WildlifeNL is a research project dedicated to the search for new forms of wildlife management. Wildlife such as wild boar, wisent, wolf, and several ungulate species and semi-domesticated large grazers are returning to the Netherlands on a large scale. This return leads to tensions between people and wildlife and calls for new forms of wildlife management. In a country as densely populated as the Netherlands, humans and wildlife constantly interact, knowingly, or more often, unknowingly. These behavioural interactions are a form of interspecies communication that current wildlife management often ignores by focusing on managing wildlife numbers.
WildlifeNL considers humans as integral parts of the natural system, acknowledging the role of interspecies communication processes between wildlife and humans as sympatric organisms. From this perspective, the project proposes to develop an innovative interspecies communication approach to wildlife management in the Netherlands, by combining the latest insights from environmental social science, philosophy, behavioural ecology, and engineering.
In WildlifeNL, scientists of diverse disciplines and practitioners, together with societal stakeholders, will develop new technologies, governance arrangements and communication strategies that influence the behaviour of wildlife ánd people to enable low-conflict human-wildlife coexistence. Moreover, together with all stakeholders, the project will explore various scenarios for how sustainable human-wildlife coexistence may look like, for example by playing a serious game. In this way WildlifeNL contributes to the search for a nature-inclusive society in which humans and wildlife can flourish.
For more information, please visit the website of WildlifeNL.
