Managing conflicts towards coexistence:

The British Ecological Society (BES) is hosting a live online workshop through its open platform Applied Ecology Resources (AER) on managing human-wildlife conflicts, focusing on wolves. The webinar takes place on Friday 21st July at 12:00pm BST and is titled ‘Working people while working on wolves – managing conflicts towards coexistence’. 

Though wolf numbers across Europe have recovered to around 12,000, more work is needed to consolidate progress made and to ensure lasting growth in numbers. Coexistence is key to achieving this. However, in recent years, the perception of wolves as indicative of ecosystem recovery has shifted and wolves are often linked to human-wildlife conflicts instead.

The webinar’s upcoming speaker, Dário Hipólito, will address this disparity in perception, arguing that it would not occur if conservation focused on coexistence and co-adaptation. 

To work towards coexistence, it’s important to understand the local communities and learn how to deal with their needs and concerns which requires persistence, adaptation and continuous communication. The objective of this workshop is to provide tools that can be used to work with local communities and improve project success.

As a PhD student at the Centre of Environmental and Marine Studies (CESAM) and Department of Biology at the University of Aveiro in Portugal, Dário’s research focuses primarily on wolf ecology and coexistence. He has spent the last 8 years conducting wolf monitoring  in central Portugal and Croatia.

Commenting on the importance of the webinar, Dário Hipólito said: ‘Doing research on wolf ecology is more than just working with wolves, it’s working people. Coexistence is key and co-adaptation is a critical piece of the process. However, trying to make locals understand the need to adapt is a challenge that I hope to make a little bit easier with this workshop.”

To register for free for the upcoming ‘managing conflicts towards coexistence’ workshop on Friday 21st July, visit the BES website and click on AER Live.