- Communities living alongside wildlife bear immediate and recurring costs—from crop loss and injury to disrupted routines—while the benefits of conservation are often diffuse and global in scope.
- These burdens are disproportionately carried by rural and Indigenous communities, many of whom are excluded from decisions about land use and conservation, despite being most affected by them.
- Conservation efforts are increasingly incorporating rights-based approaches, compensation schemes, and conflict mitigation strategies, but their effectiveness remains inconsistent and often insufficient to offset real losses.
- The long-term success of conservation depends on whether it can align ecological goals with the stability and wellbeing of local communities, rather than relying on unequal sacrifice to sustain protected areas.
“Let us stop talking about human-wildlife conflict. Some of us live with this reality and we pay a heavy price for sharing space with wildlife.”
The remark was made by a community leader at the 2023 Community-led Conservation Congress in Namibia. It was not framed as a critique of conservation policy so much as a correction to how it is described. The phrase “human-wildlife conflict” appears frequently in reports and strategies, often as a category that can be measured and managed. For those living closest to wildlife, the experience it refers to is less abstract and less contained.
“Have you ever seen how an elephant kills a person?” the same speaker asked. What followed was a detailed account of a fatal encounter during a routine trip to collect firewood: the animal catching up to a woman as she ran, throwing her, and then crushing her body. The description is difficult to read. It is also part of what is being described when conflict is reduced to a term.
Elsewhere, the cost is expressed in more tangible terms, as recounted by Kendi Borona in a commentary published on Mongabay last September. A farmer in East Africa described taking out a loan to shift from pastoralism to agriculture after repeated livestock losses. He leased land, planted tomatoes, and paid someone to guard the fields through the night. When the crop was ready, heavy rain prevented the vehicle from reaching the farm. During that delay, elephants entered and consumed the harvest.
The loss was not only the crop. It included the loan, the labor, and the expectation of repayment that had shaped the decision to plant in the first place. For households operating with limited reserves, such events are not isolated setbacks. They can determine what is planted next season, whether credit is available again, and how risk is understood going forward.
Accounts like these appear across conservation landscapes. They vary in detail but share a pattern: exposure to wildlife brings a set of recurring costs that are disproportionately borne. These costs are not limited to dramatic encounters. They include the cumulative effects of guarding fields at night, adjusting travel routes, or avoiding certain areas during particular times of year. In some places, families report keeping children home from school when wildlife movements increase, or altering daily routines in ways that are rarely captured in formal assessments.
The language of coexistence is often used to describe the desired outcome of conservation in these areas. It suggests a balance in which people and wildlife share space in ways that allow both to persist. In practice, that balance is not experienced equally.
The benefits of conservation are often framed at broader scales: ecosystems preserved, species protected, carbon stored, and watersheds maintained. The costs tend to be immediate and local. They are borne by those living in or near protected areas and wildlife corridors, often with limited capacity to absorb loss or shift livelihoods.
This asymmetry has a long history. In many regions, protected areas were established through processes that restricted access to land and resources or displaced communities from territories they had used for generations. These decisions were typically justified in ecological terms. Their social consequences were treated as secondary or unavoidable.
In some places, those patterns continue to shape present conditions. Residents near protected areas often describe being excluded from decisions that affect how land is used and who can access it. Others point to the distance between decision-making and lived experience.
“How can someone that has never lived in our land know how to care for it? How can our people and our lands be managed by laws made by people that live outside the forest and away from the great plains?” stated the Laboot Declaration issued by a group of East African Indigenous communities in 2022.
Over the past two decades, conservation organizations and donors have increasingly adopted the language of participation, rights, and inclusion. Concepts such as Free, Prior and Informed Consent are now embedded in many policies. Community-based approaches and benefit-sharing mechanisms are more widely discussed than in the past.
These shifts reflect a growing recognition that conservation cannot be sustained without the involvement of the people who live in these landscapes. They also reflect responses to documented cases where exclusionary approaches led to conflict, resistance, or harm.
Implementation, however, remains inconsistent.
Across the Congo Basin, reporting has documented allegations of abuse linked to conservation enforcement, including beatings, intimidation, and other violations. In response, some projects have introduced grievance mechanisms intended to provide a channel for complaints and redress. These systems are meant to allow individuals to report incidents, seek mediation, and access legal support.
In the town of Bayanga, on the edge of Dzanga-Sangha National Park in the Central African Republic, a human rights center has taken on that role. Since 2022, it has provided legal aid in hundreds of cases, ranging from disputes over wages and loans to physical violence and sexual abuse.
For some residents, the center has created access to institutions that were previously out of reach. It helps individuals obtain identity documents, accompanies victims to hospitals, and follows cases through the court system. Its staff also conduct outreach, explaining rights and encouraging people to come forward.
“The center helped me,” Djappa Sidonie, a Ba’aka woman living in Bayanga, told Mongabay’s David Akana, describing how she received medical care and legal support after an incident of domestic violence. Before, she added, access to such services had been limited.
The center has also become a point of contact for grievances related to conservation activities. According to those involved, complaints directly tied to conservation enforcement have become less frequent in recent years, while issues related to human-wildlife interactions—such as crop damage or injury—still remain.
For park authorities, this distinction is important. It suggests that some of the most acute tensions around enforcement may be easing, even as other pressures persist. In cases of injury or damage linked to wildlife, families may receive support for medical costs or compensation for losses.
These measures are part of a broader set of responses that have emerged across conservation landscapes. Compensation schemes for crop loss and livestock depredation are now common in many countries. Where they function effectively—where payments are timely, accessible, and aligned with actual losses—they can reduce tension and help households recover.
In many contexts, their performance is less consistent however. Payments may be delayed or incomplete. Verification processes can be difficult to navigate. Losses that fall outside formal criteria may not be recognized at all. For households operating with limited margins, the gap between loss and compensation can have lasting effects.
Efforts to reduce conflict through technical means have also expanded. These include fencing, deterrents, and early warning systems designed to prevent wildlife from entering fields or settlements. In some areas, such measures have reduced the frequency of encounters or the scale of damage.
They also require ongoing labor, maintenance, and coordination, often provided by the same communities facing the risk. The responsibility for implementing these measures does not always come with equivalent support.
The presence of these mechanisms reflects a shift in how conservation understands its relationship with people. These mechanisms are now common. Their effectiveness is far less consistent.
For communities, the experience of these systems varies. In some places, compensation arrives in time to offset loss. In others, delays or gaps deepen frustration. In some areas, grievance mechanisms are used and trusted. In others, they are little known or seen as ineffective.
This variation influences how conservation is perceived at the local level. Where systems work, they can build trust and create a sense that costs are acknowledged. Where they do not, they can reinforce the perception that conservation imposes burdens without adequate support.
The relationship between people and wildlife is not inherently adversarial. In many regions, communities have long histories of managing and coexisting with wildlife through cultural practices and local knowledge systems that regulate use and access. In parts of East Africa, programs such as the Lion Guardians initiative have built on these traditions, employing local Maasai to monitor lions and prevent conflict while maintaining cultural ties to the landscape. Elsewhere, these systems have been disrupted by external interventions that redefine land tenure, authority, and resource use.
In many instances, protected areas are designated with little or no consultation with local communities, resulting in the sudden loss of access to land and resources that have supported livelihoods for generations. The legal framework can transform traditional ways of life into unlawful acts overnight, displacing entire communities and restricting their ability to continue their customary practices.
The consequences of such changes extend beyond access to land. They affect how people relate to their environment, how knowledge is transmitted, and how livelihoods are structured. When access to forests, grazing areas, water sources, or access to wild foods is restricted, communities may be pushed into new forms of economic activity that carry different risks.
In some cases, pastoralists turn to agriculture as livestock losses increase. Farming, in turn, brings its own exposure to wildlife through crop raiding.
These dynamics are shaped by broader pressures. Land availability is affected by conservation designations, agricultural expansion, infrastructure development, and climate change. As space becomes more constrained, wildlife and people are brought into closer proximity. The frequency of encounters increases, as does the potential for loss.
In practice, coexistence is worked out through daily decisions—where to plant, when to travel, and how to respond to risk—shaped by access to land, control over resources, and the support available when losses occur.
Where communities have secure tenure, meaningful participation in governance, and access to resources, conservation outcomes tend to be more stable. Where these conditions are absent, tensions are more likely to emerge.
This has implications beyond fairness. Conservation efforts are more likely to hold where local communities experience them as compatible with their own stability.
Where the opposite is true, cooperation becomes harder to sustain.
In some cases, this leads to resistance or disengagement. These outcomes are often framed as failures of communication or enforcement. They can also be understood as responses to incentives. When the costs of conservation are immediate and personal, and the benefits are distant or uncertain, the rational choices of individuals and households may not align with conservation objectives.
Addressing this requires changes in how conservation distributes costs and benefits, and how it defines success. It also requires attention to the scale at which impacts are measured. Metrics that capture ecological outcomes do not always reflect the lived experience of those bearing the cost.
There are examples where different approaches are being tested. Community-managed conservation areas and co-management agreements aim to give local communities a greater role in decision-making and a more direct share in benefits. Some initiatives focus on aligning conservation outcomes with livelihood improvements, rather than treating them as separate goals.
Results vary. Not all initiatives achieve their intended outcomes. Where they do, they often involve secure rights, inclusive governance, and sustained support over time.
These conditions are not easily established. They depend on policy frameworks, funding models, and institutional practices that extend beyond individual projects.
Global conservation targets, such as the goal of protecting 30% of land and sea by 2030, will require decisions about land use that affect large numbers of people. The way these decisions are implemented will shape both social and ecological outcomes.
If the current distribution of costs persists, the burden will continue to fall on those least able to absorb it, with consequences for the long-term stability of conservation itself.
For those living with wildlife, the cost of coexistence accumulates over time: a harvest lost, a route avoided, a night spent awake, a decision made differently because of what has happened before.
These experiences rarely appear in how conservation is described, though they shape how it is lived.
If conservation is to hold, it will need to account more fully for the people who live with its consequences—in how projects are designed, how resources are allocated, and how success is measured.
Whether conservation can hold under these conditions remains uncertain.
Other pieces in this series:
Conservation depends on rangers. Their wellbeing is often an afterthought
Credits
This story first appeared on Mongabay
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