Abstract 199 – Does Destroying Wildlife Reduce Human-Wildlife Conflict? Evidence from Black Bears in British Columbia

Felix Pretis, Jason Hicks, Sara Wray Enns, Sumeet Gulati, Prasun Ghimire

The destruction of wildlife is a common intervention in response to human-wildlife conflict.
However, it is uncertain how effective such lethal interventions are in reducing future conflict.
Here we assess whether the destruction of wildlife reduces human-wildlife conflict by
assembling a novel dataset on all recorded human-black bear conflicts in British Columbia,
Canada from 2013 until 2021. The data spans more than 66,000 conflict events leading to more
than 3,000 bears having been destroyed. We estimate the response of conflict to destroyed
bears using panel regressions and local projections controlling for weather, settlement
density, seasonal effect, as well as salmon abundance. We find little evidence that the
destruction of black bears leads to significant long run reductions in future human-bear conflict.
Our results show a small temporary fall in conflict in response to destroyed bears, with a
rebound to pre-intervention levels of conflict after 12 months. These results are consistent with
human-black bear conflict being driven by circumstances rather than problematic bears and
cast doubt around the practice of destroying wildlife to reduce human-wildlife conflict.