As cities expand into wildlife habitat, human-wildlife conflict increases — and welfare-centered coexistence strategies offer better outcomes than lethal control.
Urban wildlife conflict frequently results in welfare costs for wild animals — through trapping, translocation, or lethal control — that could be avoided with better human behavior management. When raccoons access garbage, foxes enter gardens, or coyotes approach humans, the animals are usually doing exactly what their evolved behavioral repertoire tells them to do in response to available resources. The source of the problem is human failure to secure attractants, not animal malice. Compassionate coexistence approaches focus on modifying human behavior — securing garbage, removing food attractants, using exclusion rather than lethal control — and result in lasting reductions in conflict without the welfare costs of trapping and killing individual animals.