As wild areas disappear and agricultural lands expand, understanding how people and wildlife can coexist becomes increasingly important. Human–wildlife conflicts (HWCs) are obstacles to coexistence and negatively affect both wildlife populations and the livelihood of people. To facilitate coexistence, a number of frameworks have been developed to both understand the drivers of conflict and then to find solutions that mitigate conflict. However, each framework has different foci and strengths in particular stages of analysis. Here, we propose an integrated framework that leverages the individual strengths of previously fairly isolated methodologies, allowing for holistic HWC analysis. The framework for participatory impact assessment (FoPIA) provides a toolset for developing wildlife scenarios, selecting assessment indicators and assessing the impact of different scenarios. The social‐ecological framework of ecosystem services and disservices (SEEDS) analyzes the ecosystem services trade‐offs related to scenarios, and the 3i stakeholder analysis approach, supports the identification of stakeholders and provides a mechanism to explore, in detail stakeholders' interests, relative influence, and how outcomes of research are likely to impact different stakeholders. We apply these approaches to eastern Germany, where the increase in several wildlife populations (i.e., wild boar, common crane, gray wolf, and European bison) has contributed to conflict with people. We demonstrate the complementarity of FoPIA, SEEDS, and 3i in identifying stakeholder needs and showing how wildlife dynamics may affect coexistence and create imbalanced ecosystem service and disservice distributions. The integrated framework introduced here provides guidelines for analyzing the multistage process of stakeholder participation and enables a comprehensive approach to the complex challenge of HWCs.
Biodiversity conservation in protected areas requires strict legal limitations to land use. In the Civilian Control Zone (CCZ) of the Republic of Korea (ROK), military control has created an accidental sanctuary for the world's rarest crane species: the white‐naped crane (Antigone vipio) and the red‐crowned crane (Grus japonensis). Yet varying land use demands on the CCZ by stakeholders have caused disagreements in achieving cooperative crane conservation. This paper aims to clarify relevant stakeholders' interconnection and their motives that have led them to either promote or inhibit crane conservation in the Cheorwon Basin of the CCZ. To answer these questions, we conducted participatory Net‐Map interviews and identified stakeholders with a powerful role in crane conservation. Our results identify 44 stakeholders whose trust relations occurred twice as often as conflicts. More than 80% of stakeholders included in this study supported crane conservation initiatives. We attribute local farmers' increased level of environmental stewardship to two key schemes: a community‐led farming project generating financial incentives and a communication channel for stakeholders. Our case study demonstrates that Net‐Map is a valid tool to analyze human‐crane interactions, which is critical to ensure acceptance of legal restrictions to land use as well as crane conservation.
While agricultural intensification and expansion are major factors driving loss and degradation of natural habitat and species decline, some wildlife species also benefit from agriculturally managed habitats. This may lead to high population densities with impacts on both human livelihoods and wildlife conservation. Cranes are a group of 15 species worldwide, affected both negatively and positively by agricultural practices. While eleven species face critical population declines, numbers of common cranes (Grus grus) and sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis) have increased drastically in the last 40 years. Their increase is associated with higher incidences of crane foraging on agricultural crops, causing financial losses to farmers. Our aim was to synthesize scientific knowledge on the bilateral effects of land use change and crane populations. We conducted a systematic literature review of peer‐reviewed publications on agriculture‐crane interactions (n = 135) and on the importance of agricultural crops in the diet of cranes (n = 81). Agricultural crops constitute a considerable part of the diet of all crane species (average of 37%, most frequently maize (Zea mays L.) and wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)). Crop damage was identified in only 10% of all agriculture‐crane interactions, although one‐third of interactions included cranes foraging on cropland. Using a conceptual framework analysis, we identified two major pathways in agriculture‐crane interactions: (1) habitat loss with negative effects on crane species dependent on specific habitats, and (2) expanding agricultural habitats with superabundant food availability beneficial for opportunistic crane species. The degree to which crane species can adapt to agricultural land use changes may be an important factor explaining their population response. We conclude that multi‐objective management needs to combine land sparing and land sharing strategies at landscape scale. To support viable crane populations while guaranteeing sustainable agricultural production, it is necessary to include the perspectives of diverse stakeholders and streamline conservation initiatives and agricultural policy accordingly.
Biodiversity conservation is one of the most important objectives of protected areas. Most biodiversity assessment-related studies use the change in species abundance data to measure the level of biodiversity conservation. Yet for many areas, long-term species data are not available and thus it is necessary to use biodiversity indices to monitor the effect of land use (LU) changes or the impact of protected area establishment. Poyang Lake wetland is one of the most important wintering sites for migratory water birds on the East Asian–Australasian flyway. To protect this habitat, 14 nature reserves were created in the region between 1997 and 2003. This paper aims to assess the effect of nature reserve creation on the status of habitat for overwintering water birds in Poyang Lake wetland by analysing LU and land cover data from 1995, 2005 and 2015. We developed a composite biodiversity index to search for current biodiversity hotspots (conservation priority) in the study area. An integrated approach consisting of the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs model, GIS, fragment analysis and hotspot analysis was used to realize our objective. Our results showed that the creation of the nature reserve had positive effects on overwintering water bird habitat. However, tremendous changes (such as change of habitat area, quality and fragmentation) within and outside the nature reserve showed that the role of protected area still needs to be further discussed. Moreover, regional synthesis LU management plans such as ecological restoration should be carried out. The results of the habitat assessment also indicate that a comprehensive biodiversity index framework based on net primary productivity, habitat connectivity and habitat quality could be more efficient in assessing biodiversity and defining a reasonable protected area, from data obtain in large scale perspective.
This Scientific Impact Paper summarizes the changes in policy and practice of crane conservation that have occurred since our 2019 research in the Cheorwon Basin located in the Civilian Control Zone (CCZ) of the Republic of Korea (ROK). Changes in National Policy as well as increased engagement of conservation NGOs have led to more engagement of farmers in safeguarding crane habitat in their fields. Yet the current system of low‐intensity rice farming is dependent on military land‐use restrictions.
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