Community perception of the real impacts of human-wildlife conflict in Laikipia, Kenya: Capturing the relative significance of high-frequency, low-severity events

Abstract

Biodiversity conservation outside protected areas requires cooperation from affected communities, hence the extensive discussions of trade-offs in conservation, and of a so-called new conservation that addresses human relations with nature more fully. Human-wildlife conflict is one aspect of those relations, and as land use intensifies around protected areas the need to understand and manage its effects will only increase. Research on human-wildlife conflict often focuses on individual species but given that protecting wildlife requires protecting habitat, assessments of human-wildlife conflict should include subsidiary impacts that are associated with ecosystem conditions. Using a case study from Laikipia, Kenya, where conservation outside protected areas is critical, we analysed human-wildlife conflict from a household perspective, exploring the full range of impacts experienced by community members on Makurian Group Ranch. We addressed questions about four themes: (1) the relationship between experienced and reported human-wildlife conflict; (2) the results of a high-resolution assessment of experienced human-wildlife conflict; (3) the relative impact of high-frequency, low-severity conflict vs high-severity, low-frequency conflict; and (4) the effect of experienced conflict on receptivity to the conservation narrative. Our results show that high-frequency, low-severity conflict, which is often absent from reports and discussion in the literature, is a significant factor in shaping a community's perception of the cost-benefit ratio of conservation. Local, ongoing, high-resolution monitoring of human-wildlife conflict may facilitate more realistic and effective incorporation of the experienced impacts of human-wildlife conflict in conservation planning and management. Such monitoring could help to define locally appropriate trade-offs in conservation and thereby improve conservation outcomes.