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Efforts to promote human‐wildlife coexistence may be overly focused on wildlife‐related costs and benefits. We conducted research in Mozambique to gain insights into how governance of wildlife influences potential for human‐wildlife coexistence. Mozambique is an under‐studied region with a unique history of Portuguese rule, extended civil unrest, substantial wildlife trafficking, and current re‐wilding efforts. We conducted surveys, logistic regression, and hotspot analysis to assess which variables are correlated with positive attitudes toward living with wildlife. Most respondents (61%) expressed positive attitudes toward living with wildlife. Attitudes were positively correlated with age, gender, distance from the park, wildlife benefits, restricted access to natural resources, and agreement with wildlife rules. Conflict with wildlife (i.e., livestock predation, human harm, and crop loss) were not significant predictors of attitudes. Respondents who agreed with the rules governing wildlife were 30‐times more likely to have positive attitudes. This new and important finding highlights the possibility that institutions that address environmental justice, including the devolution of wildlife to local communities, may be more salient than the conventional measures of costs and benefits for understanding human‐wildlife coexistence. Our results suggest that much more attention should be dedicated to the role of local institutions in promoting human‐wildlife coexistence. Developing adaptations and institutions to support coexistence of humans and wildlife in shared landscapes outside protected areas is vital. We found that local institutions governing wildlife were highly correlated with positive attitudes toward living with wildlife. This suggests far more attention should be paid to the role of institutions in human‐wildlife coexistence efforts.

Stewardship of wildlife within lands managed by Indigenous peoples and local communities has relied on traditional knowledge and skills yet faces challenges amid social and economic changes that can weaken enduring social-ecological relations. Wildlife conservation initiatives frequently lean on community-based wildlife management (CBWM) to foster sustainable use while ensuring community involvement in decision making. In practice, CBWM has often remained tightly linked to top-down or externally driven processes with quick negative conclusions being drawn about the capacity of communities to manage local wildlife, without further investigating the foundational conditions of stewardship. This study proposes a theoretical model for place-based stewardship that builds on the care-knowledge-agency framework, grounding it in mentored practices and environmental virtue. Our model does not discount the importance of devolved governance systems and legitimate leadership but highlights the parallel requirement for virtuous local decision-making processes, which emerge from mentored practice, rooted in place-based knowledge, and nurtured by care. We illustrate this model with case studies from Guyana and the Democratic Republic of Congo, drawing on lessons learned to develop a generic theory of change that can be adapted to guide the development of tailored interventions for the consolidation of stewardship in the context of CBWM. We argue that CBWM initiatives involving Indigenous peoples and local communities cannot view wildlife management as disconnected from strategies for self-determination within a context of reappropriation of customary lands and may require enabling actions to recover agency and place-based care through reconnection to the territory and mentored practice.

Decentralisation of environmental governance (DEG) proliferated around the world in the 1990s, inspired, in part, by theories of common-pool resource governance that argued that local communities could sustainably manage valuable but non-excludable resources given a set of proper institutional design principles. However, many species of wildlife, such as predators that consume livestock or herbivores that destroy crops, are considered undesirable by local communities; this challenges the applicability of DEG models for managing wildlife in these contexts. Numerous scholars have proposed methods to generate economic value from locally undesired wildlife species to incentivise their conservation, but the overall success of these approaches has been mixed. We explore the intersection of DEG and the management of wildlife entangled in human-wildlife conflict and challenge the assumption that simple models of devolution and decentralisation will lead to the successful governance of wildlife in such circumstances. We argue that conflict species governance is potentially compatible with DEG but requires a fuller consideration of institutions at multiple scales than is typically included in common-pool resource theory or decentralisation. Multiple mechanisms of accountability may be especially important in securing the conservation of wildlife in conflict scenarios.

Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) are establishments that promote wildlife conservation and rural development in Tanzania. However, through focus group discussions, key informant interviews, a questionnaire survey, and literature review, we found that the participation of local people in both the establishment and management of the WMA was limited and rife with conflict. While benefits have materialized at the communal level, local people saw neither value nor benefit of the WMA to their livelihoods. Specifically, local people’s access to natural resources got worse while private eco-tourism investors and the central government have gained financially. Contrary to the livelihood enhancing WMA rhetoric, top-down institutional choices have sidelined democratically elected Village Governments and successive legislative adjustments disenfranchised and dispossessed them and their constituencies. We conclude that village governments should consistently demand for their legal rights to the resources on their land until the WMA approach to conservation and development is democratized.

Heptner's markhor Capra falconeri heptneri is an Endangered wild goat occurring in disjunct populations in southern Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Surveys to determine the total population in Tajikistan were conducted during February–April 2012. A total of 1,018 animals were observed. In most areas, which include state protected areas and family- and community-based conservancies, markhor populations are stable or increasing. Threats include illegal hunting, habitat degradation, competition with livestock and disease transmission. To motivate conservancies economically to protect markhor populations, trophy hunting should be permitted to accommodate the sustainable use of markhor, with revenues distributed in a transparent and equitably shared manner.

This paper argues that community based wildlife management in the Okavango Delta needs to be analysed and understood within the broader political, ecological and economic trends affecting Botswana as a whole. A range of issues, including global economics, competing land use strategies, tenure regimes, global climate change, village economics and settlement patterns, the role of donor agencies and the economic and political transformation of Botswana society in the last thirty years, all impact on the prospects for Community Based Wildlife Management. Some key assumptions (such as the current geographical basis for defining communities) upon which Community Based Wildlife Management has been based need further discussion and debate.

Combating the surge of illegal wildlife trade (IWT) devastating wildlife populations is an urgent global priority for conservation. There are increasing policy commitments to take action at the local community level as part of effective responses. However, there is scarce evidence that in practice such interventions are being pursued and there is scant understanding regarding how they can help. Here we set out a conceptual framework to guide efforts to effectively combat IWT through actions at community level. This framework is based on articulating the net costs and benefits involved in supporting conservation versus supporting IWT, and how these incentives are shaped by anti‐IWT interventions. Using this framework highlights the limitations of an exclusive focus on \"top‐down,\" enforcement‐led responses to IWT. These responses can distract from a range of other approaches that shift incentives for local people toward supporting conservation rather than IWT, as well as in some cases actually decrease the net incentives in favor of wildlife conservation.

In Tanzania, community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) of wildlife occurs through wildlife management areas (WMAs). The WMAs consist of multiple villages designating land and managing it for wildlife conservation in return for a portion of subsequent tourism revenues. The ecological success or failure of WMAs for wildlife conservation is rarely quantified but is important for evaluating the efficacy of specific projects and the general concept of CBNRM. I used 3 analyses to evaluate the ecological effectiveness of wildlife conservation actions in the Burunge WMA. I compared wildlife and livestock densities inside and outside a WMA using 1 year of distance sampling data and compared wild and domestic ungulate densities before and after the implementation of management changes that increased wildlife protections within a subsection of Burunge WMA using 6 years of distance sampling surveys. I also compared giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis) survival and population growth rate before and after the implementation of management changes that increased wildlife protections in a subsection of Burunge WMA using 5 years of photographic capture-recapture data. I found greater densities of wildlife and lower densities of livestock inside the WMA compared with outside. After the management changes, I documented significantly higher densities of several wild ungulate species and lower densities of domestic ungulates in the WMA. I found giraffe survival and population growth rate both increased in response to the management changes. Results indicated the WMA is effectively providing habitat and protection for wild ungulates while generally excluding domestic livestock. Ungulate densities, and giraffe survival and population growth rate over time indicated the management changes enacted in 2014–2015 resulted in positive effects for wild ungulates. These combined results indicate the ecological effectiveness of Burunge WMA and provide evidence that CBNRM can have positive effects on wildlife populations, particularly when support to grassroots law enforcement is provided.

The escalating illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is one of the most high-profile conservation challenges today. The crisis has attracted over US$350 million in donor and government funding in recent years, primarily directed at increased enforcement. There is growing recognition among practitioners and policy makers of the need to engage rural communities that neighbor or live with wildlife as key partners in tackling IWT. However, a framework to guide such community engagement is lacking. We developed a theory of change (ToC) to guide policy makers, donors, and practitioners in partnering with communities to combat IWT. We identified 4 pathways for community-level actions: strengthen disincentives for illegal behavior, increase incentives for wildlife stewardship, decrease costs of living with wildlife, and support livelihoods that are not related to wildlife. To succeed the pathways, all require strengthening of enabling conditions, including capacity building, and of governance. Our ToC serves to guide actions to tackle IWT and to inform the evaluation of policies. Moreover, it can be used to foster dialogue among IWT stakeholders, from local communities to governments and international donors, to develop a more effective, holistic, and sustainable community-based response to the IWT crisis. El creciente mercado ilegal de vida silvestre (MIVS) es uno de los obstáculos de más alto perfil para la conservación hoy en día. La crisis ha atraído más de US$350 millones en financiamiento por donadores y por el gobierno en los años recientes, principalmente dirigido a un aumento en la aplicación de la ley. Existe un reconocimiento creciente por parte de los practicantes y quienes hacen las políticas de la necesidad de hacer partícipes a las comunidades rurales que colindan o viven con la vida silvestre como compañeros clave para aplacar el MIVS. Sin embargo, se carece de un marco de trabajo para guiar dicha participación comunitaria. Desarrollamos una teoría de cambio (TdC) para guiar a quienes hacen las políticas, los donadores y los practicantes en el asociamiento con las comunidades para combatir el MIVS. Identificamos cuatro vías para las acciones a nivel comunitario: fortalecer los impedimentos para el comportamiento ilegal, incrementar los incentivos para la adopción de la vida silvestre, disminuir los costos de vivir con la vida silvestre y apoyar los sustentos que no están relacionados con la vida silvestre. Para tener éxito, todas las vías requieren fortalecer la activación de las condiciones, incluyendo la capacidad de construcción y de gobemanza. Nuestra TdC sirve para guiar las acciones que impidan el MIVS y para informar a la evaluación de las políticas. Además, puede utilizarse para fomentar el diálogo entre los accionistas del MIVS, desde las comunidades locales hasta los gobiernos y los donadores internacionales, para desarrollar una respuesta basada en la comunidad más efectiva, holística y sustentable a la crisis del MIVS.

Tourism and hunting both generate substantial revenues for communities and private operators in Africa, but few studies have quantitatively examined the trade-offs and synergies that may result from these two activities. We evaluated financial and in-kind benefit streams from tourism and hunting on 77 communal conservancies in Namibia from 1998 to 2013, where community-based wildlife conservation has been promoted as a land-use that complements traditional subsistence agriculture. We used data collected annually for all communal conservancies to characterize whether benefits were derived from hunting or tourism. We classified these benefits into 3 broad classes and examined how benefits flowed to stakeholders within communities under the status quo and under a simulated ban on hunting. Across all conservancies, total benefits from hunting and tourism increased at roughly the same rate, although conservancies typically started generating benefits from hunting within 3 years of formation as opposed to after 6 years for tourism. Disaggregation of data revealed that the main benefits from hunting were income for conservancy management and food in the form of meat for the community at large. The majority of tourism benefits were salaried jobs at lodges. A simulated ban on trophy hunting significantly reduced the number of conservancies that could cover their operating costs, whereas eliminating income from tourism did not have as severe an effect. Given that the benefits generated from hunting and tourism typically begin at different times in a conservancy's life-span (earlier vs. later, respectively) and flow to different segments of local communities, these 2 activities together may provide the greatest incentives for conservation on communal lands in Namibia. A singular focus on either hunting or tourism would reduce the value of wildlife as a competitive land-use option and have grave repercussions for the viability of community-based conservation efforts in Namibia, and possibly other parts of Africa. El turismo y la caza generan ingresos públicos sustanciales para las comunidades y los operadores privados en África, pero pocos estudios han examinado cuantitativamente las compensaciones y las sinergias que pueden resultar de estas dos actividades. Evaluamos las oleadas de beneficios financieros y de pago en especie provenientes del turismo y la caza en 77 zonas de conservación comunal en Namibia desde 1998 a 2013, donde la conservación de vida silvestre basada en la comunidad ha sido promovida como un uso de suelo que complementa la agricultura tradicional de subsistencia. Usamos datos colectados anualmente de todas las zonas comunales para caracterizar si los beneficios se derivaron de la caza o el turismo. Clasificamos estos beneficios en tres categorías generales y examinamos cómo los beneficios fluyeron hacia los accionistas dentro de las comunidades bajo el status quo y bajo una prohibición simulada de la caza. En todas las zonas de conservación comunal, los beneficios totales de la caza y el turismo incrementaron aproximadamente a la misma tasa, aunque en estas zonas se comenzaron a generar beneficios de la caza normalmente dentro de los 3 años de formación, en contraste con del turismo que se generaron después de 6 años. La desagregación de los datos reveló que los principales beneficios de la caza fueron los ingresos para el manejo de la conservación y la comida en forma de carne para la mayoría de la comunidad. La mayoría de los beneficios del turismo fueron trabajos a sueldo en hospedajes. Una prohibición simulada sobre la caza de trofeos redujo significativamente el número de zonas de conservación que podrían cubrir sus gastos de operación, mientras que la eliminación del ingreso por el turismo no tuvo un efecto severo. Dado que los beneficios generados por la caza y el turismo comienzan comúnmente a tiempos distintos en la duración total de la conservación (más temprano que más tarde, respectivamente) y fluyen a segmentos diferentes de las comunidades locales, estas dos actividades juntas pueden proporcionar incentivos más grandes para la conservación en las tierras comunales de Namibia. Un foco único sobre la caza o el turismo puede reducir el valor de la vida silvestre como opción de uso de suelo competitivo y tener repercusiones graves sobre la viabilidad de los esfuerzos de conservación basada en comunidades de Namibia, y posiblemente de otras partes de África.