Towards understanding tolerance to damage causing mammalian wildlife

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Human Wildlife Conflict (HWC) is increasing globally and has been recognized as amajor priority by most conservation organizations. This is due to the impacts that bothwildlife and stakeholders can have on each other leading to a loss of support forconservation in general. Understanding the drivers of these impacts is thereforecritical to mitigating the impacts. While the main focus of research in HWC has beenfinding technological solutions to mitigating the tangible impacts of wildlife forhumans so as to increase tolerance of stakeholders towards wildlife, recent findingshave pointed to the fact that this approach may be an oversimplification of theproblem. A number of qualitative reviews and theoretical models have thereforeemerged proposing a wide range of factors that may be important and emphasize themore complex nature of HWC. These models however are not based on quantitativesynthesis of the research on this topic and there are no widely accepted models beingused. Therefore a primary aim of this project was to develop a tolerance to wildlifedamage model that was based on a quantitative synthesis of the body of research thathas investigated attitudes to damage causing mammalian wildlife. A second aim wasto test the emergent model using a case study of urban baboon–human conflict on theCape Peninsula of South Africa. Key findings from the meta-analyses were thatcontrary to conventional wisdom, damage is not always the most important driver oftolerance as it interacted with taxonomic group and stakeholder type in complexways. For example, tolerance of ungulates and primates was proportional to theprobability of experiencing damage while elephants elicited tolerance levels higherthan anticipated and carnivores elicited tolerance levels lower than anticipated. Asecond meta-analysis aimed to determine if common patterns of variables explainingtolerant attitudes were present across a wide range of species, stakeholders andcontexts. Results showed that the majority of publications measured variables with alow likelihood of explaining drivers of attitudes or did not quantify variables ofgenerally high utility. A synthesis of the most important factors emerging from thesemeta-analyses together with additional constructs and theories from other disciplinesrelevant for addressing the complexity inherent in HWC was undertaken and theWildlife Tolerance Model (WTM) proposed. The WTM hypothesizes that the net outcome of the extent to which a person is exposed to a species as well as the types ofmeaningful events (positive or negative) determine perceptions of the costs relative tobenefits of living with a species. This in turn determines tolerance. A secondcomponent predicts 11 inner model variables that may further drive perceptions ofcosts and benefits. Results from the case study showed support for the WTM whereboth outer and inner model variables were found to be important drivers of tolerance.A key conclusion is that although synthesis of research and theory development istime consuming and costly, theory development and testing is critical to achieve longterm efficiency in conservation management because failure to target interventions atthe most important drivers will be costly, both financially and in biodiversity loss.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University