Building a resilient coexistence with wildlife in a more crowded world

Abstract

There is an urgent need to sustainably coexist with wildlife. However, realizing this goal is hampered by scant understanding of the processes that facilitate and maintain coexistence. Here, we synthesize human-wildlife interactions into eight archetypal outcomes, from eradication to sustained co-benefits, which collectively serve as a heuristic for forms of coexistence across a wide range of species and systems worldwide. We utilize resilience theory to elucidate how and why human-wildlife systems shift between these archetypes, yielding insights on research and policy priorities. We underscore the importance of governance structures that actively enhance the resilience of coexistence.

Fig. 1.

Archetypal outcomes of coadaptation between people and wildlife in shared areas. The outcomes are related to the degree to which people and wildlife adapt to each other. Outcomes in purple (A) are characterized largely by negative impacts and are not considered a state of coexistence (darker shades at bottom are farther from coexistence). In contrast, green outcomes (B) are characterized largely by positive impacts and, if sustained, can be referred to as states of coexistence (darker shades at right closer to coexistence). These archetypes are intended as a heuristic to understand human–wildlife systems and their positioning relative to the goal of achieving coexistence.

Fig. 2.

The hypothetical stability landscape for coexistence with hilltops and valleys. (A) Balls are found in the bottom of the valleys, which represent the coadaptation archetypes (i.e. stable states). These human–wildlife systems undergo perturbations in social-ecological conditions, which sometimes can shift them to different archetypes. (B) A 2-dimensional “ball and cup” representation of the stability landscape of two adjacent archetypes. Each archetype has a basin of attraction that describes its resilience to perturbations. Dashed circles indicate unstable systems. Large and persistent system perturbations, shown as brown arrows, can push systems over tipping points to other stable states (i.e. different archetypes). In addition to exogenous perturbations, (C) endogenous changes to the underlying sociopolitical and environmental contexts can cause a system to be more or less resilient to shifting to a different archetype.

Fig. 3.

Hypothesized shifts through time of archetypes of the human–gray wolf system in the American West. Purple circles indicate archetypes moving away from coexistence, whereas green circles are those archetypes moving toward coexistence. (A) In the past, shifting norms around wildlife and more protective policies were “system perturbations” that pushed the system from eradication over a tipping point to the conservation reliance archetype. This current archetype experiences perturbations, for example, ongoing disagreement between different groups of people about the desired future of wolf populations in the region. (B) Perturbations in sociopolitical or environmental conditions can shift the current archetype to those that are farther or closer to a state of coexistence. Note that archetypes that are moving away from coexistence are more resilient to change than those moving toward coexistence, reflecting the notion that coexistence with wolves is not a self-organizing state but one requiring active and adaptable governance. For more information on this case, please refer to the Supplementary Materials.