Subsistence Farmers’ Understanding of the Effects of Indirect Impacts of Human Wildlife Conflict on Their Psychosocial Well-Being in Bhutan

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a good empirical paper which should be considered for publication, but there are some issues which have to be improved during the revision.

The introduction should state what this paper brings new or what is its added value to what we already know in subsistance farmer literature. Even the aims of the paper should be better highlighted.

Moreover, the literature review can a little bit enlarged, see for instance Wilkie et al, 1998 in Conservation Biology journal on the Ituri forest of Zaire, also Cramp L. et al 2019 (https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2018.2347) has an important recent work in this field of research for southeast Europe. Also, how shepherds defended their cultural identity is already debated - see O’ Brien Thomas et al, 2019, in journal Identities on how shepherds protests for defending their cultural rights and preserving identity. Even some issues of human-animal relations can be added, for instance the aspects of the ethical killing of animals can be shortly mentioned, see an article in journal Area, 2015, on how dog culling (including shepherd dogs) is contested.

Furthermore, there are many papers published on social capital. For a good definition of social capital, see Bourdieu - https://www.socialcapitalresearch.com/bourdieu-on-social-capital-theory-of-capital/. So instead of Karami et al., 2020 you can better mention Bourdieu.Then, on the same line 167 at page 5, authors stated that ’Social capital is increasingly recognized as a dominant paradigm in the quest for social and economic development.’ Here there are also plenty of previous studies on social capital of which 1-2 can be also mentioned (see a paper on marginal people by Mereine Berki B et al, 2021 in journal Cities).

The method and data interpretation is good, although limitations of the data and method could be addressed at the end of the method section. Just in Figure 1 is missing a word at ’Individual/household well-being and ....’

The discussion section should link more the results of this paper to the international literature. So I think that several more studies from the literature review have to be connected to results of this paper, maybe some of the studies suggested above could be helpful. For instance, authors talk about cultural capital and the loss of wool for sheep breeders (see Figure 4). This is an important angle in subsistance farmer research.

Conclusions should mention how the results are novel at international level and say more on the implications of the results on what is already published in the field of subsistence farmer studies. Conclusions are too short – there are plenty of good results in this paper which can be presented in connection to what has already been published in terms of subsistence farmer works at international level.

Finally, authors have to follow Sustainability’s author guidelines, because at the moment the citations throughout the paper and the reference list are not prepared in journal’s style.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review this excellent and important paper.  The paper describes the multiple dimensions of the psychological and social costs of human-wildlife conflict (HWC), offering a strong positive contrast to the too-narrow focus on economic costs found in much of the HWC literature.   It gave me a lot to think about, and I know it will trigger discussions among my colleagues.

The paper establishes a broad context for understanding HWC by starting from the perspective of Bhutan's unique national aspirations to measure success by diverse indices of human happiness.    The methods are clearly presented (with a few lingering questions listed below), and the results are summarized effectively and fleshed out well with quotations from study respondents.  Conclusions follow clearly from results.

Some suggestions for the authors:

As a reader with background in wildlife ecology, management, and policy, it would help orient me (and readers with similar backgrounds) if a paragraph was added (possibly to section 2.2) that elaborates on the natural history of HWC in the study area -- not just the livestock present, but what crops are grown, and what wild animals take livestock and cause crop damage.   In the current MS, that information doesn't emerge until p. 10, and the interested reader needs to fill in the pieces from respondent quotes.

Figure 1 seems to be damaged in the pdf, with words omitted and cut off.  Also, the descriptions of the categories don't quite match the text; for example, the figure lists livestock under physical capital but the text (l. 174) lists livestock under natural capital (which I think is a better fit).

With regards to the methods:

The ms implies that every household selected agreed to be interviewed (l. 230 ff.), which isn't the way it usually works.  Please clarify.

There's no information about how the focus group participants were selected.  It's also not clear whether and how the FGD were used, or if they were used, in the results section.    Please clarify.

A reference (l. 270) is made to field notes.  Please include a sentence or two describing the scope and content of field notes and how they were used in the study.

Finally...I understand if the authors do not want to undertake this task in this manuscript, but if they had any ideas about what kinds of policy changes or assistance might help mitigate the stresses of HWC in Bhutan I'd love to hear them.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Authors have improved their paper. Just a minor revision is required in terms of cross-checking all referencing according to Journal Sustainability author guidelines style (for instance to add doi numbers to all articles and ISBN for book sorces in the reference list).