Guarding crops against the ‘protected pest’ : interactions among farmers, monkeys, and conservation staffs in a nature reserve of Guangxi, China

Abstract: Human-wildlife conflict has become a global challenge. Crop damage by wildlife can cause significant economic loss and primates such as monkeys can cause particular problem to farmers. The monkey problem has already become intense in communi-ties near white-headed langur national nature reserve of Guangxi, China, and involve not only farmers and monkeys, but also conservation staffs as they are regarded as the guards of monkeys. An understanding of the relationship among farmers, monkeys and conservation staffs is important to approach the monkey problem. I use in-terpretive multi-actors approach, which closely links to actor network theory, to in-vestigate local perceptions and understandings towards crop damage by monkeys, interactions between monkeys, farmers and conservation staffs, as well as how farmer-monkey relations evolve. My findings have described farmers’ rich under-standings towards the extent of crop damage and crop foraging behaviour of monkeys. Mutual and interactive processes take place between farmers and monkeys, while farmers and conservation staffs interact concerning legitimizing compensation. My thesis further discusses factors that farmers’ perceptions, the mutual learning and ad-justment in farmer-monkey relations, and how their relations are influenced by conservation and other social change. Lastly, I discuss how the monkey problem has transfigured into a conservation problem, when ‘unprotected pest’ turns into ‘pro-tected pest’. These findings and analysis help us to better understand human perception in human-wildlife conflict scenario, farmer-monkey relations and the relation-ship between local community and protected areas. Moreover, it is a try to use actor network theory in studying human-animal interactions.