Exploring the Gendered Dynamics of Human-Wildlife Conflict

The gendered dynamics of human-wildlife conflict – how people’s relations and actions are (re)shaped by conflict with protected species – remain overlooked and understudied. As protected areas and other area-based conservation measures continue to expand under global restoration targets, so too does the burden placed on communities at their margins from the increase in human-wildlife conflict. In these communities, the absence of formal protection is navigated through everyday practices, such as sleeping in gardens to guard crops, diversifying economic activities, and drawing on systems of social cooperation. Governments and NGOs have typically responded with the deployment of mitigation methods such as wildlife compensation, payments for ecosystem services, or the provision of alternative livelihoods. Yet as these interventions are rolled out at pace, the social and gendered risks they carry remain poorly understood, often obscured by their administrative and technical framing.

At a local level, this research examines these dynamics in rural northern Uganda, around Kidepo Valley National Park, with a particular focus on the gendered dimensions of the newly-minted compensation scheme. It traces how the scheme’s administrative demands come to embed individual, embodied labour, where the unpaid time and physical demands of submission often become a hidden cost of pursuing formal redress. Inconsistent payments and unmet promises risk undermining the scheme’s intended purpose, straining social ties and deepening negative perceptions of the very species it intends to protect.