Genius at stating the obvious

The human dimensions of wildlife conservation is a “new” field in the general scope of things and is ostensibly the psychological aspect of wildlife conservation. Human dimensions research actually encompasses many different things, from public policy to the Thoreau-type “love of nature”. What I study in all of this is human attitudes and reactions toward wildlife and the policies put in place to protect that wildlife.

By definition human dimensions of wildlife conservation research should be interdisciplinary; a merging of pyschology, sociology, political science, and ecology. It turns out that human dimensions research suffers from the same problems as most fields in academia; interdisciplinary research is hard! Many research projects would be better served if they used theory and practice from other fields in their work, but, because of many things (politics, lack of expertise, fear of “the scoop”), this doesn’t always happen. Case in point: attitudinal research in human dimensions. This research surveys stakeholder opinions and attitudes about a planned policy or initiative regarding wildlife conservation. Stakeholders can be citizens that might be affected by the new policy, animal rights activists, business owners, or anyone who might have some “stake” in either the way things are now or the way they would be after the policy was implemented. These surveys are important since GOs and NGOs have found (often the hard way) that if the public is not behind the policy it can cost a lot of money, time, and heartache. By assessing a groups’ feelings about the policy these organizations can predict people’s reactions to the policy and make decisions accordingly. Makes sense to me!

But it doesn’t make sense to people a hell of a lot smarter than me, which brings me to a paper I recently read on attitudinal research in wildlife conservation which brought up the obvious point; attitudes by themselves do not necessarily predict behavior. So all these papers, and there are a LOT of them (I hope to review the lion share in my next post), which propose to predict stakeholders’ reactions based on attitudinal surveys seem to be missing the point. The paper goes on to point out that social psychologists have created theoretical models and ways of surveying that can get closer to predicting behavior then simply surveying attitudes alone.

There are two major models discussed. The first is the TRA (Theory of Reasoned Action) model: an expectancy model based on people attitudes towards the act of the thing instead of the thing itself coupled with the type of social pressures that they feel surround that act. For example: instead of asking one’s attitudes toward conserving natural resources, the TRA would ask one’s attitude towards recycling and whether one thinks that others would approve of the action of recycling. If the person’s attitude toward recycling is favorable and he believes others would approve of him recycling then he is likely to recycle according to the TRA. The major problem with the TRA is that the questions need to be so specific that you’re likely to end up with a 100 page survey.

A category of models which may solve this problem are ABPMs (Attitude-to-behavioral process models). These models deal with the accessibility of an attitude. Attitudes towards behaviors are more accessible the more times the behavior has been done in the past. So, a person who has a favorable attitude toward recycling and who has recycled many times in the past is more likely to recycle than a person who has the same favorable attitude toward recycling but has never recycled before. The problem with this model is that many conservation programs may be completely new, allowing no chance to measure how accessible an attitude is.

Still, either one of these models would get us closer to understanding how people would really react to new policies meant to protect wildlife.

Summer Reading List: McCLEERY RA, DITTON RB, SELL J, LOPEZ RR (2006) Understanding and Improving Attitudinal Research in Wildlife Sciences. Wildlife Society Bulletin: Vol. 34, No. 2 pp. 537–541

Where all my bees at?

We all have probably heard of the disappearing bees problem due to the vaguely described and poorly understood Colony Collapse Disorder in which worker bees (the actual pollinators) literally just disappear (the phrase CCD was first coined in 2006). Up to 80% of the U.S. Western Honey Bees have disappeared since 2004 and there’s no indication that the decline will stop. So what are the consequences? Right now the main issues are economic. It costs more for farmers to rent bees for pollination and those costs will be passed on to the consumer. At the moment we’re importing bees from Australia to make up for the bee gap, which is also expensive. But the scary thing is that pollinators all over the world are declining. Is it possible that at some point there won’t be any bees for us to import? That problem seems far-fetched, EXCEPT that it’s already happened in China! This may be old news to some but I just saw it yesterday and was surprised. The loss of pollinators mean most fruits, vegetables, and nuts (which need to be pollinated in this way) will be prohibitively priced or disappear from the market completely. For someone who LOVES fruit I’m really worried about this. Are we looking at a world where it costs $10.00 to buy an apple?

Cool Viewing: Nature: Silence of the Bees

Very Clever

In the last 4 decades the distribution of the cheetah population has been reduced by 50%. The largest population that remains is about 20% of the entire world’s population and is located in Namibia. The Namibian cheetahs mainly live outside of protected areas, in a large area of connected livestock ranches. This is a major problem for cheetahs, who are considered pests and threats to livestock by ranchers. Even though cheetahs are considered protected game and can not be hunted for sport or profit, ranchers are allowed to kill cheetahs to protect their life or property. Killing cheetahs to protect livestock has become a major reason for the population decline.

Worldwide, livestock ranchers have strong negative perceptions of big cats in general and cheetahs in particular. These are often unfounded but do follow common sense. A cheetah hunts herd animals, ranchers are raising herd animals, a cheetah is therefore a threat to the ranchers’ animals.

What’s so clever about all this are the solutions that organizations, most notably the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) headed by Dr. Laurie Marker, are coming up with. Research has shown that cheetahs do not usually prey on livestock, but instead prefer to prey on wild ungulates. By educating local ranchers about the cheetahs’ actual predation habits and about the important role that large carnivores play in the ecosystem, the CCF has managed to change perceptions about cheetahs and decrease the number of indiscriminate killings.

Even more clever is a program Dr. Marker put into place using Anatolian Sheep Dogs. This program gives dogs to the local ranchers and assists with training and care. These dogs are a non-lethal way to control cheetahs and keep them away from livestock. Furthermore, these dogs also protect the livestock from other wild animals which may actually be more of a threat. The number of livestock lost to predation has decreased and the dogs give the farmers a sense of security and greatly decrease the indiscriminate killing of cheetahs by ranchers.

Neater still, it looks like the CCF is checking out a new program to see if its feasible to create a fuel product based on harvested bush. If this works it would a) create jobs for local people, b) be a renewable source of energy and c) restore patches of habitat for cheetahs throughout Namibia.

Summer Reading List: L. L. Marker, M. G. L. Mills, D. W. Macdonald (2003) Factors Influencing Perceptions of Conflict and Tolerance toward Cheetahs on Namibian Farmlands, Conservation Biology 17 (5) , 1290–1298)

Diving into the blogosphere

I don’t fully understand blogging. I’m not sure that anyone out there would care to read what I (or anyone else) has to say. So blogging is a bit scary to me. But, as friends have pointed out, it’s a good way to start thinking about your thesis. Since it forces you to write every day (or at least every other day), and since it forces you to write in a way that makes sense to other people. If I ever get a comment that makes me think or shows me a new perspective on one of my posts then that’s even better! So in the end, just like spinach, blogging is good for me and I solemnly swear to try my very best to dive, completely trusting, into the blogosphere.