Attitudes towards leopard cats in Taiwan 871


(Zabel & Engel, 2010; Ravenelle & Nyhus, 2017). Currently there are no incentives for private landowners in Taiwan to endorse leopard cat conservation but performance payment programmes could potentially be an effective means of miti- gating impacts and promoting coexistence between leopard cats and landowners. A feasible approach for implementing such a programme could involve paying farmers and other landowners to record occurrences of mature and/or juvenile leopard cats in their habitat and hotspot areas. The conserva- tion outcomes could be verified by trained scientists, and landowners would have an incentive to not only tolerate but also protect leopard cats. Our findings indicated an appreciation for leopard cats


amongst the residents of our three study areas. As leopard cats are the sole remaining wild, native felid species in Taiwan, their preservation is critical. However, leopard cats are threatened locally, and face population declines. To rectify this, conservation action plans need to be devel- oped and implemented, with channels of discussion estab- lished between stakeholders, policymakers and conservation biologists to facilitate the necessary changes.


Acknowledgements We thank all those who participated in the in- terviews; Mei-Ting Chen, Hong-Wei Fong, Angel Lin and Tsai-Yu Lee for their assistance in arranging interviews in Miaoli; local academics for their assistance in revising our questionnaire; the translators for transcribing the interviews; Ola Olsson for his counsel and support of this study; and the Department of Biology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden for funding.


Author contributions Study development and writing: IB and KCJP; interviews and data analysis: IB.


Conflicts of interest None.


Ethical standards The authors abided by the Code of Conduct for contributors to Oryx, and the interview process and methodology conformed to the guidelines of the British Sociological Association. Approval was received from all participants to report the data collected from the personal interviews; all participants remain anonymous, to protect confidentiality.


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Oryx, 2020, 54(6), 866–872 © 2019 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605318000984


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