Research On The Current Situation And Conservation Management Of Human-Wildlife Conflict Around Giant Panda National Park

With the increase of human activities and social development,global biodiversity is continuously lost.Biodiversity conservation,sustainable development,and the construction of ecological civilization have become key strategies for the development of the world today.In recent years,as the effectiveness of conservation has been highlighted,human-wildlife conflicts(HWC)have been occurring around the protected area,bringing obstacles to the management of the protected area and biodiversity conservation work.Correct understanding of HWC is the key to achieving the vision of “living in harmony with nature”.There is now a growing number of studies that recognize the complexity of HWC,which involves multiple fields such as ecology,anthropology,psychology,and economics,and that single-disciplinary approaches alone are insufficient to resolve it.Here,in order to determine the priority mitigation area of HWC around the Giant Panda National Park(GPNP),we develop a sociologyecology-psychology interdisciplinary integration method for the first time.We have investigated the current situation of HWC and assessed the spatial distribution of HWC risks.And we explore the factors that affect people’s attitudes toward wildlife on account of the people’s basic information in the questionnaire: whether they encounter conflicts,their income,and other social factors.Finally,a multi-objective decisionmaking method is used to determine the current priority mitigation areas of HWC combining the risk of HWC and human attitudes towards wildlife.Our research results can provide new ideas and tools for the planning of GPNP and HWC management,and provide reference and experience for the management of other hot spots of HWC,and also have perspectives for the management of protected areas on a global scale.The Giant Panda National Park(GPNP)of China aims to protect the biodiversity and typical fragile ecosystems of giant pandas and their sympatric species,and promote the economic and industrial structure of local communities,thereby promoting the coordination between ecological protection and economic society,and realizing the harmonious coexistence between man and nature.In recent years,conflicts around GPNP have become more frequent.If we cannot take timely mitigation measures,people may have widespread and irreversible negative emotions towards wildlife,and the negative impact on the national park.We randomly investigate people’s attitudes toward wildlife in the communities surrounding the GPNP.A total of 947 valid questionnaires were returned.The most involved serious species were wild boar(Sus scrofa),Tibetan macaque(Macaca thibetana),black bear(Ursus thibetanus).We used Max Ent to assess its habitat suitability index and Circuitscape to assess its connectivity in the study area.The results showed that the habitats of wild boar,Tibetan macaques and black bear were widely distributed in the study area,mainly in the mountainous forest areas in the central part of the study area,while they were less distributed in the eastern human settlements.Wild boars and black bears were more connected and penetrated deeper into the surrounding residential areas along their habitats,while Tibetan macaques were less connected and concentrated mainly in the central forest area.We also used ensemble species distribution models(ESDM)to predict the spatial risk of HWCs.The most important factor affecting the risk of HWC was the distance to roads.Overall,wild boars had more medium and high risk areas than Tibetan macaques and black bears;these were concentrated in forested areas around the protected areas,while bleeding into the surrounding human settlements.In this study,we examined the conflict between humans and multiple species and explored for the first time the interactions between human psychology and wildlife conservation.In general,it was found that people’s attitude was driven by whether they have encountered conflicts in the past,while gender,age,the primary source of income and,income level had less effect on attitudes.The results implied that wild boar was the most problematic species for HWC in the study area and that encounters with wild boars have resulted in more negative attitudes towards other wild species.The GLM results suggested that people who had experienced conflicts between humans and wild boars were more likely to have negative feelings about the Tibetan macaques and the black bears,two second-class protected species in China,and even to have less favorable feelings toward the giant panda,a world symbol of biodiversity conservation.This stimulus generalization has far-reaching implications for conservation management across the region.Highlighting priority mitigation areas enables valuable protection resources to reach the areas where they are most needed and to take the most appropriate measures based on risk and attitude factors to improve protection efficiency.Aiming at the ecology and sociology,we proposed two ways to mitigate HWC: the first is to reduce the risk of HWC through ecological measures,that is,to take preventive measures in high-risk areas to reduce incidence rates,such as building fences,changing crop types,and developing eco-tourism.The other is to alleviate people’s negative emotions about wildlife through sociological measures,that is,ecological compensation,wildlife accident insurance,and ecological protection publicity and education are adopted to enhance people’s cooperation for ecological protection.In general,to realize the beautiful vision of harmonious coexistence between humans and nature,managers urgently need to alleviate the risk of HWC and the division of people’s attitudes towards wild animals.The whole work lays a solid foundation for the management and decisionmaking of HWC in GPNP and provides a reference for mitigating HWC in other parts of the world.