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Toward Peace With Nature: Protected Areas Effectively Mitigate Wild Ungulate‐Livestock Competition Despite Spatial Mismatch on the Qinghai‐Tibet Plateau

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Competition for forage between wild ungulates and grazing livestock poses a critical challenge for sustaining grassland ecosystems and pastoral livelihoods. Protected areas (PAs) may mitigate competition, but quantitative multi‐species assessments that simultaneously integrate habitat overlap, forage availability, and conservation effectiveness remain scarce. Using 3,529 occurrence records of six dominant wild ungulate species and livestock distribution data, we quantified spatiotemporal dynamics of habitat spatial overlap and resource competition on the Qinghai‐Tibet Plateau (QTP) in 2000 and 2020 with maximum entropy and random forest models. Our results reveal that livestock and wild ungulate populations increased by 7.41% and 60.02%, sharing 92.66% of their habitat range. Spatial overlap of habitats declined by 4,340 km 2 across the QTP but increased by 662 km 2 within PAs. Notably, mean resource competition decreased by 33.01%, shifting from a 3% forage overstock (1.03) to a 31% understock (0.69). PAs reduced competition by 48.21%, surpassing the 28.81% reduction in other regions, and provided 3.90 million sheep units (SHU) of potential rewilding capacity. The competition mitigation in PAs was accompanied by outward spillover effects ( R 2 = 0.88). However, existing PAs cover only 41.49% of key wild ungulate habitats and 12.71% of areas simultaneously facing overgrazing, revealing a spatial mismatch between conservation and ecological needs. Accordingly, we propose a four‐zone conservation‐utilization framework consisting of strict protection, coexistence, restricted grazing, and traditional use areas, emphasizing government‐corporate‐pastoral collaboration. These findings provide actionable insights for balancing wildlife conservation with pastoral livelihoods and promoting peace between humans and nature in ecologically fragile regions.

Source: Earth s Future

DOI: 10.1029/2025ef007815