As recovering tigers, lemurs, and elephants increasingly share landscapes with farming families, human-wildlife coexistence is proving that species recovery and community wellbeing can strengthen each other.
For decades, conservation success was measured by a single question: are wildlife populations recovering? Tigers are rebounding across parts of Asia. Mountain gorillas continue their comeback in Central Africa. Wolves are returning to parts of Europe, while jaguars reclaim landscapes across Latin America. These achievements mark some of conservation’s greatest wins, but they also introduce an equally urgent question: how can people and wildlife thrive together on the same land?
Human-wildlife coexistence has become essential precisely because conservation is working. As recovering species expand back into forests, rivers, and rangelands, they increasingly overlap with farming communities, fishing families, and rural households whose livelihoods depend on that same land. The latest International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List includes more than 175,000 assessed species, with nearly 50,000 classified as threatened with extinction. For species beginning to recover, ensuring people and wildlife can safely share landscapes has become critical to sustaining those hard-won gains.
Coexistence relies on locally led solutions: better livestock protection, rapid response teams, early warning systems, financial safety nets, sustainable livelihoods, and stronger community governance. Recognized under Target 4 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, supporting coexistence is now formally integrated into global species recovery strategy, not treated as a secondary concern.
In south-eastern Madagascar, human-wildlife coexistence centers on rice fields bordering the last stronghold of the Critically Endangered greater bamboo lemur. A successful harvest determines a family’s food security and income for the entire year, creating direct tension where farmland meets lemur habitat. Since 2019, a community-led rice field guarding system implemented through the SOS Lemurs project has dramatically reduced conflict, with no monitored fields affected by lemur damage. Alongside crop protection, the initiative supports habitat restoration, sustainable agriculture, beekeeping, handicrafts, environmental education, and improved healthcare access, strengthening livelihoods while safeguarding one of the world’s rarest primates.
The Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest spanning India and Bangladesh, presents a more complex picture of human-wildlife coexistence. This critical stronghold for the Endangered Bengal tiger is also home to thousands of people dependent on fishing, crab harvesting, and forest resources. Through IUCN’s Integrated Tiger Habitat Conservation Program, the Wildlife Trust of India and WildTeam Bangladesh now implement complementary, transboundary projects. In India, Primary Response Teams, AI-enabled monitoring, and early warning technologies reduce human-tiger conflict alongside emergency support systems. In Bangladesh, WildTeam strengthens community engagement, wildlife monitoring, and local stewardship while maintaining cross-border knowledge exchange between both organizations.
In Kenya, human-wildlife coexistence takes a financial form. A single night of elephant crop-raiding can destroy an entire season’s harvest, threatening livelihoods for families sharing land with wildlife. A case study developed by the IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence Specialist Group alongside the UN Food and Agriculture Organization explores an insurance approach designed with government agencies, conservation organizations, and local communities to help families recover faster from wildlife-related losses while encouraging preventative measures that reduce conflict in the first place.
In Kenya, human-wildlife coexistence takes a financial form: a case study developed by IUCN’s Species Survival Commission Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence Specialist Group and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization explores insurance that helps families recover from elephant crop-raiding losses while encouraging preventative measures that reduce conflict. Photo by Tony Wild and Norah Rotich, courtesy of IUCN.
These projects fall under IUCN’s Integrated Tiger Habitat Conservation Program, active across Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal, and Thailand. Beyond crop and livestock protection, supported projects restore habitat, strengthen wildlife monitoring, install predator-proof corrals and solar-powered fencing, establish early warning systems, and create sustainable livelihood alternatives, reducing pressure on forests altogether.
The IUCN SSC Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence Specialist Group anchors much of this work globally, connecting researchers and practitioners so lessons learned in one landscape can inform communities thousands of kilometers away. Earlier this year, practitioners from seven tiger range countries gathered in Bangkok to share challenges and compare solutions. The dialogue continues in March 2027, when the group hosts its second International Conference on Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence in Thailand.
Later this year, a forthcoming publication from the African Wildlife Initiative will expand human-wildlife coexistence across an entirely different continent, examining 30 projects across 13 African countries spanning landscapes as varied as the Maasai Mara, the Namib Desert, and Cameroon’s forests. Seven detailed case studies from Botswana, Cameroon, Kenya, Namibia, Niger, Tanzania, and Zambia will highlight predator-proof enclosures, community guardian networks, and strengthened local governance, reinforcing a consistent lesson: effective coexistence combines practical conflict prevention with sustained investment in both communities and ecosystems.
Common myths continue to complicate public understanding of coexistence work. Removing problem animals rarely solves conflict long-term unless underlying causes like food scarcity or habitat fragmentation are addressed, since new animals often replace those removed. Conflict extends well beyond large predators like tigers and wolves to elephants, monkeys, wild pigs, and even geese damaging crops and property. And no single solution works everywhere; the most effective strategies are designed with local communities and adapted to specific ecological and social conditions rather than imported wholesale from elsewhere.
Human-wildlife coexistence increasingly defines what successful conservation looks like in practice. As more species recover across more landscapes, the experiences emerging from Madagascar’s rice fields, the Sundarbans’ mangrove channels, and Kenya’s elephant corridors demonstrate that coexistence isn’t a single intervention or a fixed endpoint. It is an ongoing process of collaboration, adaptation, and shared stewardship between the communities and species that must continue sharing the same land for both to survive.
