Interactions between humans and wildlife resulting in negative impacts are among the most pressing conservation challenges globally. In regions of smallholder livestock and crop production, interactions with wildlife can compromise human well-being and motivate negative sentiment and retaliation toward wildlife, undermining conservation goals. Although impacts may be unavoidable when human and wildlife land use overlap, scant large-scale human data exist quantifying the direct costs of wildlife to livelihoods. In a landscape of global importance for wildlife conservation in southern Africa, we quantified costs for people living with wildlife through a fundamental measure of human well-being, food security, and we tested whether existing livelihood strategies buffer certain households against crop depredation by wildlife, predominantly elephants. To do this, we estimated Bayesian multilevel statistical models based on multicounty household data (n = 711) and interpreted model results in the context of spatial data from participatory land-use mapping. Reported crop depredation by wildlife was widespread. Over half of the sample households were affected and household food security was reduced significantly (odds ratio 0.37 [0.22, 0.63]). The most food insecure households relied on gathered food sources and welfare programs. In the event of crop depredation by wildlife, these 2 livelihood sources buffered or reduced harmful effects of depredation. The presence of buffering strategies suggests a targeted compensation strategy could benefit the region's most vulnerable people. Such strategies should be combined with dynamic and spatially explicit land-use planning that may reduce the frequency of negative human-wildlife impacts. Quantifying and mitigating the human costs from wildlife are necessary steps in working toward human-wildlife coexistence.

中文翻译：

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跨界保护景观中的野生动物影响和脆弱的生计

导致负面影响的人类与野生动物之间的相互作用是全球最紧迫的保护挑战之一。在小规模牲畜和作物生产地区，与野生动物的互动会损害人类福祉并激发对野生动物的负面情绪和报复，从而破坏保护目标。虽然当人类和野生动物的土地使用重叠时，影响可能不可避免，但很少有大规模的人类数据可以量化野生动物对生计的直接成本。在对南部非洲野生动物保护具有全球重要性的景观中，我们通过人类福祉和粮食安全的基本衡量标准量化了与野生动物一起生活的人们的成本，并测试了现有的生计策略是否可以缓冲某些家庭免受野生动物掠夺作物的影响，主要是大象。为此，我们基于多县家庭数据（n = 711）估计了贝叶斯多级统计模型，并在参与式土地利用制图的空间数据背景下解释了模型结果。野生动物掠夺农作物的报道很普遍。超过一半的样本家庭受到影响，家庭粮食安全显着降低（优势比 0.37 [0.22, 0.63]）。粮食最不安全的家庭依赖于收集的食物来源和福利计划。在野生动物掠夺农作物的情况下，这两种生计来源可以缓冲或减少掠夺的有害影响。缓冲策略的存在表明有针对性的补偿策略可以使该地区最脆弱的人群受益。此类策略应与动态和空间明确的土地利用规划相结合，以减少对人类-野生动物产生负面影响的频率。量化和减轻野生动物造成的人类成本是实现人类与野生动物共存的必要步骤。