining as possible.

Asian Leopards

Like tigers, Asian leopards are rapidly losing their habitat and prey species. Wild sheep and goats, the natural prey of species such as the snow leopard, have been hunted out of many areas in the central Asian mountains, and growing human and livestock populations are putting increasing pressure on the remaining leopards and their prey.

For example, domestic livestock in Mongolia have increased from 20–25 million to around 33 million over the past 10 years, squeezing out wild sheep and goats. The habitat of the Central Asian leopard has declined from several million hectares in the mountains of Turkmenistan , southern Uzbekistan , south-western Tajikistan, and parts of the Caucasus to less than 600,000-800,000 hectares today.

Increases in livestock and a decrease in natural habitat have inevitably resulted in livestock predation by leopards, and subsequent retaliation by herders. In the summer of 2003 in Mongolia , snow leopard predation caused the death of 20 horses (worth an average of US$100-150 each) in a WWF project area. Between 1996 and 2002 at least 16 snow leopards were reported killed in Zaskar in northern India , eight in one village alone.

The Amur leopard is particularly vulnerable in the Russian Far East, where farmers raise captive deer for human consumption and to produce antlers for the Asian medicine market. Deer are the natural prey preference for leopards, and in absence of wild prey, leopards venture into the deer farms in search of food. Owners of these farms are quick to protect their investment by eliminating leopards attacking their stock. Presently, the Amur leopard’s most immediate threat comes from such retaliatory or preventive killing.

In many countries, conflict killings and the trade in big cat parts go hand in hand; the bones and pelts of leopards killed primarily due to retaliation for livestock losses also enter illegal trade.


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Elephants

In both Africa and Asia , elephant habitat is being replaced by agriculture - both by small-scale farmers and international agribusiness such as palm oil. Not only are the animals being squeezed into smaller and smaller areas, but farmers plant crops that elephants like to eat. As a result, elephants frequently raid and destroy crops. And after being persecuted for decades and hunted almost to extinction, a wild elephant's reaction to a human can be similar to our reaction to a mosquito - swat it. So while many people in the West regard elephants with affection and admiration, the animals often inspire fear and anger in those who share their land.

Elephants eat up to 450kg of food per day. They are messy eaters, uprooting and scattering as much as is eaten. A single elephant can destroy a hectare of crops in a very short time.

Small farmers - often desperately pooor and already economically and nutritionally vulnerable, forced by circumstances to encroach into elephant habitat - can lose their entire livelihood overnight from an elephant raid. Large agriculture is also affected. In the largest palm oil producing province in Indonesia , Riau, losses due to elephant damage of oil palm plantations and timber estates are estimated to be around US$105 million per year.

People are also often injured and killed. In India, over 100 people are killed by elephants each year, and over 200 people have been killed in Kenya over the last 7 years. Elephants are often killed in retaliation. Wildlife authorities in Kenya shoot between 50 and 120 problem elephants each year and dozens of elephants are poisoned each year in oil palm plantations in Indonesia.

Over the last 100 years, African elephant populations have declined from 3-5 million to 400,000-660,000 and Asian elephant populations have declined from 100,000 to between 35, 000 and 50, 000. Habitat loss and conflict with people are the biggest threats to their continued survival.

WWF and its partners are working to reduce conflict with elephants through a range of techniques. These include: chilli and tobacco-based deterrents to keep elephants out of fields; changing farming practises - making farms easier to defend; growing crops that elephants don't like; education; and improving oil palm plantation practises in Malaysia and Indonesia. One example involves restoring degraded biological corridors to facilitate seasonal movement of elephants and other wildlife in the lowland Terai region of Nepal so that the animals don't need to travel through human habitatations and habitat management in protected areas in Nepal.

Bears and wolves

In Europe , since the time when humans became farmers and livestock breeders, conflict with large carnivores has existed. People’s property has been threatened by predators, particularly man as forests were cleared and prey populations were reduced. Many farmers resorted to persecution, and in many areas these carnivores were eliminated entirely.

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Wolves in Norway

Despite protests by WWF and other concerned partners, the beginning of 2005 saw another five wolves killed in Norway - a quarter of the country’s wolf population.

The Norwegian Government granted licences to hundreds of farmers to kill the wolves as a measure to prevent the actual or perceived loss of domestic livestock, primarily sheep. The controversy has also attracted critical comments from the Swedish minister of the environment who has accused Norway of taking unilateral decisions to manage what is a joint population.

The wolf (Canis lupus) became a protected species in Norway in 1973 and is cited on their red list of endangered species as 'critically endangered'. The Norwegian Ministry of the Environment is ultimately responsible for ensuring that there are viable populations of all red-listed species.

Bears in Europe

Bears throughout Europe (as elsewhere) are somtimes known to attack livestock and water pipes, raid orchards, attack rubbish bins and and on occasion storehouses of food. People are naturally scared of these large predators and the first reaction is to attack or shoot them.

However, attacks on humans do not appear to be a result of predatory behaviour, but rather a result of the bear defending itself, its cubs or a carcass against humans. The presence of a wounded bear is the most dangerous situation.
In Austria , teams of bear specialists sometimes capture and move a problem bear to a new area or work to condition the bear not to attack or dwell near human settlements.

 

WWF and its partners are working in many parts of Western Europe and Scandinavia to reintroduce bears, wolves, lynx, and bearded vultures, and to increase the populations of these species.

Reintroducing species is not always popular but many measures have been used to reduce conflict between the animals and humans including:

• Monitoring lynx numbers in Switzerland, and translocating animals once they have reached a maximum number in a particular area
• Working with farmers to protect livestock and property from large carnivores
• For example, training of Abruzzo mastiffs (a large dog breed) in Italy to protect sheep against wolf attacks
• Working with farmers in Sweden to minimize encounters with brown bears and wolves
• Compensation schemes for the Sami in Sweden for reindeer taken by wolves
• Education to gain public support for the presence of large carnivores.

Jaguars and Spectacled Bears in Latin America

Jaguars and Spectacled Bears are frequently hunted and trapped because people are scared of them and locals want to protect livestock and corn crops, a particular favourite of the bears.

WWF, with our many partners in the region, is exploring ways to reduce that conflict. That includes looking at alternative enclosures for livestock, infrared cameras to register the behaviour of jaguars, and compensation for jaguar attacks on livestock.

For Spectacled Bears, it means reducing bear mortalities induced by human conflicts. There are a range of solutions from growing different crops that bears don't like, to moving problem bears to different areas and also developing policy tools and protocols for managing human/bear conflict.

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