with raccoon dogs as well as other species, which can turn urban human-wildlife conflicts into harmonious
relationships in Shanghai and potentially other urban areas.
Photo by Xiaodong Sun.
By Qianqian Zhao, Yihan Wang, Lejie Wu, Yidi Feng, Yuhan Li, Zhuojin Zhang, Qing Zhao, and Fang Wang.
The mechanism behind the tolerance of city residents to the presence of wildlife is vital in promoting a harmonious coexistence between humans and nature in urban environments. To advance our knowledge of this mechanism, we focused on raccoon dog in Shanghai, where their fast-growing population has resulted in thousands of complaints and posed management challenges in mitigating human-wildlife conflict. We conducted two questionnaire surveys and initiated educational activities between the two surveys that aimed to inform the public about urban wildlife in their areas. The Chinese pronunciation of the characters for “raccoon dog” is very similar to “harmony and peace.” Based on this relationship, we designed emoji, paper cuts, and brochures to increase people’s relational value to urban species. We shared these between the two surveys. We found that residents’ familiarity with raccoon dogs positively influenced their tolerance, and residents perceived higher benefits and less risks of raccoon dogs during our second survey, after they learned more and saw the material that we had prepared.
To our knowledge, our study is the first in China that demonstrated education activities can improve people’s tolerance of wildlife in urban environments. We believe that the results from this multidisciplinary research will make an immediate contribution to urban biodiversity management in China, and the approach is easily adapted for other systems where rapid changes have brought challenges in human-wildlife coexistence.
Relational Thinking 