Residents perspectives on human-wildlife conflict management to build community resilience in Chitwan National Park, Nepal

Human-wildlife conflict can significantly impact economic, social, and ecological systems critical to promoting sustainable development. Effectively managing conflicts between people and wildlife that share a common landscape requires the implementation of effective management strategies that aim to reduce the impacts of HWC and promote coexistence as preferred by the community. However, many studies have often overlooked social aspects, especially the residents' perceptions of HWC management, that can help build community resilience. Residents and wildlife share a common landscape in the Chitwan National Park in Nepal. Competition for resources grows as the human-modified landscape provides a new form of habitat for wildlife. We used Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) to capture the residents' (n=506) perspectives on the importance of HWC management strategies and their performance by park management to prioritize strategies that could help build community resilience. We found notable mean performance-importance gaps for the eight HWC management strategies, representing the park management's inability to meet the desired need of farmers and non-farmers. The IPA matrix grid shows the three strategies - skill, livelihood, and compensation - that need immediate attention from park management as they fall under high-priority strategies in quadrant II. The two-way ANOVA results revealed that the residents' perspectives on importance and performance in all management sectors differ. We conclusively recommend developing site-and context-specific HWC management plans that consider the affected community's livelihood needs, which are essential for increasing the operational effectiveness of HWC management. Park management should prioritize strategies in sectors more vulnerable to HWCs to secure community support for long-term conservation goals. This study will be a key reference for identifying context-specific management strategies that incorporate community resilience in the management of human-wildlife conflict. This could inform HWC management policy and conservation planning to achieve coexistence that benefits both people and wildlife, particularly in low-income countries with similar socio-ecological settings. Overall, our findings provide a new perspective on human-wildlife conflict management that policymakers, researchers, and protected area managers around the world can use to build community resilience to facilitate coexistence.Libre office and Sumatra PDF.Funding provided by: Ministry of Science and Technology, TaiwanCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100004663Award Number: 109-2628-M-259-001-MY3Data collection: This study was carried out in the buffer zone of Chitwan National Park (CNP), Nepal. We conducted a quantitative survey of households in 21 buffer zone user committees that was spread across four sectors. We used a structured questionnaire to collect primary data. The survey questionnaire consisted of three sections. The first part accessed information related to HWC, the second part accessed the residents' perception of HWC management in CNP, and the third section included socio-demographic information. Using stratified random sampling, the enumerator interviewed a total of 506 households. Only the household members who had provided verbal consent and shown interest were interviewed. Data Analyses: The collected data were cleaned using Microsoft Excel 365 for Windows and systematically coded and analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 26.0. First, we performed Paired t-tests, then plotted the importance-performance analysis grid comparing farmers and non-farmers, and finally conducted a two-way ANOVA test