Professor Alexandra Zimmermann
Research Fellows
Associate Professor
Alexandra Zimmermann is Associate Professor at WildCRU and the founding Chair of the IUCN SSC Human-Wildlife Conflict & Coexistence Specialist Group. She works globally in the field of human-wildlife conflict and coexistence (HWCC) and conservation conflict resolution. Over the past 25 years, across wide a range of socio-political contexts including conflicts over jaguars and pumas in Brazil and Venezuela, elephants in India and Indonesia, tigers in Nepal, bears in Bolivia, and fruit bats in Mauritius. Her work focuses on the hidden social causes of conflict, community-led solutions, stakeholder dialogue, and conflict prevention.
At WildCRU she co-leads the Conflict & Coexistence Theme, supervises doctoral students, leads a Master’s module on HWCC. She has also trained several hundred researchers, practitioners, and government officers around the world in human-wildlife conflict management and conflict resolution, and runs an independent professional training course called Negotiating Coexistence.
As Chair of the IUCN SSC Human-Wildlife Conflict & Coexistence Specialist Group, she led the group’s work in the development of the IUCN Guidelines on Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence, and established the HWCC International Conferences, the first of which was co-hosted with WildCRU in Oxford in 2023. She plays an active role in international policy, particularly for Target 4 of the UN CBD Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and its implementation and monitoring, for which she facilitates practice-policy links and cross-sectoral collaborations. For these efforts she received the Harry Messel Award for Conservation Leadership from IUCN in 2024.
Alexandra works extensively in the intergovernmental sector, including previously for five years as senior advisor to the Global Wildlife Program of the World Bank. She is a frequent technical advisor to a number of institutions including the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the Royal Commission for Al Ula, and serves on the boards of the Arabian Leopard Fund and within the UN-led Collaborative Partnership for Wildlife, among many others. Before this she was Head of Conservation Science at Chester Zoo, where she secured five Darwin Initiative grants and led community-based human-wildlife coexistence efforts in South Asia and Latin America.
Alexandra was raised in Indonesia, Lebanon, Germany, France, and Canada and was initially trained in zoology (BSc, Leeds) and conservation biology (MSc, DICE) before gaining her doctorate in conservation social science (DPhil, Oxford). She then trained in conflict negotiation at Harvard Law School and diplomatic negotiation at the United Nations. She seeks to bring insights from conflict studies and diplomacy into biodiversity conservation.
Websites
IUCN SSC Human-Wildlife Conflict & Coexistence Specialist Group www.hwctf.org
Selected Publications
Zimmermann, A & McQuinn, B. (2025, in press) The art and science of conservation conflict resolution. Oxford University Press.
Zimmermann, A. (2025, in prep). Human-wildlife conflict and coexistence in theory and practice. An academic textbook. Cambridge University Press
Zimmermann, A., Hatchwell, M., Dickie, L. & West, C.D. (2007) Zoos in the 21st Century: Catalysts for Conservation? Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK.
IUCN (2023). IUCN SSC guidelines on human-wildlife conflict and coexistence. First edition. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. https://doi.org/10.2305/YGIK2927. (Editor)
IUCN (2020). IUCN SSC Position Statement on the Management of Human-Wildlife Conflict. IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) Human-Wildlife Conflict Task Force. (Lead Author).
Zimmermann, A, McQuinn, BP, & Macdonald, DW (2020). Levels of conflict over wildlife: understanding and addressing the right problem. Conservation Science in Practice. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.259
Zimmermann, A, Johnson, P, de Barros, AE, Inskip, C, Amit R, Cuellar Soto, E, Lopez-Gonzalez C, Sillero-Zubiri, C, de Paula, R, Marchini, S, Soto-Schoender, J, Perovic, PG, Earle, S, Quiroga-Pacheco, CJ, & Macdonald, DW (2021) Every case is different: cautionary insights about generalisations in human-wildlife conflict from a range-wide study of people and jaguars. Biological Conservation. Vol. 260. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2021.109185
Tollington, S., Kareemun, Z., Augustin, A., Lallchand, K., Tatayah, V. & Zimmermann, A. (2019). Quantifying the damage caused by fruit bats to backyard lychee trees in Mauritius and evaluating the benefits of protective netting. PLoS ONE 14(8). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220955
Marchini, S., Ferraz, KPMB., Zimmermann, A., Guimarães-Luiz, T., Morato, R., Correa, PLP. & Macdonald. D.W. (2019). Planning for coexistence in a complex human-dominated world. In: Frank, B., Glikman, JA & Marchini, S. Human-Wildlife Interactions: Turning Conflicts Into Coexistence? Cambridge University Press. Pp 414-438
Pooley, s, M. Barua, W. Beinart, A. Dickman, G. Holmes, J. Lorimer, A.J. Loveridge, D.W. Macdonald, G. Marvin, S. Redpath, C. Sillero-Zubiri, A. Zimmermann, & E.J. Milner-Gulland (2017) An interdisciplinary review of current and future approaches to improving human–predator relations. Conservation Biology, 31(03):513-523 https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12859
Wilson, S., Davies, T.E., Hazarika, N. & Zimmermann, A. (2013). Understanding Patterns of Human-Elephant Conflict in Assam: An Analysis to Inform Mitigation Strategies. Oryx. 49(01): 140 – 149. https://doi:10.1017/S0030605313000513
Chartier, L., Zimmermann, A. & Ladle, R.J. (2011). Habitat loss and human–elephant conflict in Assam, India: does a critical threshold exist?. Oryx. 45 (04): 528-533. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605311000044
Davies, T. E., Wilson, S., Hazarika, N., Chakrabarty, J., Das, D., Hodgson, D. J. and Zimmermann, A. (2011), Effectiveness of intervention methods against crop-raiding elephants. Conservation Letters. 4: 346-354. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1755-263X.2011.00182.x
Inskip, C. & Zimmermann, A. (2009). Human-Felid Conflict: A Review of Patterns & Priorities Worldwide. Oryx 43 (1): 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1017/S003060530899030X
Zimmermann, A., Walpole, M. J., & Leader-Williams, N. (2005) Cattle ranchers’ attitudes to conflicts with jaguars in the Pantanal of Brazil. Oryx. 39 (4): 406-412. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605305000992
Zimmermann, A. (2020) Why we need to invest in conflict resolution for better biodiversity outcomes. World Bank Blogs. 17 November 2020. https://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/why-we-need-invest-conflict-resolution-better-biodiversity-outcomes Translated into Spanish, French, Chinese and Arabic
Zimmermann, A. & Baruah, M. (2023) Human-Wildlife Conflict: Global Policy and Perception Insights. World Bank Briefs. 9 November 2023. https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/global-wildlife-program/brief/human-wildlife-conflict-global-policy-and-perception-insights
Zimmermann, A. (2022). UN biodiversity conference: what does living in harmony with nature look like? The Conversation.16 December 2022. https://theconversation.com/un-biodiversity-conference-what-does-living-in-harmony-with-nature-look-like-196228
Zimmermann, A. & Stevens, J (2021). Managing human-wildlife conflict in a rapidly changing climate. IUCN Congress Blogs. July 2021. https://www.iucncongress2020.org/newsroom/all-news/managing-human-wildlife-conflict-rapidly-changing-climate
Zimmermann, A, Macdonald, E, & Kingston, T (2020) Why Mauritius is culling an endangered fruit bat that exists nowhere else. The Conversation. 26 November 2020. https://theconversation.com/why-mauritius-is-culling-an-endangered-fruit-bat-that-exists-nowhere-else-150567
For more publications see:
https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=IyQIGWsAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra
