Wildlife conservation management on inhabited islands

Islands are critically important sites for the conservation and restoration of biodiversity because they are home to a disproportionate amount of the world’s biodiversity and are often free from many of the causes of species decline found on mainlands (Myers et al. 2000; Courchamp et al. 2014; Tershy et al. 2015). Although there have been substantial conservation gains on small uninhabited islands (Jones et al. 2016; Moro et al. 2018), islands of substantial size are typically inhabited. Wildlife conservation management on inhabited islands thus entails both ecological and socio-economic dimensions. The social sciences have much experience to bring to the challenge of wildlife conservation management (Bennett et al. 2017), and inhabited islands may be a test case for applying them. Although human communities on islands tend to have unique characteristics as a result of their isolation and the nature of their existence, they also tend to be more engaged with their environment through their livelihoods. Management of conservation conflict on such islands is as much about ecology as it is sociology, psychology and stakeholder engagement and management (Van der Werff et al. 2013; Redpath et al. 2015). Indeed, recent extinctions of three faunal species in Australia have been as much about human processes as they have ecological processes (Woinarski et al. 2017). This special issue brings together selected works presented at a symposium of the Australasian Wildlife Management Society (AWMS) Conference held in Brisbane, December 2014. It focuses on the role of humans on islands, and therefore the importance of human dimensions in wildlife management. Wildlife management on islands is explored through this lens for a number of Australasian and international case studies. Crandall et al. (2018) first outline the diverse toolkit the social sciences bring to bear on these challenges. Russell et al. (2018) then highlight the importance of social impact assessment in conjunction with environmental impact assessment, and the important application it is likely to have in the future for wildlife management on inhabited islands. Several additional case studies are then presented