Behavioral Causes, Ecological Consequences, and Management Challenges Associated with Wildlife Foraging in Human-Modified Landscapes

Abstract

Humans have altered up to half of the world's land surface. Wildlife living within or close to these human-modified landscapes are presented with opportunities and risks associated with feeding on human-derived foods (e.g., agricultural crops and food waste). Understanding whether and how wildlife adapts to these landscapes is a major challenge, with thousands of studies published on the topic over the past 10 years. In the present article, we build on established theoretical frameworks to understand the behavioral causes of crop and urban foraging by wildlife. We then develop and extend this framework to describe the multifaceted ecological consequences of crop and urban foraging for the individuals and populations in which they arise, with emphasis on social species for which interactions with people are, on balance, negative (commonly referred to as raiding species). Finally, we discuss the management challenges faced by urban and rural land managers, businesses, and government organizations in mitigating human–wildlife conflicts and propose ways to improve the lives of both wildlife and humans living in human-modified landscapes and to promote coexistence.

Beauty or beast? Farmers’ dualistic views and the influence of aesthetic appreciation on tolerance towards black-backed jackal and caracal

“…"Noodletjie" could therefore be translated by "little Noodle" in a positive, affectionate way. The word elicitation exercise did not highlight the use of significantly more negative terms towards jackal than caracal ðw 2 1 ¼ 2:491, P = 0.1145), but there were significantly more positive terms used for caracal than jackal ðw 2 1 ¼ 4:925, P = 0.0265).…”

“…Mesocarnivores (i.e., midsized carnivores <15kg that outnumber large carnivores in terms of species richness and fulfil a myriad of ecological roles [ 1 ]) present particular attributes such as small size and both behavioral and ecological flexibility, which are important traits for persisting in anthropogenic landscapes [ 2 ]. They are thus more likely to interact with people and domestic animals than their larger counterparts [ 3 ].…”

Socioecology Explains Individual Variation in Urban Space Use in Response to Management in Cape Chacma Baboons (Papio ursinus)

“…In the meantime, management should continue to develop other tools to reduce baboon-human conflict, e.g. baboon-proofed fences and baboon-proofing property and bins (see Fehlmann et al, 2020;Hoffman & O'Riain, 2012a;Kaplan et al, 2011 for discussions). Integrating social sciences research to understand perceptions of individual baboons of different size and sex would further inform management of how and why these low-ranking females have greater access to urban spaces; for example, there may be differences in people's perception of the damage caused, and the threat posed, between male and female baboons (Mormile & Hill, 2017).…”

Flexible group cohesion and coordination, but robust leader–follower roles, in a wild social primate using urban space

“…Owing to the challenges involved in tracking the behaviours of many individuals simultaneously, we are only just beginning to understand the collective behaviour of wild social groups [1][2][3] and know little about whether and how it changes in anthropogenic environments. This is an important gap in knowledge given the critical influence collective behaviours exert on group dynamics, individual fitness and social evolution [4][5][6] and the increasing spatial overlap between wildlife and humans worldwide [7].…”

“…sex and age: [31][32][33]), with consequences for group-level patterns of behaviour. For example, changes in resources and risks can prevent individuals from foraging together at specific locations [27,34,35], exaggerating differences in motivation or hunger among individuals and creating conflicts of interest [7,36]. Specific to the Cape baboons, field rangers are also more likely to herd baboons in urban space [9,12] with a focus on the core of the group, providing opportunities for more peripheral individuals to use urban space [18].…”