Humans will encroach further into wildlife habitats over the next half a century presenting unprecedented conservation challenges.
First-of-its-kind research assessing the future overlap between human and wildlife populations found that the overlap will increase across 57% of the world’s land surface by 2070 and decrease across just 12%.
This brings greater potential for conflict such as wildlife eating crops or livestock, and humans killing wild animals in a threat to species conservation. It also brings a greater risk of disease transmission between animals and humans.
Nearly half (46.5%) of global land area will experience a doubling in human-wildlife overlap by 2070 with most areas of increasing overlap located in Africa and Asia. Conversely, 21% of land in Europe is projected to see a decline in overlap by 2070.
Important nature-rich regions such as the Brazilian Amazon will see relatively large increases in overlap, which researchers say will likely present unprecedented conservation challenges including the potential for human and wildlife conflict and biodiversity loss.
The projected increases in overlap are largely driven by the expansion of human populations rather than changes in wildlife distributions caused by climate change.
Humans already occupy 70% of terrestrial land area and must share increasingly crowded landscapes with animals, according to the research.
The study, published in the Science Advances journal, found that identifying hot and cold spots of human-wildlife overlap “could support the development of equitable coexistence strategies that maximise synergies and minimise trade-offs between societal needs and biodiversity conservation”.
