Human–Macaque Conflicts in Shrinking Communities: Recent Achievements and Challenges in Problem Solving in Modern Japan

Abstract

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Optimizing habitat connectivity among macaque populations in modern Japan

“…This means that land sharing even along the periphery of the least‐cost path between people and macaques could be a feasible option, as exemplified by the practices of agroforestry in the tropics (Estrada et al, 2012). One of the feasible alternatives could be the adoption of wildlife‐friendly silvicultural techniques such as retention forestry to create multi‐storied forests (Mori & Kitagawa, 2014), likely contributing to ensuring the compatibility between forestry development and macaque habitat conservation (Enari, 2021). For achieving such alternatives designed to land share by agreement among multi‐stakeholders, some minimum regulations of land‐use to avoid excessive forest losses, rather than arranging nature reserves, would be preferable on the least‐cost paths.…”

“…Depopulation appears to be an opportunity to undo the key cause of ongoing conservation issues. However, the reality in Japan is that shrinking human communities should be considered a cause of new and more serious damage threatening public livelihoods, which occurs inside human settlements where the most effective countermeasures (i.e., fencing) can hardly be incorporated (Enari, 2021). Thus, faced by the reality of present communities, the culling of troops strongly habituated to human and settlement areas becomes an inevitable option in many cases (Seino et al, 2018; Uno & Kinota, 2019) and therefore, ensuring the appropriate design of habitat connectivity among remnant populations becomes an even more important challenge.…”

“…Predators and resource competitors that constrain habitat occupation of Japanese macaques are absent in the wild (Enari, 2021). This means that few intricate presumptions were required to calculate the connectivity of macaque populations, such as dispersal traps (Vasudev et al, 2015), brought by predation risk (Orrock et al, 2008) and interspecific resource competition (Cushman et al, 2010) to impede animal movement.…”

The dark side of nature experience: Typology, dynamics and implications of negative sensory interactions with nature

“…The so‐called ‘expansion of negative experience’ (Soga & Gaston, 2022) is found in both developed and developing countries and urban and rural areas (Figure 1). The expansion of negative experience is considered to be driven by several environmental and social factors, such as increases in human populations, increases in ecotourism activities, reductions in available natural habitat due to urban and agricultural developments, range expansion due to global climate change of some wildlife harmful to humans, increased international trade or the depopulation of rural areas, the growing familiarity of wild animals with people and inappropriate behaviour of people towards them (Chippaux, 2015; Enari, 2021; McPhee, 2014; Penteriani et al, 2016; Soga & Gaston, 2020; Vink et al, 2011).…”

“…fire ants, snapping turtles, redback spider or spear thistle), the establishment of these organisms in an ecosystem can result in loss of many native species but it may increase negative direct human–nature interactions (Liu et al, 2021; Shackleton et al, 2017; Vink et al, 2011). Likewise, it might be possible that loss of some predator species due to anthropogenic activities can result in the increase in the abundance, and activity level, of wildlife that can cause negative health impacts for humans (Enari, 2021). In these cases, the amount of negative direct human–nature interactions per unit of biodiversity likely increases with decreasing biodiversity.…”