Guarding crops from monkey troops: farmer-monkey interaction near a nature reserve in Guangxi, China

Abstract

Crop damage by wildlife can cause significant economic loss and non-human primates can be nuisances to farmers following their ingenuity in crop-raiding strategies. There is an emerging research interest on interspecies interaction in human-wildlife conflicts, following the growing field of merging human-animal barrier, at least analytically. We collected qualitative data from two villages experiencing macaque crop damage near a national nature reserve in Guangxi, China, to understand how humans and macaques interact in a crop damage scenario and how the interaction evolves in time. We find the mutually interactive processes taken place between farmers and monkeys as they try to learn and adjust to the counterparts' daily activities and raiding/guarding strategies. Their interaction is also mediated by materiality: the crops, the topography of the landscapes and managerial tools. In recent years, socioecological changes such as afforestation, hunting bans and out migration have enabled macaques to grow their population and more boldly pursue for their preference of crops. Our finding reveals the role of non-human animal agency, conservation, and other social processes in shaping human-wildlife relations, as well as the potential of using more-than-human perspective and ethnographic methods in understanding human-wildlife relations. It further implies the need of enhancing farmers' knowing and adjustment, as well as encouraging human-wildlife cohabitation.

The Status of Wildlife Damage Compensation in China

“…While predators usually cause injury or death to livestock and poultry, herbivores compete with domestic livestock for pasture or cause damage to or total loss of harvests and property. A comprehensive list of nuisance species reported in 19 Chinese provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities is provided in Supplementary Material Table S1 [24,[31][32][33]36,37,48,49,[54][55][56]65,.…”

“…Chinese conservation efforts to preserve biodiversity and control the impact of hunting on wildlife populations, has resulted in the effective protection of-often endangeredwildlife species and their habitats [26][27][28]. With the rapid growth of wildlife populations and corresponding range expansions, human-wildlife conflicts have notably increased across China [29][30][31][32]. In particular, the depredation of crops and domestic livestock, but also through the transmission of diseases and direct threats to human safety have become increasingly disastrous, resulting in serious economic losses and increasing grief among local communities [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40].…”

“…With the rapid growth of wildlife populations and corresponding range expansions, human-wildlife conflicts have notably increased across China [29][30][31][32]. In particular, the depredation of crops and domestic livestock, but also through the transmission of diseases and direct threats to human safety have become increasingly disastrous, resulting in serious economic losses and increasing grief among local communities [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]. Hence, this matter has become a focus for local and regional politicians, who have come to recognize the issue's socioeconomic importance, particularly in provinces with rich biodiversity (e.g., Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Jilin, and Tibet) [41,42], and where compensation programs for local communities have already been implemented [30,43,44].…”

Crop Loss and Damage by Primate Species in Southwest Ethiopia

“…Crop damage is the most prevalent form of humanprimate confict across the African continent [5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. Primate damage to crops results in signifcant economic losses [12]. Crop-raiders are commonly thought of as creatures that engage in this behavior [13].…”

Human–elephant interaction: Community perspectives on conflict mitigation and conservation mechanisms

“…Here, costs include direct monetary losses and indirect costs perceived by the affected people, such as the psychological costs of fear and risk (Bruskotter & Wilson, 2014; Kansky & Knight, 2014). Ecologists, who used to prefer studying species in their “natural” environment, now look into the interconnectedness between human and non‐human species (Li & von Essen, 2020).…”