Using individual‐based modelling to anticipate future conflict potential for expanding European bison populations

Recent recoveries of European megafauna provide opportunities for restoring these species more widely across their historical ranges. However, as their populations grow and expand into more human‐dominated landscapes, conflicts with people will increasingly challenge human‐megafauna coexistence.

Focusing on European bison Bison bonasus , we developed spatial conflict indicators related to crop damage, forestry damage and traffic collisions, and integrated them in a spatially explicit, individual‐based metapopulation model to identify regions where conflict might occur as bison populations expand in Central Europe. We furthermore tested how future European bison population trends would be affected by population regulation for conflict mitigation and by increased traffic mortality.

Our population model projected a threefold increase of European bison to 7580 individuals after 100 years, and continuous range expansion. Conflict potential varied substantially across the region for the different conflict types, yet we generally anticipated increasing conflict risk, with hotspots primarily in northeastern Poland (crop damage), western Poland (all conflict types) and Western Germany (traffic). Importantly, we identified potential low‐conflict coldspots in the Slovakian Carpathians and in the Czech‐German Bohemian forest.

Limiting European bison population growth to not exceed low‐conflict densities reduced population forecasts by 35%, and substantially reduced range expansion in western Poland, southeastern Poland and Western Germany. Increased traffic mortality slowed down range expansion, primarily in Western Germany, and decreased long‐term population size by 10%.

Our results uncover a major trade‐off between conflict mitigation through population regulation and restoring the functional roles of European bison, highlighting the need for coexistence strategies to reconcile these goals. We identified conflict‐prone regions where targeted mitigation measures should be prioritized, as well as conflict coldspots offering untapped potential for European bison restoration.

Synthesis and applications . Proactively developing and geographically targeting coexistence measures before conflicts become entrenched can improve megafauna restoration success. Our work demonstrates how integrating spatial conflict indicators into individual‐based models enables forward‐looking simulations of range expansion to guide such measures and to assess how they might impact recovering populations. Engaging stakeholders and building local support will be key to fostering megafauna recovery and their various social‐ecological benefits.