Few areas in the world exist where humans and wildlife do not overlap. Across landscapes, from the highly built environments of cities, to agrarian fields and wildlife reserves, human-nature interactions are inevitable. In these settings, scientists take various approaches to promote biodiversity, such as the establishment of greenspaces, conservation programs/incentives within human-altered landscapes (e.g. shade grown or bird friendly coffee and private easements), and rules regulating and limiting the use of natural areas. However, many of these plans often ignore the perceptions and potential desires of the people who live in and around these landscapes that are impacted by management practices. As a result, there can often be mismatches between what the public and scientists desire resulting in unsuccessful conservation and restoration plans. In an attempt to remediate these problems, there is a growing interest in understanding how perceptions of plants and animals may influence individuals’ and organizations' actions toward wildlife conservation. This interest in how perceptions relate to action is of importance to conservationists who often rely on funding generated from the public, city planners who aim to maximize the utility of open spaces, and NGOs and governments that promote “greener” land management practices. However, despite this interest, studies that link human perceptions of wildlife with ecological data about the presence of wildlife within the same system are rare. To fully understand the complexity of human-nature perceptions and interactions, ecologists and social scientists must work together in order to address this coupled issue. In this session, we will provide examples of how social and ecological datasets can be used in conjunction to better understand how people perceive nature and make decisions which can affect biodiversity in their communities. Additionally, this work provides insight as to how these perceptions of nature then link back to how people experience and interact with nature. Through this session, we will highlight the importance of integrating social science with ecological studies and planning actions , especially in human-dominated systems. This session will also highlight potential datasets and social science methodologies that ecologists can use in future studies.