Community‐based comanagement: Sharing responsibility when tolerance for wildlife is exceeded

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Abstract
A key question in considering wildlife stakeholder acceptance capacity (WSAC) is scale of the problem or opportunity for which WSAC is a concern. Experience indicates that human communities, typically delineated by named places, usually are the relevant scale. This level of human organization seems to be where wildlife issues, especially problems in human‐wildlife interaction, are articulated. Communities can define where and when wildlife tolerance has been exceeded, the nature of problems, what objectives for wildlife impacts should be, and which approaches for resolving issues are acceptable to the community. Experience and recent inquiry described in this article have shown that communities want to be involved in management decisions and, in some cases, implementation of management actions. Community‐based comanagement is becoming an increasingly attractive option for agencies that are financially strapped and staff‐limited in the face of growing demand by communities for tailored management responses to mitigate local situations where wildlife acceptance capacity has been exceeded.