CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Gagyi Palffy, Andrea |
|---|---|
| Title | FROM CONFLICT TO COEXISTENCE: Human-wolf conflict and management solutions in the Western Carpathians of Transylvania - reinterpreting conflicts as drivers of change and inherent regulating mechanisms of coexistence |
| Summary | The recent global expansion of human population has led to an unprecedented increase in human-wolf interactions in a wide variety of landscapes where their activities overlap. Within and across such interfaces, management of human-wolf interactions became one of the most pressing conservation issues of the 21st century. Human-wolf interactions, including human-wolf conflicts are multifaceted and impose complex cost-benefit tradeoffs to both humans and wolf populations. Thus, understanding these interactions holistically is essential for facilitating positive outcomes of management and conservation strategies and for securing human-wolf coexistence in human dominated landscapes. The conflict with human economies, generated largely by wolf predation on livestock and game species, represents one of the main reasons for wolf control, and it is still today one of the most important causes of wolf mortality. Analyzing what management and husbandry factors may be related to wolf predation on livestock and showing how these factors can influence predation is an essential way of gaining more baseline information providing useful insight into choosing appropriate preventative measures. It is also important to consider the role of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) of livestock producers and local communities related to husbandry systems and individual management practices in mitigating conflicts. In addition, empirical research examining the human aspects of wildlife conflicts contributes to our knowledge on the multitude of socio-political and governance aspects that drive, maintain, amplify and/or reduce conflicts. All this knowledge is essential for the process of co-designing and implementing sound mitigation strategies. Thus, this research analyzes the wide array of biophysical, husbandry, management, and social-institutional factors that influence and drive direct and indirect (both visible and subtle) conflicts around wolves in the Western Carpathians of Romania and identifies solutions that would aid in mitigating conflict. In order to grasp the full complexity of this subject, this research takes on a novel holistic and interdisciplinary approach that sees the human and natural components of the complex and dynamic human-influenced landscape of the Western Carpathians of Transylvania as coupled rather than separate. By further developing and adapting the Integrated Coupled Human-Natural Systems (CHANS), the Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) and the Coexistence as a Continuum approaches, this research adopts a comprehensive, integrative and multi-science framework to capture the intricate web of interactions and back-and-forth feedback between the various components of this fundamentally integrated system (wolves and their natural environment; livestock, livestock guarding dogs and shepherds; local communities; stakeholders and managing institutions at both local, national and international level). First, in order to determine what spatial biophysical factors are associated with the risk of wolf predation on livestock, a predictive model of where predation is more likely to occur was built through a complex Risk Modelling Analysis, and the predicted risk was visually represented through a detailed risk map of wolf predation patterns that can help identify conflict hot-spots and focus management efforts. Next, 78 non-spatial biophysical and husbandry factors were analyzed statistically in order to identify which of these factors also profoundly influence the outcome of predation events, thus introducing the role of humans and human-wildlife interactions in this spatial food web. TEK of livestock producers on the topic was also investigated and described for this purpose. People’s concerns and perceptions were also assessed, and the resulting map of the Perceived Risk of predation was compared to the calculated risk. Lastly, moving completely into the realm of human influence on conflict, the role of interhuman conflict and decision making at the institutional level was investigated by analyzing existing policies and practices concerning wolves and their management, identifying actors involved in wolf governance and HWC and their roles in the conflict, mapping institutional processes, defining problems and schematically representing processes and issues. This allowed identifying potential measures and offering evidence-based recommendations on ways to overcome the identified issues. The results suggest to managers and livestock producers that livestock flocks in the study area are at a higher risk of predation by wolves in the remote natural high alpine pastures (situated in the core area of the park) where they graze during the warm months of their seasonal migration. While grazing in these areas, livestock are most vulnerable in the open grasslands and pastures near the edge of the forest, where dense and tall vegetation minimizes sensorial detection. The element cover appears to be a very important factor affecting predation success on livestock for wolves in our study, suggesting that wolves in this landscape demonstrate stalking-hiding and ambush-like behavior as part of their hunting tactics. This study suggests that livestock owners aiming to reduce livestock losses should be aware of these hunting strategies and increase vigilance and preventative behavior when finding themselves and their flocks in higher risk areas and situations such as the middle of the night, in the cold seasons, and during harsh weather conditions. The results suggest that the vulnerability of livestock to wolf attacks depends on flock size, density and composition, with enclosed flocks attacked more when in larger numbers and free grazing flocks attacked more when in smaller numbers, while juvenile individuals seem to be at highest risk of predation. At the same time, the findings of this research reemphasize the urgency of well-thought-out management policies that take into account both the calculated and the perceived risk, TEK, and the value of preventative measures, and emphasize the need to incorporate nation-wide data on wolf and prey populations into the decision-making process. Tensions and disputes revolving around various interests of the many stakeholders involved in wolf management influence wolf governance at a local but also national and even international level, leading to a situation where wolf management becomes as much of a socio-political issue as a biological one, resulting in less-than-ideal management strategies and their poor implementation at both local and national levels and compromised human interests and conservation goals. There is a need to reform policies and institutions, while also changing attitudes. In the context of a centuries-long coexistence, wolves, livestock and people in the Romanian Carpathians constantly interact, responding to each other’s strategies in the form of a never-ending process of co-adaptation. Capturing these interactions, and the influence of social and governance factors on wildlife conflict development, is a novel socioecological framework for operationalizing coexistence, rarely employed until now. The unique combination of methods adopted in the framework of this research and adapted to the specific context of this ancient case of coexistence, can offer broader insight into what factors make functional coexistence and co-adaptation possible. This stands in contrast to other studies focusing solely on aspects that hinder conservation and coexistence. This approach is essential for designing functional landscapes of coexistence in areas prone to human-wildlife conflicts. Thus, this research represents one small step forward towards advancing the interdisciplinary theory and practice of coexistence in an increasingly human-dominated world. Founded on the aforementioned approaches, this dissertation introduces concepts, such as the “Integrated Adaptive Response System” (IARS) of the coupled Human-Dog-Livestock trio, tailors “Adaptive Participatory Governance” to HWC studies; discusses an adapted framework of “Coexistence viewed as a continuum” and “Coexistence interpreted as Co-adaptation” between people and wildlife in complex socio-ecological systems, that focuses on reinterpreting conflicts as “drivers of change” and intrinsic self-regulating mechanisms of coexistence. Under the acronym of CASES (Complex Adaptive Socio-Ecological Systems), this framework promises to become a helpful baseline, starting-point study framework to guide the choice of theoretical and methodological approaches for specific research contexts on the basis of a set of fundamental principles that assemble the state-of-the-art understanding on HWC matters in SES and CAS systems into one comprehensive, multi-dimensional, flexible and broadly applicable blueprint. In short, CASES – a framework for HWI cases. This socio-ecological approach has rarely been undertaken and thus, this analysis helps fill an important research gap while also laying the ground for improving the interoperability of different scientific approaches that scientists and managers can undertake in the field to gather richer data on, and successfully mitigate, human-wolf conflicts. |
| Supervisor | Anthony Brandon Patrick |
| Department | Environment Sciences and Policy PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/palffy_andrea.pdf |
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