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WildlifeNL consists of a broad consortium of societal and scientific partners. The goal is to generate practice-relevant outcomes through conducting applied research. This is done in close cooperation within the consortium. In doing so, WildlifeNL also hopes to contribute to reducing the distance between science and practice.

The project takes 8 years, and is divided into 4 phases:

  • Years 1-3: jointly describing the context of current wildlife management and determining the focus of the study
  • Years 2-5: understanding by gaining new knowledge in different subfields
  • Year 4-6: innovate and experiment (following the new insights gained)
  • Years 6-8: transform and integrate knowledge and explore opportunities for scaling up


The project is currently in its first phase. This phase is mainly focused on setting up the collaboration between all partners in the consortium. The activities in this phase consist mainly of workshops,. The aim of these workshops is to work with all consortium partners to map current fauna management and the current handling of large grazers, to identify problems and obstacles, and to reflect together on the use of the research. The aim is to discuss with the consortium the starting points of the project and identify opportunities for change. This is input for the second phase in which the research questions will be further developed.

Research questions

What are the current social paradigms underlying human-animal interactions and what possible alternative, non-dualistic, paradigms about human-animal interactions can be identified?

What is the current and possible future role of inter-species communication (between humans and animals) in human-animal management? And what role does trust play in this, between humans and between humans and animals?
What would an adaptive governance system that focuses on co-management of human-animal behavior look like? How to enable such institutional reform?
What values/benefits (intrinsic, instrumental and relational) do different groups in society attribute to wildlife and what level of conflicts with wildlife do these groups experience?

How are values and conflicts related to human and animal behavior, how are they distributed in space, and what are the inequalities associated with them?

How can the use of new governance arrangements and communication strategies guide human and animal behavior and reduce conflict?
Can new technological developments help actively guide human and wildlife behavior to reduce conflict?
What are the implications of the increasing use of technology in wildlife management on the experience of nature?
How do we monitor wildlife, wildlife damage and human-fauna conflicts? What variables are most important here? How do we ensure that monitoring methods are acceptable to all parties? Which methods are these? And how do we make monitoring data transparent and accessible?

Photo header: Ruud Maaskant, PWN

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