Social attitudes towards conservation 353


FIG. 1 Rural communities (black circles) in the Nahuelbuta Range, central-southern Chile, which were surveyed to assess people’s perception of the frequency of occurrence of threats to carnivores, and their willingness to conserve native carnivores and to adopt a set of management practices to reduce losses of domestic animals.


buta Range?’ (a) Deforestation and replacement of native forest by exotic plantations, (b) forest fires, (c) attacks on carnivores by domestic dogs, and (d) human hunting of carnivore prey. We included forest fires as an anthropogenic threat to biodiversity because almost all forest fires in Chile are a result of human rather than natural causes (González et al., 2005). People reported the occurrence of each of the threats on a six-point Likert scale: 1, never/almost never; 2, low–medium frequency; 3, medium frequency; 4, medium–high frequency; 5, high frequency; 6, always (Newing et al., 2011).


Self-reported predation of domestic animals People re- sponded to ‘How often do the following carnivores attack your domestic animals?’ using the same six-point Likert scale used for threats. Using this scale we also asked people how often they used lethal control on each of the five carnivores to mitigate loss of domestic animals.


Willingness to conserve carnivores To evaluate people’s willingness to conserve the five study carnivores we asked ‘How much do you support the conservation of each the following carnivores?’ Responses were on a six-point Likert scale: 1, strong rejection; 2, medium rejection; 3,low rejection; 4, low support; 5, medium support; 6, strong support.


Willingness to adopt management practices for domestic animals We assessed people’s willingness to adopt a set of practices that could reduce predation of domestic animals


and decrease the pressure on carnivore survival. We asked ‘How willing are you to adopt each of the following management practices for domestic animals?’ (a) overnight confinement of poultry in henhouses, (b) investment in henhouse infrastructure, (c) overnight confinement of livestock, (d) investment in cowshed infrastructure, (e) pastu- rage in places with low predation risk, (f) restriction of the use of summer pasturage, (g) caring for livestock and/or poultry with guard dogs or by owners, (h) dogs being tied up on the property, and (i) dogs being free to roam the property. The differences between the last three practices are related to the specific objective of using dogs, and the type of dogmanagementonthe property.Wemeasuredtheiranswers on a six-point scale: 1, fully disagree; 2,disagree; 3, slightly disagree; 4, slightly agree; 5, agree; 6,fully agree.


Results


Self-reported threats towards carnivores Participants reported that human hunting of carnivore prey occurs with moderate frequency (median = 2.5; Table 1), and forest fires are the least frequent threat. Deforestation and replacement of native forests by exotic plantations, and attacks by domestic dogs, were reported as the most frequent threats to native carnivores (median = 3.0; Table 1).


Self-reported predation of domestic animals Participants reported that the predation of domestic animals by carnivores varied between species. Attacks by culpeo and


Oryx, 2020, 54(3), 351–358 © 2019 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605318000832


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148