Developing Wildlife Management Strategies for Urban Areas

The majority of all-day human-wildlife interactions take place in urban areas. A broad variety of wildlife species benefit from rich habitat resources in cities and towns worldwide. The close neighbourhood of human affairs and... [ view full abstract ]

The majority of all-day human-wildlife interactions take place in urban areas. A broad variety of wildlife species benefit from rich habitat resources in cities and towns worldwide. The close neighbourhood of human affairs and wildlife implies a variety of impacts: On the one hand, human-wildlife conflicts like damages to houses, vehicles and green spaces as well as the risk of zoonotic disease transmission, or even wildlife attacking humans or pets. On the other hand, to many citizens urban wildlife carries aesthetic and emotional value. For many persons, interaction with urban wildlife is the only wildlife interaction they experience in real life and not through media. The role of wildlife management in urban areas is to reduce negative impacts and increase positive impacts of urban wildlife with methods which are accepted by urban societies. To many German communities, urban wildlife management is a new task, since game species are traditionally managed by hunters in rural areas. In this poster, we present the case of the German state Baden-Württemberg, where we developed guidelines for wildlife management in urban areas from 2010 to 2016. We analyzed the initial situation with semi-structured interviews among stakeholders, a telephone survey among citizens of Baden-Württemberg and qualitative analyses of press articles. Results showed that there is a high demand for urban wildlife management, since cases of conflicts were frequent and involved a variety of species. The majority of citizens needed support in case of human-wildlife conflicts, but lacked clear contact persons and available, correct information. Urban wildlife management tasks were not clearly distributed among authorities, and the legal situation was confusing. Basically, urban wildlife management was not on the agenda of urban administrations. In a second step, we organized two subsequent expert workshops in all four administrative districts of Baden-Württemberg with persons involved in urban wildlife management (hunters and hunting authorities, veterinarians, animal welfare groups, conservation authorities, police, etc.) to develop strategies for improving urban wildlife management. We defined the following management goals: educe threats to health and security, reduce damages caused by wildlife, protect wildlife from unnecessary suffering, maintain and improve citizen's experience of nature, support and conserve threatened wildlife species. Workshop participants came to identify five different management aspects, where action should be taken to improve urban wildlife management: Management structures, capacity building, public information, urban habitats and acceptance of wildlife. Based on these results, we developed guidelines for districts and communities in Baden-Württemberg. In a follow-up project, these concepts are implemented in two model regions in Baden-Württemberg until 2019.