Conference Agenda

In the last decades, human activities have become a major force of biophysical changes in our planet, leading to unprecedented consequences for the ecological processes that govern our natural environments. Scientific knowledge about the impact of global change on ecological communities and ecosystems primarily focuses on human actions affecting the relationships between non-human species. However, though largely overlooked in the literature, these effects certainly also play an important role in shaping complex ecological dynamics in human-dominated landscapes and mediating the intensity and occurrence of negative human-wildlife interactions. In this presentation we will review the different mechanisms by which the components of global change can drive human-wildlife conflicts. We will focus on the different ways by which climate change, land-system dynamics, biodiversity loss, altered biogeochemical flows, biological invasions and other components of global change can influence existing conflicts or result in new ones. Our final goal is to propose a novel perspective about which pathways can force terrestrial vertebrates to enter in conflict with humans due to altered environmental conditions.

In the Anthropocene, the prevalence of human modification (HM) within a species’ range can help to identify vulnerable populations and implement conservation strategies. We assessed the extent of HM in relation to carnivore global species richness and within the distributional range of 255 terrestrial carnivores. We also evaluated the spatial heterogeneity of HM across regions and determined which carnivore traits influenced HM prevalence using regression trees. We found that ~6% of terrestrial areas comprised high carnivore species richness that corresponded to low HM. However, globally, 37.8% of all carnivores’ ranges experience high to very high human pressures raising concerns about population persistence and conservation effectiveness. The average human modification index (meanHMI) across all carnivore species was 0.331 with species ranges within East Asia and West and East Africa being are most vulnerable to rampant HM. The meanHMI was predicted best by range size, family, and temporal activity pattern of the species. Ultimately, our findings highlight carnivore populations that both appear resilient and are vulnerable due to HM, helping to identify areas where adaptation and consistence strategies persist and other populations likely experiencing human-wildlife conflict and at-risk of range contractions, respectively.

The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is an area where natural vegetation is located close to settlements. Usually, it is divided into two types: interface and intermix. In interface, settlements abut natural vegetation, while in intermix houses are located within natural vegetation. WUI is a global phenomenon and its existence may support human-wildlife interactions, or wildlife damage to humans. In this study, we used a set of WUI maps of the Polish Carpathians to analyse the impact on the occurrence of damages caused by wolves, bears and lynx. We found that although the proportion of WUI in the commune does not directly explain the high number of damages, most of the damages occurred in WUI. While most wolf-dependent damages are located in Interface, bear-related incidents happened in Intermix WUI. We also found that a significant part of the damages took place in areas that were WUI many decades ago, which shows the existence has a strong legacy effect. There is a need to avoid settlement expansion into wildlands, especially in areas where large carnivores are recovering, to reduce the potential negative impact of their presence in human-dominated landscape.

Acknowledgements

The study was supported by the National Science Centre, Poland, contract no. UMO-2019/35/D/HS4/00117.

Wildlife comebacks have motivated controversy over the convenience to downgrade the conservation status of species after certain baselines are reached. The debate often downplays the relative magnitude of recent recovery as compared to historical declines. Historically, human activities have displaced large carnivores from the most productive landscapes. Therefore, marginal lands may have acted as Anthropocene refugia, allowing the long-term persistence of species in habitats with less conflict with humans. We analysed the magnitude of historical brown bear and wolf ranges, and how contractions may have been driven by people’s historical occupation of land. We modelled fine-scale bear and wolf occurrences over 700 and 170 years, respectively, using unique historical records from Spain. In the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods, bear distribution covered much broader bioclimatic conditions. The signal of land-use on species occurrences could be detected as early as in the 14th century, while only two relict populations persisted since the 18th century. In contrast, wolf was widespread two centuries ago and experienced a 70% reduction since then. Remarkably, the most suitable areas for recolonization coincide with historically suitable areas. Our work supports the land-use refugia hypothesis and calls for full consideration of historical decline patterns in modern conservation.

The conservation of large carnivores in human-dominated landscapes is challenging for multiple reasons. For instance, carnivores like the grey wolf (Canis lupus) need to move frequently across multi-use landscapes, and human-caused mortality can have substantial effects on population dynamics, which in turn can affect conflict occurrence. We built a spatially-explicit individual based model (SE-IBM) to simulate the dynamics and dispersal of the wolf population in the Iberian Peninsula, where wolves have not expanded their range in the past 30 years despite ample suitable habitat. Our IBM shows unexpected high mortality rates for residents and dispersers. High mortality rates create vacant territories and social openings in packs, which lead to short dispersal events and high turnover of territories. We also showed that reductions in mortality rates lead to wolf expansion across currently unoccupied habitats, and that potential changes in land cover and resource availability are expected to affect recolonization processes. Human attitudes towards wolves may greatly determine the extent of conflicts under recovery scenarios. Our study enables a better understanding of how human-caused mortality influences population dynamics in wolves and vulnerability to conflict, thus allowing prioritization of management actions to foster coexistence.

Climate change and human-wildlife conflict are both pressing challenges for biodiversity conservation and human wellbeing in the Anthropocene. Climate change is a critical yet underappreciated amplifier of human-wildlife conflict, as it exacerbates resource scarcity, alters human and animal behaviors and distributions, and increases human-wildlife encounters. Such conflicts disrupt both subsistence livelihoods and industrial economies, and may accelerate the rate at which human-wildlife conflict drives wildlife declines. We synthesize evidence on climate-driven conflicts occurring among 10 taxonomic orders, on six continents, and in all five oceans. We further highlight incredible diversity in the forms of conflict occurring and climate drivers underlying such interactions. We introduce a framework describing distinct environmental, ecological, and sociopolitical pathways through which climate variability and change percolate through complex social-ecological systems to influence patterns and outcomes of human-wildlife interactions. We conclude by discussing how explicit consideration of climate change can aid conflict mitigation and climate change adaptation to limit the impacts of human-wildlife conflict on biodiversity conservation and human wellbeing in a changing climate, drawing upon lessons learned from case studies.