“Trophy hunting increases human-wildlife conflict between communities near game reserves and wild animals.”

However, both communities experienced similar challenges due to the ban on trophy hunting, such as increased wildlife numbers, which escalated human-wildlife conflicts (HWCs). … The participants believed that due to hunting, animals-especially elephants-moved far from human settlements because of the disturbance they experienced due to hunting. Therefore, hunting lessened human-wildlife conflicts in communities. … Both communities believed that the human-wildlife conflict would not have escalated without the ban on trophy hunting.

The social costs include the loss of human life due to animal attacks, as hunted animals become more aggressive towards humans (Angula et al., 2018) , the increased damage to crops caused by changes in animal behaviour due to trophy hunting, and the social injustice experienced by workers in trophy hunting occupations, also noted by Koot, (2019) in Namibia.

Regulated, presumably sustainable harvest was ineffective at reducing human–bear interactions and incidents in the near-term and might have increased both. … Significantly higher rates of our measures of conflict after the initiation of the spring season in districts with greater overlap with treatment WMUs demonstrates that the spring season was not sufficient to reduce conflict in the areas that it was implemented.

Hunting intensifies HWC because the hunted species tend to abandon the hunting grounds for safer places to avoid deaths, disturbances and injuries from recreational hunters (Casas et al., 2009). … When the fugitive species move to areas closer to human landscape may increase the incidents of HWC.

However, our case study demonstrates that sustainable hunting alone does not offset the costs of elephant crop depredation in a Namibian conservancy.

After having banned sport hunting in 1979, Uganda reintroduced it in 2001 around Lake Mburo National Park, and in 2006 in the Kabwoya and Kaiso-Tonya Game Management Area, with the aim to reduce human-wildlife conflicts, especially poaching, by providing incentives for the local inhabitants in order to positively change residents’ attitudes towards wildlife.

Where problem animal control (PAC) is subcontracted to a hunting outfit, compensation may occur through the trophy fees paid (Taylor, 1994). … Hunting clients are prepared to pay a premium for a problem animal (Lindsey et al., 2007), and there is evi dence that this practice has reduced conflict (Lindsey et al., 2006).

Benefits may create incentives for local residents to co-exist with such problematic species as large carnivores, herbivores competing for grazing, or animals considered to be dangerous or a threat to the welfare of humans and their personal property; … funds generated from wildlife use are used by conservancies to employ community game guards and implement game management and monitoring systems, allowing communities to proactively counter poaching threats and mitigate increasing incidents of human/wildlife conflict.

In the case of Kenya where a ban on trophy hunting has been in place since the late 1970s, there is potential support for the return of trophy hunting to alleviate human-wildlife conflict and enable access to benefits from hunting tourism.

Similarly, research in this topic addresses how hunting can be a source of conflict with wild species, namely predators, and a means used to control human-wildlife conflicts. 73

The Maasai Steppe is the most important trophy hunting area in northern Tanzania, with more than a dozen concession areas. However, because hunting revenues flow to central government and private hunting companies, with limited benefit-sharing with resident communities living alongside wildlife, hunting does not provide incentives for local communities to protect wildlife habitat or tolerate species such as lions (Sachedina & Nelson, Reference Sachedina and Nelson2010).

Shemwetta and Kidegesho (2000) explain that conflicts between wildlife and people, particularly those who share the immediate boundaries with protected areas, are common phenomenon. … Shemwetta and Kideghesho (2008) mention some of the costs to include; loss of access to legitimate and traditional rights, damage to crops and other properties, livestock depredation, and risk posed to people‟s lives through disease transmission and attacks by wild animals.

The reality is that compensation alone will not solve human-wildlife confrontation issues; a multifaceted approach needs to be explored to reduce problems experienced by Kwandu conservancy members. … The scheme recognizes the complexity of human-wildlife conflict and it has its own limitations. Therefore, the scheme does not attempt to compensate the amount equivalent to losses incurred from wildlife, neither does it reduce human-wildlife conflict, but encourages conservancies to introduce preventative measures that do reduce and mitigate problems.

Where problem animal control (PAC) is subcontracted to a hunting outfit, compensation may occur through the trophy fees paid (Taylor, 1994). Hunting clients are prepared to pay a premium for a problem animal (Lindsey et al., 2007), and there is evi dence that this practice has reduced conflict (Lindsey et al., 2006).

Sogbohossou et al. (2011) meanwhile, found that trophy hunting might even be exacerbating levels of livestock depredation in the Pendjari Biosphere reserve complex in Benin. … Conflicts related to trophy hunting were also reported, particularly in Tanzania. Much of the conflict relates to access rights and land use, e.g. for cattle grazing, local hunting, ecotourism, and natural resource use, with conflict being between locals and the hunting operators or the Wildlife Division anti-poaching units (e.g. Hausser et al., 2009, Sachedina and Nelson, 2010).

A CBNRMS has been established in the Caprivi region of Namibia, where the eco-tourism industry and hunting concessions are potentially valuable for developing a local economy based on wildlife related revenues. This scheme entails a system of returning benefits to rural communities in order to motivate them to protect wildlife outside protected areas and to discourage poaching; it is still at an early stage, but it is expected to have a real potential in mitigating the conflict

However, people largely voiced the same concerns – and it wasn’t about the change in income to the trusts, but about there being more elephants and how they were coming much closer to the villages than before. … Those that agreed with the ban being lifted felt this way because of the need to control elephant numbers. It’s important to note that trophy hunting hadn’t been killing large number of elephants. But it did seem to be deterring them from moving too far out of the protected areas – creating a buffer between protected areas and the surrounding mixed-use rural areas. … Following a national consultation, the government of Botswana lifted the hunting moratorium in May 2019. One of the main reasons they gave was the increase in human-wildlife conflict experienced by people in many rural areas across northern Botswana.

The ban on trophy hunting had an adverse impact as highlighted by various data sources. … Participants said the ban also led to more instances of human-wildlife conflict. … The participants decry an increase in the number of wildlife in the areas and expressed that this has led to an escalation of human-wildlife conflict.

For instance, vegetable farming in buffer zones around protected areas risks increasing human-wildlife conflict. Water access, crop raiding by elephants or baboons, fencing costs and soil degradation are real constraints. Yet the paper glosses over these very practical concerns. … In contrast, hunting incentivises keeping wild land wild, placing value on intact ecosystems and large, free-ranging species. It doesn’t require land clearance or conflict with the ecosystem — it works with it.

We determined that sustainable trophy hunting only returns ~30% of the value of crops lost to the community and cannot alone offset the current costs of coexistence with elephants.

These include animal welfare and protection advocates who argue trophy hunting is cruel, threatens wildlife populations, exacerbates human–wildlife conflict, and provides little economic benefit to local communities, as well as hunting and conservation advocates who argue trophy hunting can generate revenues which support wildlife conservation and economic development, and therefore provide local incentives for local communities to maintain habitat and tolerate dangerous wild animals.

Public pressure could end trophy hunting of wildlife, potentially negatively affecting species conservation and the human communities that depend upon the revenue hunting generates.

…views widely held in the wealthy West are often at odds with views within lion range countries, where lions often impose severe costs (including man-eating) on the people who live alongside them.

Poaching of wildlife is not necessarily a human-wildlife conflict if the animal has been killed only with the motivation to obtain meat, body parts or a trophy, for trade, recreation or cultural reasons. If, however, the animals poached had also been blamed for damage caused to livelihoods, then their killing may have been influenced by, and therefore incorporated, a degree of human-wild life conflict to some extent.

Globally, large carnivore populations are in decline due to habitat loss, conflict with people over livestock depredation and over-exploitation (Loveridge et al., 2010b). … Trophy hunting is a potential cause of over-exploitation and decline of carnivore populations, and has thus been highlighted as a cause of conservation concern (Becker et al., 2013, Cooley et al., 2009, Packer et al., 2009).

We place these findings in context of the rapidly growing human population in rural Tanzania and the concomitant effects of habitat loss, human-wildlife conflict, and cultural practices.

Trophy hunting is supposed to be part of the solution to Leungo's conundrum. … Re-introduced in 2019, the sport is intended to garner revenue for locals to offset the hardship of living alongside these destructive giants. … He has many complaints about trophy hunting, including his belief that killing older males actually makes the human-elephant conflict worse because it removes role models for the younger animals in the herd.

Becauseof poorconservationfundingissues, trade bans or enlisting species as endangered will notstop these species from declining because thegreatest threat to species persistence has been poaching, habitat loss and human-wildlife conflicts (Di Mininet al., 2016a; Trethowanet al., 2011) and not sustainableutilization through trophy hunting.

Within the Kilombero Game Controlled Area (KGCA) of Tanzania, protection is offered to large mammal populations by trophy hunting concessions that maintain natural habitat through the prevention of extensive human encroachment.

These key informants believed that a trophy hunting ban would contribute to the escalation of wildlife crimes in the game reserves and village lands since trophy hunting companies support anti-poaching activities in their hunting blocks.

About 16.67% and 14.29 % of African elephant and Cape buffalo kill sites occurred within the restricted 400 m buffer area from the park boundary.

"The location of this hunt pegs NG13 as a 'fear zone' for elephants," Espley added, "resulting in this particular hunt being damaging to Botswana’s wish to reduce human-elephant conflict and so improve the lives of its people."

Trophy hunting can be successful at conserving wildlife because it provides the economic incentive to conserve large tracts of wildlife habitat where there are few or no alternative funding sources. This helps maintain species, including lions, which can threaten the lives and livelihoods of rural people.

Trophy hunting also had positive and negative impacts on communities, including the financial and animal meat benefits enjoyed by some communities, but also restrictions and controls on their hunting activities.

If local communities were to engage with conservation activities and non-consumptive wildlife uses (i.e. uses of that do not involve the killing or removal of animals), this could permit growth in wildlife populations. This in turn could risk an increase in human-wildlife conflict if wildlife became a nuisance to the community.

Proponents often use the plight of local African communities to position trophy hunting as a contribution to social justice — usually poverty alleviation, a solution for human-wildlife conflict, and food provision.

Furthermore, where conservation ‘successes’ have resulted in wildlife population increases, or species have recovered and expanded their ranges, human-wildlife conflicts often follow.

The data dismantles the outdated narrative that communities need trophy hunting, instead revealing a growing desire to coexist with wildlife and benefit from its protection.