Underlying social attitudes towards conservation of threatened carnivores in human-dominated landscapes F RANCISCO ZORONDO-RODRÍGUEZ,DAR Í O MOREI RA-ARCE and S TA N B OUTI N
Abstract Carnivore conservation depends on people’s willingness to implement management practices to reduce threats to carnivores and mitigate conflicts between carni- vores and domestic animals. We assessed the willingness of rural communities in central-southern Chile to (1) con- serve carnivores, and (2) adopt management practices to re- duce predation of domestic animals, a key factor triggering carnivore–human conflicts in rural areas. The study focused on five carnivores: the chilla Lycalopex griseus, the culpeo Lycalopex culpaeus, Darwin’s fox Lycalopex fulvipes, the guiña or kodkod Leopardus guigna, and the puma Puma concolor. We found that rural communities perceived that threats towards carnivores rarely occurr in their region, con- trary to the literature on this subject; people’s attitudes dif- fered depending on the carnivore; and peoplewere willing to adopt management practices to help conserve carnivores (e.g. overnight protection of domestic animals and invest- ment in infrastructure for henhouses and cowsheds), except leashing dogs. The willingness to conserve carnivores and adopt practices that would help do so may be associated with how these measures affect people’s well-being. Although rural communities would like carnivores to be conserved, this cannot be achieved unless some pivotal practices, such as management of domestic dogs, are adopted by these communities. For successful biodiversity conservation outcomes in human-dominated landscapes, the social incentives necessary for rural communities to adopt appropriate management practices must be identified and implemented.
Keywords Attitudes, carnivores, domestic animal, human– wildlife conflict, livestock, Nahuelbuta Range, predation, temperate forest
FRANCISCO ZORONDO-RODRÍGUEZ Departamento de Gestión Agraria, Facultad Tecnológica, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Santiago de Chile, Chile
DARÍO MOREIRA-ARCE* (Corresponding author) Departamento de Manejo de Bosques y Medio Ambiente, Facultad de Ciencias Forestales, Universidad de Concepción, Casilla 160-C, Victoria 631, Concepción, Chile E-mail
moreira.dario@gmail.com
STAN BOUTIN Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
*Also at: Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Received 24 October 2017. Revision requested 16 January 2018. Accepted 12 June 2018. First published online 25 February 2019.
Introduction
programmes (Hågvar, 1994; Beedell & Rehman, 2000; Romañach et al., 2007; Schumann et al., 2012). Carnivores living in anthropogenic landscapes are often persecuted and hunted by rural communities (Zimmermann et al., 2005; Romañach et al., 2007; Soto-Shoender & Giuliano, 2011) because of predation on domestic animals and the effects of this on people’s well-being (Woodroffe & Ginsberg, 2005; Campbell & Alvarado, 2011; Dickman et al., 2011). However, as a number of threats to carnivore survival arise from human activities (e.g. poaching, habitat conver- sion, management of domestic animals), the conservation of carnivores will ultimately depend on people’s willingness to reduce or manage these threats. Assessing attitudes to- wards carnivores and the willingness of local communities to adopt practices to control threats to carnivores could increase conservation opportunities in human-dominated landscapes. This has been emphasized as a challenge by the 2010–2020 strategic plan of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD, 2010). Experience and attitudes (i.e. the psychological tendency
T
that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favour or disfavour; Eagly & Chaiken, 1993) determine people’s environmental behaviours (Evans & Lepore, 1997;Knez etal., 2009). For instance, awareness of the occurrence of threats to biodiversity in a particular area, and previous experience of predation of domestic animals by carnivores could affect social sup- port for predators in human-dominated landscapes (Evans &Lepore, 1997). If positive attitudes towards carni- vores were to increase, the adoption of carnivore-friendly management practices to reduce predation on domestic animals could become more widespread (Amador-Alcala et al., 2013), thus supporting the persistence of carnivore populations in these landscapes (Breitenmoser et al., 2005; Amador-Alcala et al., 2013; Soto-Shoender & Main, 2013). Many native carnivore populations exist in production-
oriented lands where there is a lack of control of human- derived threats, such as invasive species, habitatmodification, and retaliation for carnivore predation of livestock (e.g. Butler et al., 2004; Inskip&Zimmermann, 2009;Vanak&Gompper, 2009; Amador-Alcala et al., 2013; Soto-Shoender & Main, 2013; Moreira-Arce et al., 2015). The opportunity to conserve
Oryx, 2020, 54(3), 351–358 © 2019 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605318000832
he attitude of people is an underlying factor in social support for carnivore conservation and recovery
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