Complexities of conflict: the importance of social factors for resolving human-wildlife conflict

Dickman argued that human-wildlife conflict is often misdiagnosed as a simple problem of animal damage when its roots and intensity are deeply social, shaped by attitudes, cultural values, historical grievances, social identity, and conflicts between human groups projected onto wildlife. Drawing on carnivore conflict cases, she showed that hostility frequently exceeds what economic losses alone would predict, and that technical fixes fail when underlying social dimensions are ignored. She called for integrating social science, addressing perception, trust, and intergroup tensions, into conflict management. The paper became a landmark in reframing human-wildlife conflict as fundamentally a human-human and human-nature relationship problem, profoundly influencing the field's direction.