Photo by Anne Newton.
By Keziah Hobson, Andrew Stringer, Robin Gill, Jenny MacPherson, and Xavier Lambin.
We need to find ways for people and wildlife to coexist in landscapes, where wildlife persists and risks to people are tolerable. People’s tolerance and acceptance of wildlife and the associated impacts have been identified as crucial for achieving coexistence. Historically, habitat change and persecution have led to dramatic declines in populations of many mammalian predators. Impacts and risks that these species pose to human interests, such as killing livestock or game species, led people to view many species as “pests” and subsequently hunted and trapped to remove them. Several of these predators are now recovering. However, concerns over impacts to human interests remain. The concepts of tolerance and acceptance are not yet fully understood, particularly in relation to recovering predators. What drives people to be more tolerant of a species and its impacts? How does people’s tolerance vary between different species and their differing interests?
In this study we collected data using an online questionnaire shared with members of organisations associated with rural land-based activities. We gathered information on people’s interests and how they value wildlife, and their attitudes, perceptions, and experience of six recovering predator species: otter, pine marten, polecat, buzzard, golden eagle, and red kite, in the UK. Using varying hypothetical conflict scenarios (e.g., species impacting livestock, game, pets, and native species) we asked each respondent to choose the management strategy they deemed most appropriate. From this we created a tolerance score for each respondent about each species.
Our results showed that an individual’s interests and general beliefs about wildlife management, how beneficial they perceived the species was, and their experience of the species and other recovering predators best described a person’s level of tolerance towards the impacts of a species. We identified an overlap in tolerance between groups with strong interests in wildlife conservation, shooting, farming, and fishing. A person’s tolerance was related to their positive and negative experience and any negative hearsay (i.e., information they heard about the species). We found that people were rarely accepting of the impacts of species they had more negative attitudes towards. Therefore, to achieve coexistence, a combination of improving attitudes and increasing acceptance of impacts is vital.
Relational Thinking 