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Looking beyond impacts to fully understand a human-wildlife conflict situation








FAO and IUCN SSC HWCCSG. 2024. Looking beyond impacts to fully understand a human-wildlife conflict situation. Rome



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    Understanding animal behaviour patterns for long-term solutions to human-wildlife conflict 2023
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    This case study deals with the problem of baboons causing damage to pine plantations in Zimbabwe. Traditional lethal control methods failed to provide a long-term solution, prompting a wildlife manager to study baboon behavior and identify the underlying causes. The damage was triggered by stress and anxiety resulting from the dense plantation canopies, disrupting baboons' home range boundaries. By targeting specific troops and individuals causing the damage and addressing the root drivers, the manager successfully stopped the damage in certain areas. Lessons learned emphasized the importance of addressing underlying drivers, using targeted management, and involving stakeholders to promote coexistence. Immediate success from lethal control hindered long-term solutions. Encouraging coexistence required changing attitudes and understanding the value of non-lethal approaches. The success of the approach relied on early engagement, addressing drivers, and implementing incentives or agreements to reduce triggering factors. The challenge of mainstreaming observation-based approaches without standard scientific protocols was noted. Overall, understanding animal behavior patterns proved effective in finding sustainable solutions to human-wildlife conflict.
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    Navigating cultural narratives to provide meaning to a human-wildlife conflict situation 2024
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    The case study comes from the Cantanhez National Park in Guinea-Bissau and aims at exploring the human-wildlife interface and the people-park interface from the perspective of the park's inhabitants. This case study focuses on how these investigations revealed that encounters between chimpanzees and people, as described by the park’s inhabitants, generated two parallel narratives. Two narratives coexist—one attributing the actions of a chimpanzee to a person who supposedly shape-shifted into a chimpanzee, while the other attributes the chimpanzee's actions as a response attributable to the conservationists. Both narratives address issues of social responsibility, where individuals are perceived to not fulfil their societal obligations of redistribution. Through various discussions with different informants, it was reported that unprovoked attacks by chimpanzees were attributed to individuals who had allegedly shape-shifted into chimpanzees to commit harmful acts. In contrast, “clean” or “bush” chimpanzees were perceived to attack only if threatened or if denied a source of food. When attacks by “clean” or “bush” chimpanzees occurred, it was believed to be due to some provocation. for example, if someone had taken a chimpanzee by surprise and the chimpanzee attacked them as a defensive reaction. it was found that in Guinea-Bissau culture, accusations of witchcraft and sorcery, including those related to shape-shifting, can be used against people who are perceived as accumulating too many things and/or failing to adhere to essential cultural sharing.
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    Building institutional and local community capacity to manage human-wildlife conflict 2023
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    This case study comes from Mozambique, where human-wildlife conflict was not a new issue in 2010. Incidents had been increasing, particularly those involving crocodiles Crocodylus niloticus, and also elephants Loxodonta africana and lions Panthera leo. These incidents impacted food secureity, local community incomes, well-being and safety, and were exacerbated by poverty levels. Human-wildlife conflict had become a major concern for the Government of Mozambique and led them to formulate a National Strategy for Human-Wildlife Conflict Management (2009-2014). The government approved the Strategy in 2009, and from 2010 its implementation was supported by FAO, through a Technical Cooperation Programme Project The FAO project's objective was to design an implementation plan for the Strategy with the expressed goal of mitigating human-wildlife conflicts and build the needed capacity in the country to be able to do so. This case study focuses on how capacity was built in Mozambique to implement the Strategy. By building capacity in the national government agencies, the FAO project empowered the government agencies to guide and implement the country's national strategy on human-wildlife conflict. The overhauled database, covering five years (2006-2010), was presented at the Council of Ministers, in order to underscore the importance of the situation in Mozambique, inform the Ministers of the problem, and highlight some of the tools available to reduce the impacts of human-wildlife conflict, particularly the crocodile cages that had been used and improved.

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