Adaptive Co-Management Frameworks for Protected Areas Integrating Local Livelihoods and Wildlife Conflict Mitigation

Abstract

In human-dominated habitats, human-wildlife conflict is a challenge that is frequently observed to affect the existence of protected areas that serve as important in conserving biodiversity. This paper set out to advance and test the adaptive co-management framework, which combines local livelihoods in a way that supports conflict mitigation to improve socio-ecological resilience. The data were gathered under the mixed-method socio-ecological systems approach, through the various protected areas that differ in governance regimes, livelihood dependence, and conflict intensity. Human-wildlife conflict data were based on the incident records, participatory mapping, and household survey, and the ecological indicators such as habitat condition and fragmentation obtained using the multi-temporal Landsat and Sentinel. Composite indices of livelihood resilience and participation in governance included income diversity, adaptive capacity, institutional access, and stakeholder engagement. The findings indicated that strong co-managed sites had the lowest levels of conflict (HWCᵢ = 2.1 ± 0.3), highest resilience livelihood (LRIᵢ = 0.74 ± 0.05), and better habitat condition (VCI = 0.68 ± 0.04), and weakly managed sites had the highest levels of conflict (HWCᵢ = 5.2 ± 0.6), low resilience (0.39 ± 0.07). The involvement of governance positively affected livelihood resilience (β = 0.62, p < 0.001) and indirectly decreased the intensity of conflict (β = −0.48, p < 0.01), with adaptive learning having a further positive impact on institutional effectiveness (β = 0.55, p < 0.001). The researchers summarize the research by concluding that adaptive co-management, which provides a structured feedback-driven learning and livelihood assistance, can reduce HWC, enhance community resilience, and ecological performance all at the same time. Further research must aim at expanding the framework to various socio-ecological settings and implement technological assistance in monitoring and mitigation of proactive conflicts.