The current status, issues, and mitigation strategies of human-wildlife conflicts in national parks

One of the primary challenges faced in the high-quality construction of national parks is human-wildlife conflict. It is crucial to ensure the lives and property of the people while protecting wild animals. To gain a comprehensive understanding of the current status and issues related to human-wildlife conflicts in national parks, a questionnaire involving 624 indigenous households within the first batch of national parks was conducted, complemented by semi-structured interviews with park administration and local government department staff. The findings reveal that 70%, 47%, 76%, and 33% of households in Sanjiangyuan, Giant Panda, Northeast Tiger and Leopard, and Wuyishan National Park suffered damages due to human-wildlife conflicts. The major conflict-prone animals were wild boar, wolf, and brown bear, causing economic losses such as crop damage, property destruction and medical expenses range from thousands of yuan to tens of thousands of yuan. Despite continuous improvements in wildlife damage compensation mechanisms and ongoing efforts to enhance preventive measures, several problems remain prominent, including inadequate compensation, ineffective household preventive measures, underdeveloped monitoring and warning systems, and insufficient control measures during incidents. Consequently, this paper put forward policy suggestions such as optimizing the wildlife damage compensation mechanism, strengthening preventive measures, diversifying incident control strategies, enhancing regional risk assessments, improving monitoring and early warning capabilities, and regulating wildlife populations to achieve scientific management of human-wildlife interactions in park areas, thereby maximizing the safety of residents.