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Notes -
If so, I don't really think any answers to this question (your broader one) are really indicative of much because there is one glaring confounding factor in the metric you're using. Most megafaunal extinctions did not occur during the transition to industrial modernity; rather they occurred when all modern humans were still firmly in the hunter-gatherer stage. The giant ground sloths in South America, the mammoths and mastodon in North America, as well as Diprotodon and the marsupial lion in Australia were all driven extinct via a combination of human pressure + environmental shifts during the late Pleistocene. 65% of megafaunal species went extinct during this period, and when it came to animals above 1000 kg, 80% of them disappeared.
What really does this metric in is that this loss of megafauna wasn't exactly evenly distributed throughout the world, it was particularly severe in the Americas and Australia, whereas Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia were less affected. And the worst Pleistocene megafaunal die-offs occurred in regions which happen to correlate with first-world-ness today. Long before any human societies became recognisably first-world the distribution of megafauna globally was already very skewed, and relative megafaunal diversity in any region has a whole lot to do with whatever happened during the late Pleistocene and not quite so much to do with industrialisation.
There were jaguars on the Texas gulf coast until the 30’s. Tigers lived in thé actually populated parts of southern Russia until soviet times. Mountain lions lived through most of the east until the late nineteenth century and they’re still present in the outer suburbs of most American cities in the west- their ecological requirements aren’t that different from pantheras.
Wolves live up and down Italy. Bears are surprisingly willing to live near people.
Clearly large predators living near civilized people is a thing that has, in fact, happened.
I had a black bear in my driveway Monday evening. Just outside 495 in Massachusetts.
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