Identifying the potential for sustainable human–wildlife coexistence by integrating willingness to coexist with habitat suitability models

Abstract

Persistence of large mammals in the Anthropocene depends on human willingness to coexist with them, but this is rarely incorporated into habitat suitability or conservation priority assessments. We propose a framework that integrates human willingness-to-coexist with habitat suitability assessments to identify areas of high potential for sustainable coexistence. We demonstrate its applicability for elephants and rhinos in the socio-ecological system of Maasai Mara, Kenya, by integrating spatial distributions of people's willingness-to-coexist based on Bayesian hierarchical models using 556 household interviews, with socio-ecological habitat suitability mapping validated with long-term elephant observations from aerial surveys. Willingness-to-coexist was higher if people had little personal experience with a species, and strongly reduced by experiencing a species as a threat to humans. The sustainable coexistence potential framework highlights areas of low socio-ecological suitability, and areas that require more effort to increase positive stakeholder engagement to achieve long-term persistence of large herbivores in human-dominated landscapes.