ENSC 402: Analyzing Extant Wildlife-Agriculture-Interference Mitigation Plans: A Comparison to Ideal Environmental Decision Making Practices

For hundreds of years, human agricultural practices have impeded on the natural processes of the surrounding wildlife. This history of negative impacts to surrounding wildlife has long been studied and addressed, but what about the negative effects that some animals pose on agriculture? This paper will address three different scenarios: coyote and wolf impacts on livestock farming, elephant impacts on agricultural practices in Africa, and the effects that feral swine have on the environment and agriculture. These situations will be examined to provide information on these topics and to raise awareness of these issues. After examination, the conservation practices used to protect the agricultural resources will be assessed. These practices will then be compared to theories and practices used in environmental decision making. Comparing these situations will allow us to better understand real-world situations, and the practices used to mitigate these effects, to the “ideal” practices of environmental decision making expressed by the academic community. Examples of these practices include the ideals of Systems Thinking, “Wicked” problems associated with environmental decisions, Life Cycle Analysis, Adaptive Management, stock-holder involvement, and Indigenous people’s epistemologies and decision-making. Some, if not all, of these environmental decision-making tools are possibly what is being utilized to mitigate the impacts animals have on agriculture and the impacts that agriculture has on wildlife. To assess and characterize the mitigation of wildlife on agriculture is important in understanding the usefulness of these practices, as well as to determine whether these practices are used in real-life situations. Another objective of this paper will be to identify the use of these practices with relevance to habitat and wildlife conservation to ensure that the practices do not limit agricultural development, but also do not limit the wildlife that is impacted due to the presence of agriculture in their habitat.