Feelings, conflicts, and use: wildlife-human interactions in El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve, Mexico

ABSTRACT

Human activities are one of the most critical threats to wildlife. Therefore, understanding human-wildlife interactions is key to designing and applying sound conservation strategies. We identified wild animals relevant for people in El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve, southern Mexico considering four types of interactions: Use, affect (either positive or negative), and conflict. Twenty-eight workshops and 670 wildlife-human experiences with 58 taxa were recorded. The most relevant species were Odocoileus virginianus, Tapirus bairdii, Panthera onca, Pharomachrus mocinno, and Bothriechis bicolor. Positive affect was the most frequent interaction reported (46%), followed by use (20%), conflict (17%), and negative affect (16%). Negative affect and conflicts were mainly related to fear and damage by native predators. Species use was relatively infrequent (20%). We propose that conservation strategies be directed according to the species and their specific interactions.

KEYWORDS:

• Cloud forest
• empathy
• fear
• felines
• snakes

Acknowledgments

We thank all the participants in our workshops and interviews for their collaboration in this study. We are also grateful to the ETBR staff for their logistic support, and to the anonymous reviewers who provided insightful comments to improve this manuscript. Jenny Glikman and two anonymous reviewers provided insightful comments to improve this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially funded by The Rufford Foundation [grant 31543-1], Idea Wild, and a CONACYT scholarship granted to the first author for doctoral studies.