UW researchers say climate change amplifies conflicts between humans and wildlife

In January, a polar bear attacked two people in Wales, Alaska. It was the first fatal attack in Alaska in 30 years, the Associated Press reports.

And researchers at the University of Washington have found that as the climate changes, conflicts between humans and wildlife have increased. From polar bears spending more time on land as warmer temperatures melt the ice they depend on, to drought forcing elephants into villages as they seek water, conflicts are happening around the world.

Leigh West is a doctoral student at the University of Washington and a co-author of the study. She joins us with more details on the research.

This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. ‘Climate change as a global amplifier of human-wildlife conflict.’ That is the headline from a recent study by researchers at the University of Washington. They surveyed evidence of climate-driven conflict and found it around the world on six continents and in all five oceans. It means a huge variety of animals: polar bears in Canada, barnacle geese in Scotland, blue whales in the Pacific, African wild dogs in Kenya, crocodiles in South Sudan. Leigh West is one of the co-authors of the study. She is a doctoral student at the University of Washington, and she joins us now. Leigh West, welcome.

Leigh West: Thank you. How are you doing?

Miller: Doing very well. Thanks for joining us. I gave that list of animals large and small. Can you give us a sense for the kinds of conflicts that we’re talking about?

West: Yes, definitely. I guess, similarly to that breadth that you described in the kinds of animals involved and the locations that we’re finding these conflicts in, there’s also a lot of different ways that these conflicts can manifest. When we were conducting the review, we split thinking about these conflicts into two categories, one being long-term climate changes. You can think of gradual warming of the planet or reductions in sea ice versus more acute climate events like droughts or heat waves. With those long-term changes, an example is looking at polar bears in Canada and in Alaska where, as there’s these gradual reductions in sea ice over time, polar bears are spending more time on land and trying to find new food sources which can bring them into human areas and bring them into contact with people which can then result in conflict. Whereas an example of those more acute changes leading to conflict could be there’s a drought in East Africa, and elephants are searching for water and for food so they go into villages and maybe damage crops or injure people. And then there can be retaliatory killings by people in response to that.

Miller: What might this look like in the Pacific Northwest?

West: That’s a great question. We analyzed about 50 case studies. There weren’t any examples rooted specifically in the Pacific Northwest, but there were definitely species that people here would be very familiar with. There were several case studies about humpback and blue whales, with one of them describing how there was a marine heatwave and changes in whale behavior in response to that then led to an increase in entanglements. There’s also a few different studies about black bears showing that, as temperatures are increasing and affecting hibernation, there’s more instances of bears entering settlements and causing conflict.

Miller: Just a few days ago, we talked about Lyme disease and the spread of ticks and the increase in Lyme-bearing ticks going westward from the East Coast and also northward into Canada. Is that an example of this phenomenon? I mean, is getting bitten by a tick a human-animal conflict?

West: Yeah, it definitely could be. We specifically in this review did not consider disease transmission or zoonotic disease because that’s just such a huge field of study that we didn’t have the ability to include. But that is a great example of a conflict between humans and animals. We did also encounter examples, as you mentioned, with mosquitoes in terms of disease transmission there. I think it doesn’t matter the size of the animal. Any interaction between an animal and a human that leads to a negative outcome for either party is what we’re considering human-wildlife conflict.

Miller: From a mosquito to a blue whale. It’s hard to think of a bigger spread sizewise. I was wondering about one of the challenges here: how you disentangle, for the purposes of a survey like this, climate change from something like habitat loss because it seems like there could be complex interactions there.

West: Oh, yes, there’s definitely… When we’re thinking about any of these questions, they’re highly complex, and it’s difficult to disentangle those things. When we were doing this review, how we tried to go about that was that, to include a case study in this paper, there had to be some sort of measured or quantified connection between a change in climate and a human-wildlife conflict outcome. So, in instances where there were maybe changes in habitat or changes in resource availability or distribution that weren’t directly linked to some sort of climatic driver, we didn’t consider those.

Miller: What are the possible ramifications for animals as these conflicts increase?

West: I mean, human-wildlife conflict in general, even without the context of climate change, is a huge contributor to the global decline and extinctions of large mammals and other animals, which can then kind of trickle up to whole ecosystem changes. So, in thinking about a world in which these kinds of extreme climate events and gradual changes are all increasing, we can expect those kinds of negative ramifications to increase in future if we aren’t able to take action to combat them.

Miller: Not to minimize the impact on humans in specific cases where they may be attacked by a tiger or trampled by an elephant, but it does seem like in general it’s the animals that are more likely to suffer serious consequences as these conflicts increase?

West: I think that’s hard to say. I think perhaps people have more of an ability to adjust their location or where they’re living or kind of be able to proactively respond to these conflicts. So in that case, maybe we can consider there to be a more dramatic effect on wildlife. But at the same time, a lot of these conflicts are occurring in areas where livelihood insecurity and human health and safety is already an issue. If you’re a farmer in Africa and your crops are being trampled by elephants or your livestock is being predated on by a carnivore, that’s something that’s a huge kind of environmental justice, human rights issue. So I think it’s definitely there’s impacts on both sides.

Miller: What’s your own specific field of study? I mean, what angles here are you most interested in digging deeper into?

West: My doctoral research is pretty directly linked to this study. I’m working with large carnivores in Botswana and thinking about how droughts might affect carnivore behavior and their interactions with humans. So I’m deeply invested in the work that we’re doing here. I mentioned that example, when I was just speaking about impacts on humans, of large carnivores going into villages during times where there’s not many wild prey around or not much water and causing conflict that way. That’s definitely something I’m thinking a lot about, both from the ecological perspective of what are the reasons that this is happening from an animal behavior perspective but then also from a social science perspective and working with communities to understand their perspectives on how this change has unfolded and what their priorities are for being able to address these conflicts as droughts likely worsen over time in Africa.

Miller: That to me brings up a really interesting wrinkle here which is, as you noted earlier, when you looked at all of the previous research that had been done, you and the team, you only included case studies, or specific conflicts in your review article if it was clear that it was a climate change driven increase. But to what extent, popularly, are these conflicts seen as effects of climate change, whether you’re talking about Botswana or in other places? Do the people who are experiencing an increase in these conflicts recognize this as a part of climate change?

West: This is me speculating here because we haven’t written about this specifically, and I don’t think we’ve really encountered that aspect explained very thoroughly. But I think in a lot of cases, maybe, no. You know that we found examples of shark bite incidences increasing when there’s higher air temperatures and sea temperatures. I think it’s likely that if a person is on the beach in the U.S. and gets bitten by a shark, they’re not really going to understand that. But again, for my doctoral research I’ve done a little bit of preliminary interviews and discussions with local people, and they very much do have an awareness of this issue and understand that, when there’s droughts and when there’s less water to be shared between livestock and people and large carnivores, then there is more conflict during that time. So I think it can go both ways. But hopefully… You know, one of the aims of a paper like this and communicating it broadly, like I’m doing right now, is to be able to make people aware of that, whether you just are a listener on the radio or a policy maker and thinking about how we can implement changes to reduce these conflicts moving forward.

Miller: Obviously we’re talking about, if the range is from mosquitoes to blue whales, all over the world, there’s no one solution for preventing or mitigating these conflicts. But, what are some possible ways to think about reducing those conflicts?

West: I think that the answer to that question can both draw on a couple of really great examples that exist, and also kind of being speculative and thinking about projecting these issues into the future, what might we be able to do? A great example of the former is the RAMP program in California. I think I mentioned the example of a marine heatwave in California increasing whale entanglements earlier. After this happened, there was a policy that was put into place in California that would adjust the start and end dates of fishing seasons based on these real-time climate and ocean conditions in the Pacific that were being measured. And the fishing season would then be delayed if it was a period when entanglements in fishing gear for whales was going to be more likely. I think those kinds of dynamic strategies that explicitly incorporate climate indices into risk assessments and management are really proactive solutions that are really exciting and I think prosperous for the future. But there could also be really simple, effective solutions. Like we’ve talked a few times about drought: There were a couple of cases where artificial water troughs were used during periods of drought to be able to provide water for either livestock or for wildlife that was causing issues for humans. So there’s a wide variety of possible solutions.

Miller: Leigh West, thanks very much for joining us.

West: Thank you so much for having me.

Miller: Leigh West is a doctoral student at the University of Washington and one of the co-authors of a recent study that cataloged the climate change driven increases in human-animal conflicts all over the world.

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