Attitudes towards prey translocation 345
has been suggested (Aryal et al., 2013; Ferretti et al., 2014). Snow leopards were believed to have been absent from the Park for 40 years (Ale et al., 2007), but have recolonized the area and now have a density of 1.8 per 100 km2 (DNPWC, 2013), similar to the neighbouring Qomolongma National Nature Reserve in Tibet (Chen et al., 2017). The Near Threatened Himalayan tahr Hemitragus jemlahicus is the primary prey species of the snow leopard but its low den- sities may be limiting the recovery of the snow leopard population within the Park, and contributing to household livestock losses (Lovari et al., 2009; Aryal et al., 2013). Although the proposal to translocate blue sheep to ameli-
orate this situation has been based on a favourable habitat assessment (Aryal et al., 2013), a social feasibility assessment has not previously been conducted. The disputed presence of blue sheep historically in the Park further complicates the situation as the IUCN guidelines suggest particular caution be exercised when considering translocations of species new to an area (IUCN/SSC, 2013). Some sources have recorded historical blue sheep sightings in the area (Adhikari et al., 2013; Hillary & Doig, 1962, cited in Lovari & Mishra, 2016) but others argue against its historical distribution locally (S. Ale, pers comm.). The species has been recorded histor- ically in the neighbouring Rolwaling Conservation Area but not in recent times (Ale et al., 2010). This study was designed to address the various com-
ponents of a social feasibility assessment for conservation translocation (IUCN/SSC, 2013), utilizing the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (Chambers & Conway, 1992; Scoones, 1998), which assesses how households access a range of tangible and intangible assets to create a liveli- hood and manage associated risks. The study posed the following three questions: What are local attitudes to the proposed blue sheep translocation? What factors best ex- plain these attitudes? What are the motivations behind local attitudes?
Study area
Sagarmatha National Park (Fig. 1) was gazetted in 1976, with a later buffer zone introduced in 2002. Habitat gradients exist between permanent snow at 8,848m and temperate oak and pine forests at 2,845m (Bhuju et al., 2007), with snow leopard habitat characterised by subalpine and alpine vegetation at 3,500–5,500 m. According to the most recent census, 3,500 people permanently live in 63 settlements within the Park, with an overall population density of 0.33 people/km2 (Government of Nepal, 2012). Residents are mostly engaged in a combination of agro-pastoralism and tourism for their livelihoods and a centralised conservation governance regime is in place in the Park, with some local devolution following the introduction of the buffer zone (Bhuju et al., 2007).
Methods
Questionnaires A household questionnaire (Supplementary Material 1)was developed, with both closed and open questions (White et al., 2005); potential explanatory variables were included, based on a systematic literature review. Alongside typical demographic factors a livelihoods index based on the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (DFID, 1999;Steimann, 2005), with a potential range of 0–1, was included, as were measures of attitudes to snow leopards and snow leopard conservation measured on five-point Likert scales (JHH, unpubl. data). A summative attitudinal scale, using a five- point Likert scale, was employed to measure attitudes to the proposed translocation. Questions involving identification of blue sheep and snowleopards used colour photographs of similar-sized herbivores and carnivores present in the study site or in similar protected areas in Nepal (Wildscreen, 2014). The draft household questionnaire was first piloted with a sample of 24 households outside the Park. Questionnaire data were collected from 260 individuals
in the Park during February–March 2014, by two Nepali re- search assistants, in either English or Nepali. Systematic sampling was used because of the informal nature of many of the settlements and the absence of a sampling frame. Every fourth house in each settlement was sampled, an approach similar to studies elsewhere in Nepal (Paudel& Thapa, 2001). To promote and ensure reliability, random back-checking of 10% of surveys was conducted (White et al., 2005). Respondents unfamiliar with blue sheep, or un- able to identify it from the photograph, were shown the cor- rect image and given a description of the species before proceeding. Following trends in recent analyses of attitudes to the
snow leopard (Suryawanshi et al., 2014; Alexander et al., 2015), the attitudinal scales used were all treated as continu- ous data. Based on this approach, the regression models were therefore used for explanation rather than prediction (Mac Nally, 2000). Data for household livestock owned and household livestock lost to snow leopards were trans- formed to a log10 scale before inferential analysis, following Zimmermann et al. (2005). Inter-observer and inter-coder reliability were both tested, using paired sample t tests (Sakurai et al., 2013). Cronbach’s alpha test score for the blue sheep translocation attitudinal scale was 0.954, indicat- ing a high degree of reliability. A multiple regression model was used to explore the
variables that best explained attitudes towards blue sheep translocation. Data were checked to ensure they met the ne- cessary assumptions for multiple regression models (Field, 2013). Hierarchical entry based on theoretical suitability was used and model selection used the R2 change results to determine goodness-of-fit (Mac Nally, 2000). P-P plots
Oryx, 2020, 54(3), 344–350 © 2018 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605318000157
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