Research overview: adaptive management of human-carnivore conflict

This overview reviews the application of adaptive management, structured learning through iterative intervention, monitoring, and adjustment, to human-big cat conflict. It synthesises arguments that because conflict systems are complex, dynamic, and context-specific, managers should treat interventions as experiments, measure outcomes, and revise approaches rather than assume fixed solutions work indefinitely. The literature highlights the role of monitoring, stakeholder participation, and feedback in refining husbandry, incentive, and response measures over time, and the institutional commitment required. The survey frames adaptive management as well-suited to conflict's uncertainty and change, advocating a learning-oriented posture that continuously updates strategy as predators, prey, people, and conditions evolve, in contrast to static, one-off interventions.