What's the WeiFo 2025 all about?
The concept of Shared Landscapes
The concept of Shared Landscapes is the focus of this year’s Weihenstephaner Forum and reflects this perspective; it advocates for multiuse landscapes that balance the needs of both people and nature, and promotes acceptance and coexistence. Sharing landscapes is critical to the future of wildlife in the Anthropocene, particularly in terms of understanding the interconnectedness of humans with and as part of nature.
The Forum will present research on human-wildlife interactions in human-dominated
landscapes, including urban and agricultural areas. Case studies from around the world will illustrate the range of interactions that occur in these landscapes. We will consider coexistence as “a negotiation process in which both parties [human-human and human-wildlife] can flourish, leading to a dynamic equilibrium”.[1]
How are positive interactions fostered and negative interactions reduced, including humannature
interactions that are often overlooked in science and society? We will reflect critically on what coexistence means for the inhabitants of these shared landscapes.
For whose benefit are landscapes shared, what does it mean for the nonhuman inhabitants of these habitats, and how is the success of coexistence measured?
The Forum will address perspectives from a broad range of disciplines, from ecology
to anthropology to conservation science. We identify and discuss the factors that
foster broad coexistence based on our findings across diverse regions and taxa.
[1] Von Essen, E., Drenthen, M., & Bhardwaj, M. (2023). How fences communicate interspecies codes of conduct in the landscape: toward bidirectional communication?. Wildlife Biology, e01146