Jolly Helina, Stronza Amanda
Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resoures, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont, USA.
Department of Ecology Behavior and Evolution, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA.
Conserv Biol. 2025 Apr;39(2):e14460. doi: 10.1111/cobi.14460.
Much work on human-wildlife conflict focuses on safeguarding wildlife from humans and vice versa, protecting humans, their crops, livestock, and property from wildlife, and mitigating negative, sometimes lethal encounters. The emphasis is on conflict, a framing that reinforces human-nature dualisms and instills the notion of humans and wild animals as adversaries. Although human-wildlife interactions are sometimes negative, they can also be neutral, coadaptive, and mutually beneficial. They can demonstrate coexistence. Conservationists have tended to overlook or simplify such relations. They have either failed to define coexistence or characterized it as the outcome of externally driven conservation strategies. Conflict has been perceived as the norm, with coexistence a distant ideal. This way of seeing ignores the many ways people have coexisted with wildlife and coadapted with wild animals in multispecies landscapes for generations. We encourage greater attention to Indigenous and traditional experiences and knowledge, and seeing how coexistence can be a norm, which sometimes includes negative interactions and conflict. Scholars in geography, anthropology, animal studies, philosophy, Indigenous studies, and multispecies ethnography offer insights into how paying attention to coexistence can reshape understanding of human-wildlife interactions that decenters humans, and actively supports ethical conservation. Contributions from social scientists include focusing on relational ways of thinking and seeing that the lives of humans and other beings are intertwined and not governed solely by conflict.
许多关于人类与野生动物冲突的研究都聚焦于保护野生动物免受人类侵害，反之亦然，保护人类、他们的庄稼、牲畜和财产免受野生动物侵害，并减轻负面的、有时甚至是致命的遭遇。重点在于冲突，这种框架强化了人与自然的二元对立，并灌输了人类和野生动物是对手的观念。尽管人类与野生动物的互动有时是负面的，但它们也可能是中性的、共同适应的和互利的。它们可以展示共存。保护主义者往往忽视或简化了这种关系。他们要么未能定义共存，要么将其描述为外部驱动的保护策略的结果。冲突被视为常态，共存则是遥远的理想。这种看待方式忽略了人们在多物种景观中与野生动物共存并与野生动物共同适应的多种方式，这种情况已经持续了几代人。我们鼓励更多地关注本土和传统经验与知识，以及了解共存如何能够成为一种常态，其中有时包括负面互动和冲突。地理、人类学、动物研究、哲学、本土研究和多物种民族志领域的学者提供了一些见解，即关注共存如何能够重塑对人类与野生动物互动的理解，这种理解将人类置于次要地位，并积极支持符合伦理的保护。社会科学家的贡献包括关注关系性的思维和看待方式，即人类和其他生物的生命相互交织，并非仅仅由冲突所主导。
