Human–Wildlife Conflicts in Forests

A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907). This special issue belongs to the section "Forest Ecology and Management".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 January 2018)

Special Issue Editors

Social and Economic Research Group, Forest Research, Northern Research Station, Roslin EH25 9SY, Scotland, UK
Interests: tree and plant biosecurity; stakeholder engagement; human-wildlife conflicts
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Plunkett Foundation, The Quadrangle, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1LH, UK

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The multifunctionality of forests represents the range of benefits that forests provide to people, but also highlights the challenges of balancing biodiversity conservation with forest and wildlife management. Forests in both rural and urban environments reflect diversity in society with multiple ownerships, governance arrangements and ‘uses’: such as recreation, biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration, health promotion, timber and fuel production, amongst many other purposes. While forests are often considered primarily to be places for wildlife to live, different forest ‘users’ and their demands on the ecosystem services that forests provide often lead people into conflicts with wildlife or other forest ‘users’ over their differing interactions with wildlife. Cultural drivers, and the associated depth of human–wildlife connections, also contribute to the definition and strength of these ‘conflicts’. Many natural resource management conflicts have a strong social element, and understanding the multidimensional nature of human–wildlife interactions requires that research better addresses the reality of people’s experiences, values and understanding of both their social and natural environments. It is also critical to understand the co-dependence of human–wildlife interactions with policy and ecology. This Special Issue focuses on understanding the social drivers of human–wildlife conflicts in forests, and the strategies for resolving these. Topics can include, but are not limited to, human attitudes towards forest wildlife and its management as drivers of human–wildlife conflict; human behaviors in forests at different temporal and spatial scales and across differing cultural settings that confound or resolve conflict; the impact of social, environmental and economic change in forests on human–wildlife conflict; empirically informed analyses of specific cases of human–wildlife conflict in forests; forest use and ecological disturbance; conflict over the acceptability of wildlife and management/control methods; changing priorities towards wildlife and wildlife management in response to drivers of change. We especially welcome empirical or theoretical attempts to reconcile or balance the trade-offs between ecological and social benefits of forest and wildlife management.

Dr. Mariella Marzano
Dr. Norman Dandy
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Forests is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Wildlife management
  • Climate change
  • Forests
  • Biodiversity conservation
  • Multi-functional use
  • Recreation disturbance
  • Human–wildlife conflicts
  • Attitudes towards management

Published Papers

There is no accepted submissions to this special issue at this moment.
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