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Wild animals are important worldwide because of the multiple values they represent for human societies. Different frameworks have been proposed to understand the values of wildlife from economic and noneconomic perspectives. Despite efforts from different disciplines to provide a holistic framework for the analysis of wildlife values, the focus is still based on the monetary value derived from market prices. Community-oriented approaches to wildlife conservation have an especially strong economic rationale because they depend on the economic costs and benefits that wildlife represents to local communities. However, purely economic approaches ignore that values are subjective and as such are perceived differently among stakeholders according to their social, economic, cultural, and ecological context. The lack of a holistic framework hinders the possibility to provide a clear and practical tool for the resolution of wildlife conservation conflicts and the identification of management options that maximize values. Based on a wide literature review, we propose a comprehensive wildlife value framework (WVF) incorporating the values of wildlife identified in the academic literature into the total economic value (TEV) framework. Costs associated with human-wildlife conflicts are also incorporated as well as subjective perceptions of values based on multidimensional well-being criteria. This work aims to provide a common structure within which different perspectives related to wildlife can be captured to inform multi-actor, multi-objective decision making related to wildlife management.

Societies value ecosystems and the services they provide in a number of ways. These values can help inform the management of ecosystems such as coral reefs. However, the trade-offs in ecosystem goods and services associated with different social and management conditions are poorly understood. Consequently, we examined values assigned to the goods and services identified across three types of management on the Kenyan coast: (1) a government-imposed no-take area in the Mombasa Marine National Park; (2) co-management of gear between fishing communities and the government's fisheries department; and (3) community-initiated no-take area management, where a community independently initiated and controlled a small closed area. We compared the ecosystem goods and services and the broader total economic value to explore how the history of these sites, their social conditions, and different management choices were associated with these values. The highest total economic values were associated with government management interventions and were probably due to the government's priority to be involved in the high-value beach tourism destinations. This is, however, associated with losses in a range of local community-level values and the social capital of the resource-user community. For example, resource users near the government marine protected area had the lowest value for measures of biological knowledge. Sites displaying greater community-level values were characterized by high social capital, and users had the most confidence in their ability to manage the resource. This study suggests that trade-offs occur in values associated with the interests and responsibilities of the management. The ability to cope with disturbance and change will depend on these values and responsibilities, and local communities are less likely to respond when government management and interests are strong.