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Conservation science requires a balance of social and ecological perspectives to understand human-wildlife interactions. The salient issue that often hinders balanced integration is that current frameworks ignore context. We look for an integrative social-ecological framework which emphasizes equal representation across social and ecological conservation sciences. We suggest “social-ecological practice theory”, an integration of general ecological theory and anthropology’s practice theory, for a conservation- minded social-ecological framework to better theorize human-nature relationships. We then illustrate how to apply social-ecological practice theory to our case study in the Makgadikgadi region of Botswana. We highlight how the practices of people, lions, and cattle—in combination with environmental and structural features—provides the needed context to deepen understanding of human-wildlife conflict in the region.