The world faced stark challenges during the global pandemic caused by COVID-19. Large forces such as climate change, cultural ethnocentrism and racism, and increasing wealth inequality continue to ripple through communities harming community well-being. While the global pandemic caused by COVID-19 exacerbated these forces, lessons across the globe have been captured that inform the field of community well-being long-after the end of the pandemic. While many scholars have looked to political capital, financial capital, and social capital to tackle these challenges, natural capital and cultural capital have extreme relevance. However, scholarship tends to overlook the inextricable and important links between natural capital and cultural capital in community development and well-being work. These capital forms also inform contemporary understandings of sustainability and environmental justice, especially in the fields of community development and well-being. This perspective article showcases the deep connections between natural capital and social capital through literature review and community cases across the globe. Questions are posed for future research and practice tethering together cultural capital and natural capital when looking to bolster community well-being.

In this perspective article, we propose a well-being survey instrument based on Bhutan's Gross National Happiness (GNH) framework for use in community-based wildlife conservation projects. Allgood, Hofberg, Musikanski, Michelini and Moser (2019) found that while there is a need, there is not a well-being survey instrument that includes indicators to measure the impacts on community and wildlife for communality-based wildlife conservation projects. The instrument proposed in this paper is designed to meet the unmet need. It is developed based existing instruments as well as indicators adapted by the authors based on the authors' experience. The proposal concludes with recommendations for use of the instrument.

Many wildlife conservation projects aim to create sustainable and effective solutions by incorporating human and community well-being into their projects. While a few of these projects are incorporating a community well-being approach based on noneconomic factors such as health, education, culture, community vitality, and good governance, most define well-being in purely economic terms. Often, the goal is equitable sharing of the economic value of wildlife as the primary incentive for communities to conserve wildlife. However, these projects have had variable results due to a variety of factors. The question of how conservation projects can reliably and consistently improve both community well-being and wildlife outcomes has yet to be answered. The authors posit that existing indices that measure well-being such as the government of Bhutan's Gross National Happiness (GNH) index, can provide a framework to systematically identify well-being factors through a community-driven method. In this article, nine sustainable and successful community-based wildlife conservation projects are assessed to determine what aspects of well-being (as described by the nine domains of Bhutan's GNH framework) were considered in project planning and implementation. The results indicate that each project did incorporate a variety of aspects of human well-being into planning and implementation, which likely contributed to their success. Future research recommendations include the development and testing of a community-based well-being instrument to analyze and guide community-based wildlife conservation programs.

This article showcases tensions between local culture and wildlife conservation work.The community capitals framework is applied drawing specifically on cultural capital, natural capital, and economic capital for elucidation of notable insights. Five cases from across the world are leveraged to identify where and how culture and conservation can be reconciled to enhance the well-being for humans and wildlife. The five cases include: Whaling in Iceland; elephants in Thailand; monk seals in Hawaii; koalas in Australia; and, wildlife in Alaska. The article demonstrates how different communities have and can shift values to view animals as co-producers of well-being rather than commodities. These communities can find ways to examine and take advantage of the intersections of economic, cultural, and natural capital. Moreover, the nature of how species are culturally defined as important is examined leaving many questions regarding power, ownership, and leadership in future sustainable development efforts including wildlife conservation.

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