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This paper addresses how the design of collaborative regimes influences markers of legitimacy in Swedish water- and large carnivore governance. Based on institutional analysis and statistical analy ...

In facing our greatest challenges, researchers have questioned where the ‘wild things’ will reside in the future, and large carnivores have been a primary focal area. The built environment plays a critical role in the propagation of countless species including carnivores; however, contemporary conceptualizations of human–nature relations do not satisfactorily attend to where the built environment should be placed within existing human–nature relation frameworks or how it impacts our ability to find space for carnivores. This paper fills this information gap by investigating the role of the built environment in social–ecological systems (SES), specifically wildlife and carnivore conservation. The paper unfolds in four stages: The first reviews empirical efforts to capture the relationship between human–natural–wildlife systems and the built environment. Second, using insights from the built environment literature, I argue that moving away from a common pool resource focus, decoupling wildlife and natural systems, investigating all infrastructure types and their interactions across systems, and considering the notion of hybrid systems offer pathways forward. Third, an explanation of the built environment's linkages to human and carnivore systems is undertaken to illustrate how the built environment facilitates the material and symbolic interactions through a blending of properties from human, wildlife and natural systems. Lastly, the argument is made that attending to the role of the built environment in human–wildlife relations can stimulate new research that reveals unhelpful habitual behaviour, feedbacks and barriers, and may also help explain unintended or unexplained consequences impacting human–carnivore relations not fully considered under existing frameworks. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

Opracowanie podejmuje problematykę nowego, wprowadzonego mocą nowelizacji kodek-su karnego z 13 czerwca 2019 roku, przestępstwa odpłatnego przyjęcia zlecenia zabójstwa (art. 148a § 1 k.k.). Nie ulega wątpliwości, że jest to rozwiązanie bezprecedensowe, nadające zasadzie ochrony życia i jej zakresowi zupełnie nowego znaczenia. Wyprowadza ono ochronę życia z dotychczaso-wych ram zachowań zabronionych chroniących to dobro, przesuwając ją na płaszczyznę zachowań, które nigdy dotąd nie były karalne, bardzo oddalonych od wystąpienia zamierzonego przez sprawcę skutku. Przestępstwo to, na co zwrócono uwagę już w toku prac nad nowelizacją ustawy karnej w licznych opiniach formułowanych przez przedstawicieli środowiska karnistycznego, budzi wiele wątpliwości, w tym takie, które wiążą się z poszanowaniem przez tę ustawową konstrukcji funda-mentalnych zasad prawa karnego. Kryminalizacja zachowań na tak odległym przedpolu naruszenia dobra prawnego może być w szczególności źródłem kontrowersji w kontekście gwarancyjnej funkcji prawa karnego. Przeprowadzona analiza ma na celu zwrócenie uwagi na kilka najistotniejszych kwestii dotyczących tego przestępstwa, między innymi jego charakteru prawnego, uzasadnienia jego typizacji, konstrukcji jego ustawowych znamion, możliwych przypadków zbiegu przepisów czy przestępstw, w których może pozostawać, trudności, jakie nowa konstrukcja może nieść dla praktyki wymiaru sprawiedliwości, a także samej potrzeby wprowadzenia omawianej „modyfikacji granic” prawnokarnej ochrony życia człowieka.

In the policy sciences, the intractability of disputes in natural resource governance is commonly explained in terms of a “devil shift” between rival policy coalitions. In a devil shift, policy actors overestimate the power of their opponents and exaggerate the differences between their own and their opponents’ policy beliefs. While the devil shift is widely recognized in policy research, knowledge of its causes and solutions remains limited. Drawing insights from the advocacy coalition framework and social identity theory, we empirically explore beliefs and social identity as two potential drivers of the devil shift. Next, we investigate the potential of collaborative venues to decrease the devil shift over time. These assumptions are tested through statistical analyses of longitudinal survey data targeting actors involved in three policy subsystems within Swedish large carnivore management. Our evidence shows, first, that the devil shift is more pronounced if coalitions are defined by shared beliefs rather than by shared identity. Second, our study shows that participation in collaborative venues does not reduce the devil shift over time. We end by proposing methodological and theoretical steps to advance knowledge of the devil shift in contested policy subsystems.

We use comparable 2005 and 2018 population data to assess threats driving the decline of lion Panthera leo populations, and review information on threats structured by problem tree and root cause analysis. We define 11 threats and rank their severity and prevalence. Two threats emerged as affecting both the number of lion populations and numbers within them: livestock depredation leading to retaliatory killing of lions, and bushmeat poaching leading to prey depletion. Our data do not allow determination of whether any specific threat drives declines faster than others. Of 20 local extirpations, most were associated with armed conflicts as a driver of proximate threats. We discuss the prevalence and severity of proximate threats and their drivers, to identify priorities for more effective conservation of lions, other carnivores and their prey.

Occupancy‐based monitoring has become an important tool in wildlife conservation and management. Nonetheless, meeting occupancy modeling assumptions and providing biologically accurate information are difficult tasks over long time periods, large areas, or when monitoring multiple species. In occupancy modeling frameworks, derived grids are commonly used to divide landscapes into discrete units. Grid sizes that match the home range size of the species of interest are considered optimal, but this practice is complicated as home range size may vary by sex, habitat quality, or among species. Additionally, studies often assume their survey methods sample an entire grid cell when the actual effective sampling area may be much smaller. The effect of reduced effective sampling area on occupancy estimation has received little attention to date, despite being flagged as a critical issue. In this study, we assessed (1) how the relationship between effective area, home range size, and grid size affects power to detect trends in occupancy; (2) how varying the sampling design factors of effective area, duration, detection probability, and resurvey interval influence monitoring efficiency; and (3) determine whether a single sampling design can simultaneously detect declines in two species with different home range sizes. We used a spatially explicit simulation framework to create biologically realistic declining populations over 10 yr and assessed statistical power to detect known declines using occupancy modeling. We found that effective area and detection probability had the greatest influence on statistical power. We could not reliably detect declines when detection probability was low or when effective sampling area was 25% of the landscape, ≥25% effective area, and fixed sampling locations. Further, increasing resampling interval greatly increased monitoring efficiency. Our results show monitoring planning requires explicit consideration of effective sampling area and methods with sufficient detectability to detect population declines.

Conflict with humans is one of the primary reasons why large carnivore populations are declining worldwide. Rates of human‐carnivore conflict (HCC) are particularly high in East Africa, where human settlements tend to surround protected areas, maximizing potential for human‐carnivore interactions. Despite extensive HCC research in this region, HCC persists and carnivore populations continue to decline. Evident disconnects between HCC research and conservation action, management practices and policy formation have been cited as mechanisms associated with these trends. We conducted a literature review to determine the extent to which HCC research in East Africa is actionable within the context of management and policy formation. We evaluated 36 papers for co‐production, interdisciplinary collaboration, applied or theoretical publication and stakeholder engagement. Many were published by co‐authors in academia (63.8%) and collaborative efforts between academics and non‐governmental organizations (25.0%), with limited representation outside these sectors. Collaboration with disciplines outside the natural sciences, specifically the social and political sciences (both 2.8%), was also uncommon although humans were the primary topic of study in 28% of papers. Moreover, while many papers were published in applied journals (86%), few explicitly stated policy and management objectives. Stakeholder engagement was mostly in the form of surveys and questionnaires rather than direct involvement in the research process. Our review indicates that HCC research currently lacks strong evidence of actionability and we provide recommendations for improving the practical salience of conservation research.

1. Interspecific competition is an important evolutionary force, influencing interactions between species and shaping the composition of communities. In mammalian carnivores, to reduce the risks of negative encounters between competitors, species can employ a strategy of temporal partitioning, adapting activity patterns to limit synchronous activity. This strategy of non-human competitor avoidance, however, may be influenced by the expansion of human activities, which has driven wildlife towards nocturnality.\ud \ud 2. Therefore, it could be hypothesised that the disruption of temporal niche partitioning by humans and their activities could increase temporal overlap between carnivores, enhancing interspecific competition.\ud \ud 3. We reviewed the published literature systematically, and employed generalized linear models to quantitatively evaluate the relative influence of a range of human, meteorological and ecological variables on the coefficients of temporal overlap within carnivore communities on a global scale.\ud \ud 4. None of the models investigated showed evidence of an impact of humans on temporal partitioning between carnivores on a global scale. This illustrates that temporal avoidance of humans and competitors does not always follow a consistent pattern, and that its strength may be context-dependent and relative to other dimensions of niche partitioning (spatial and trophic).\ud \ud 5. Similarly, the regulation of activity patterns may be under strong site-specificity, and be influenced by a combination of biotic and abiotic characteristics. Temporal avoidance of both humans and competitors may be regulated by short, reactive responses that do not impact activity patterns in the longer term.\ud \ud 6. Although we did not detect a global disruption of temporal partitioning due to human disturbance, carnivore communities may still experience an increase in interspecific competition in other niche dimensions. Further research would benefit from using controlled experimental designs and investigating multiple dimensions of niche partitioning simultaneously. Finally, we recommend complementing the coefficient of temporal overlap with other metrics of fine-scale spatiotemporal interactions.

A.B.L. was supported by a Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación grant (IJCI-2017-31419) from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities; J.V.L.B. by a Ramón & Cajal research contract (RYC-2015-18932) from the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (…), Cimatti, M., Ranc, N., Benítez-López, A., Maiorano, L., Boitani, L., Cagnacci, F., Čengić, M., Ciucci, P., Huijbregts, M.A.J., Krofel, M., López-Bao, J.V., Selva, N., Andren, H., Bautista, C., Ćirović, D., Hemmingmoore, H., Reinhardt, I., Marenče, M., Mertzanis, Y., Pedrotti, L., Trbojević, I., Zetterberg, A., Zwijacz-Kozica, T., Santini, L.

Funding: African Institute for Conservation Ecology; Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. Grant Numbers: PD/BD/114037/2015, UID/BIA/00329/2019; National Geographic Society. Grant Number: EC-314R-18; Wild Tomorrow Fund; South African Agency for Science and Technology Advancement. Grant Number: UID: 107099&115040. 1 Conservation efforts in South Africa play out across multi-use landscapes where formal protected areas coexist with private wildlife business (ecotourism and/or hunting) in a human-dominated matrix. Despite the persistence of highly diverse carnivore guilds, management idiosyncrasies are often orientated towards charismatic large predators and assemblage-level patterns remain largely unexplored. 2. We conducted an extensive camera-trap survey in a natural quasi-experimental setting in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. We sampled across a protection gradient characterized by a provincial protected area (highest and formal protection status), a private ecotourism reserve, game ranches and traditional communal areas (lowest protected status). We evaluated assemblage-level and species-specific responses of free-ranging carnivores to the varying management contexts and associated environmental gradients. 3. Despite similar assemblage composition between management contexts, site-scale carnivore richness and occupancy rates were greater in the formal protected area than adjacent private reserve and game ranches. Carnivore occupancy was more similar between these private wildlife areas, although putative problem species were more common in the private reserve, and contrasted with depauperate assemblages in least protected communal lands. Variation in carnivore occupancy probabilities was largely driven by land use contexts, that is, the level and nature of protection, relative to underlying fine-scale landscape attributes (e.g. distance to conservation fences) or apex predator populations. 4. Synthesis and applications. Our findings provide convincing empirical support for the added value of multi-tenure conservation estates augmenting and connecting South Africa's protected areas. However, our emphasis on free-ranging carnivores exemplifies the importance of maintaining areas under long-term formal protection and the risks with viewing lucrative wildlife business as a conservation panacea. We suggest that unmanaged carnivore species be the formal components of carnivore reintroduction and recovery programmes to better gauge the complementary conservation role of South Africa's private land. Postprint

Human–wildlife interactions occur when humans and wildlife overlap in the same landscapes. Due to the growing human population, the number of interactions will continue to increase, and in some cases, develop further into social conflicts. Conflicts may occur between people disagreeing about wildlife conservation or arguing over which wildlife management measures should be taken. Social conflicts between humans are based on different attitudes, values and land‐use aspirations. The success of solving these social conflicts strongly depends on building trust between the public, stakeholders, authorities and researchers, as trust is fundamental to all communication and dialogue. Here we have examined how trust in large carnivore research differs within a geographically stratified sample of the Norwegian population. The comprehensive survey, including 2,110 respondents, allows us to explore how people perceive factual statements about large carnivores depending on the source of these statements. Specifically, the respondents were given multiple statements and asked to judge them in terms of meaning and authenticity depending on whether the statements were made by a politician, the Norwegian farmers' association, the Norwegian Fish and Game association or a large carnivore researcher. Based on the variations in perceptions, we inferred that trust in large carnivore researchers and their research results varied with people's attitudes, values and direct experience of large carnivores. In general, respondents perceived 60% of the statements to be genuine when given no information of who had made them. Although this increased to 75% when informed that the statements were made by a large carnivore researcher, there was still a 25% probability that the statement was perceived as manipulative or political. Age, environmental values and negative experiences of carnivores increased the probability of perceiving research statements as manipulative or political. People living in areas with high proportions of hunters showed particularly polarized views, either more strongly perceiving the statements as political, or in contrast as research. This study provides a novel perspective in understanding the role trust plays in social conflicts related to human–wildlife interactions. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

ispartof: Frontiers In Ecology And Evolution vol:8 issue:10 status: published

Promoting co-existence between humans and their physical and ecological environment, including wildlife, has been given an increased importance due to a recent shift of society to become environmentally sustainable. However, humans and large carnivores have been in conflict throughout history. One of the most prominent reasons for this conflict is damages to livestock and domestic animals. Population reduction or even local eradication has often been used as a damage mitigation strategy. However, number of carnivore damages need to be positively related to carnivore densities for population reduction to be an effective damage limitation tool. Sweden is a country in northern Europe with frequent human-carnivore conflicts, spurred by an intense and polarized public debate. We use a 20-year data set on brown bear (Ursus arctos), Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) and wolf (Canis lupus) and their damages in Sweden to evaluate if temporal variation in carnivore densities has caused an equivalent variation in the number of damages to cattle, sheep and domestic dogs, if such relationships differed between the carnivore species and damage types, and if there were geographic scale dependencies in these relationships. We observed contradictory effects of large carnivore densities on damages, which included both positive and negative effects. Differences occurred between carnivore species, damage types, geographic areas, and spatial scales. However, wolf densities appeared to have been positively related to the number of damages more often than bear and lynx densities. Our results highlight that large carnivore damages can be highly context dependent, and that other factors than the size of local or regional carnivore populations may be more important damage determinants. Such an interpretation implies that population reduction may not necessarily be an effective method for limiting large carnivore damages, and highlight that damage mitigation strategies need to be flexible over time and space. We recommend further studies identifying the contexts in which large carnivore densities influence damages to livestock and domestic animals, as well as studies aimed at identifying other factors that may be related to the number of damages., Funding was provided by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness in Spain (grant number RYC2013-14662) and by the National Research Foundation in South Africa (grant numbers SFP2008072900003, IFR2011032400087, CPRR13081929244 and IFR150119112493).

Policy mixes (i.e. the total structure of policy processes, strategies, and instruments) are complex constructs that can quickly become incoherent, inconsistent, and incomprehensive. This is amplified when the policy mix strives to meet multiple objectives simultaneously, such as in the case of large carnivore policy mixes. Building on Rogge and Reichardt's analytical framework for the analysis of policy mixes, we compare the policy mixes of Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany (specifically Saxony and Bavaria), and Spain (specifically Castilla y Leon). The study shows that the large carnivore policy mixes in the case countries show signs of lacking vertical and horizontal coherence in the design of policy processes, weak consistency between objectives and designated policy instruments, and, as a consequence, lacking comprehensiveness. We conclude that creating consistent, coherent, and comprehensive policy mixes that build on multiple objectives requires stepping away from sectorized policy development, toward a holistic, systemic approach, strong collaborative structures across policy boundaries and regions, the inclusion of diverse stakeholders, and constant care and attention to address all objectives simultaneously rather than in isolation.

The legitimacy of large carnivore institutions to exercise truth-making power is assumed by constituents and other audiences. This study examines the power of language in shaping resistance to hegemonic truths about red wolf recovery in North Carolina. We conducted a critical discourse analysis of seven corpora produced by a discourse coalition comprising local, state, and federal actors. We demonstrate that these actors held seven cognitive interpretive repertoires in common (positioning; causality; contrariety; fatalist; falsifiability; victim; and big bad wolf). Findings indicate that repertoires influenced red wolf governance processes, reversed the risk narrative concerning recovery, split cognitive authority over red wolves in the public sphere, and set new, paradoxical limits for scientific inquiry. This study reinforces that language is power and, therefore, language is also legitimation. We conclude that researchers, citizens, and decision makers must attend to the ways in which language control contributes to legitimacy deficits through coordinated resistance.

Human–carnivore conflict (HCC) represents one of the greatest threats to rural livelihoods and the persistence of large carnivores. The application of aversive conditioning, the association of unpleasant stimuli with the occurrence of unwanted behaviors, to mitigate HCC has achieved mixed results within and across species, making a better understanding of the factors driving intervention success critical to inform management practices. We explored the degree to which the chasing of African lions (Panthera leo) out of no tolerance zones conditions lion behavior to reduce their rate of return into community lands or rate of repeated livestock killing, providing evidence‐based understanding of program outcomes. We used data from 15 global positioning system (GPS)‐collared lions adjacent to Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe, with each lion receiving 0–17 conditioning treatments, and analyzed the data using recurrent event survival analysis and logistic regression. Chases were most successful (i.e., lion pushed out of the no tolerance zone by sunrise of the following day) in the dry season (i.e., when wild prey were more predictable), in areas closer to the park, and for individuals from smaller and more stable prides (i.e., had not lost a pride male within six months). Adult females and subadult males were more likely than adult males to reenter community lands, and subadult males were most likely to repeatedly depredate livestock. While livestock depredation has decreased since program initiation, the individuals in this study were overall not less likely to enter community lands or depredate livestock in response to chases when chases were considered isolated events. Rather, it was the consistency of deterrence events that proved most important in reducing livestock depredations, likely because of a stronger reinforcement between the undesired behavior and the negative stimulus. However, lions that had previously habitually killed livestock had greater depredation rates even after several conditioning treatments. Aversive conditioning holds promise in the management of carnivores that depredate livestock, but intervention must be consistent, ideally early in the development of problem behaviors, to maximize intervention effectiveness. Methods that separate wildlife from people (i.e., fencing, livestock enclosure fortification), in combination with aversive conditioning, may be needed to provide a sustainable, long‐term solution.

Connection with a zoo animal may increase conservation-mindedness in zoo visitors, potentially resulting in conservation-oriented behavior change. No research has attempted to establish what this "connection" actually means. Visitors (N = 85) to Melbourne Zoo were asked to name the animal with which they most connected, the extent to which they connected with it, and to qualitatively describe what it meant to connect with that animal. Many (but not all) participants connected with charismatic megafauna: primate, great ape, large carnivore, or large herbivore. Qualitative analysis revealed five common themes in the meaning of connection: Appreciation, Attribution, Inspires Emotions, Interaction, and Proximity. Overall connection level was significantly correlated with perceptions of conservation caring for the chosen species. Future research should aim to determine what factors affect a zoo visitor's connection level, which could impact attitudes and behaviors toward conservation.

Accurate analyses of the diets of predators are key to understand trophic interactions and defining conservation strategies. Diets are commonly assessed through analysis of non‐invasively collected scats, and the use of faecal DNA (fDNA ) analysis can reduce the species misidentifications that could lead to biased ecological inference. We review the scientific literature since publication of the first paper on amplifying fDNA , in order to assess trends in the use of genetic non‐invasive sampling (gNIS ) for predator species identification in scat‐based diet studies of North American and European terrestrial mammalian carnivores (Carnivora). We quantify error rates in morphology‐based predator species identification. We then provide an overview of how applying gNIS would improve research on trophic interactions and other areas of carnivore ecology. We found that carnivore species identity was verified by using gNIS in only 8% of 400 studies of carnivore diets based on scats. The median percentage of false positives (i.e. samples wrongly identified as belonging to the target species) in morphology‐based studies was 18%, and was consistent regardless of species’ body size. We did not find an increasing trend in the use of gNIS over time, despite the existing technical capability to identify almost all carnivore species. New directions for fDNA studies include employing high‐throughput sequencing (HTS ) and DNA metabarcoding to identify the predator species, the individual predator, the entire assemblage of consumed items, and the microbiome of the predator and pathogens. We conclude that HTS protocols and metagenomic approaches hold great promise for elevating gNIS as a fundamental cornerstone for future research in ecology and conservation biology of mammals., PM enjoyed a postdoctoral fellowship funded by FEDER funds through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness Factors - COMPETE and by National Funds through FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology (UID/BIA/50027/2013 and POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006821). RG was supported by a research contract from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (IF/564/2012). The University of Idaho, USA, provided salary support for LW. The Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD) provided travel funding between the University of Porto, Portugal, and the University of Montana, USA.

Modern day investigation in fields of archaeology and palaeontology can be greatly characterised by an exponential growth of integrated new technologies, nevertheless, while these advances are of great significance to multiple lines of research, their evaluation and update over time is equally as important. Here we present an application of inter and intra-observer analysis in taphonomy based geometric morphometrics, employing robust non-parametric statistical analyses for the study of experimental carnivore tooth pit morphologies. To fully understand the influence of measurement errors in the collection of this data, our statistical assessment was performed on fully superimposed, partially superimposed and raw landmark coordinates collected from 3D surface scanning. Experimental samples used to assess these errors includes wolf and dog tooth pits used in modern day ecological livestock predation analysis. Results obtained from this study highlight the importance of landmark type in the assessment of error, emphasising the value of semi-landmark models over the use of ambiguous Type III landmarks. In addition to this, data also reveals the importance of observer experience for the collection of data alongside an interesting increase in error when working with fully superimposed landmarks due to the “Pinocchio Effect”. Through this study we are able to redefine the geometric morphometric models used for tooth pit morphological analyses. This final hybrid Type II fixed landmark and semi-landmark model presents a significant reduction in human induced error, generating a more metrically reliable and replicable method that can be used for data pooling in future inter-institutional research. These results can be considered a fundamental step forward for carnivore inspired studies, having an impact on archaeological, palaeontological, modern-day ecological research as well as applications in other forensic sciences., L.A.C. is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities with a FPI Predoctoral Grant (Ref. PRE2019-089411) associated to project RTI2018-099850-B-I00 and the University of Salamanca. R.H. is supported by MICINNFEDER PGC2018-093925-B-C32, the AGUAR project number SGR 2017-1040; the Universitat Rovira I Virgili (2014, 2015 and 2016 PFR-URV-B2-147) and CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya. D.H.R. is supported by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, under the contract REF: PEJ2019-005420-A as part of the i+D+I Garantía Juvenil. Finally L.A.C., M.Á.M.G and D.G.A. are supported by the General Foundation of the University of Salamanca under the Plan TCUE 2018-2020; Project “WOLF_FOOTPRINT” (PC-TCUE18-20_2013).

The Publisher would like to correct the introduced formatting errors on the caption of Figure 1 and in the data in Table 2.

In this article, we investigate whether increased participation offers a way of addressing wicked policy problems. We utilize a natural policy experiment in the form of a 2010 reform of Swedish wildlife management policy aiming to solve longstanding conflicts over predators through increased stakeholder participation in regional Wildlife Management Boards. Using a panel study design containing quantitative and qualitative data, we estimate pre- and post-reform levels of three wickedness-reducing mechanisms: legitimacy, deliberation, and conflict intensity. Despite a substantial increase in participation, we find no evidence of reduced wickedness after the reform.

Granting legal protection to an endangered species has long been considered a major milestone for its conservation and recovery. A multitude of examples such as wolves in the contiguous USA (Boitani 2003) or many large carnivore populations in Europe (Chapron et al. 2014) have revealed how instrumental wildlife protection laws can be for species recovery. However, legal obligations to conserve endangered species may be useless if the rule of law is not properly enforced. Such situation is not exclusive to countries with political instability or weak institutional capacities but can also be relevant, for instance, to member states of the European Union and therefore bound to European legislation on nature conservation.

This paper provides the first in-depth exploration of tiger killing behaviour in communities bordering the Sundarbans mangrove forest, Bangladesh. Our findings demonstrate the complexity of carnivore killing behaviour in situations of human–wildlife conflict. We find that killings are not purely retaliatory in nature (i.e. driven by a desire for retribution following livestock depredation or attacks on humans by tigers), and that previous negative experience of tigers is not the sole determinant of villagers’ acceptance of killing behaviour. Inter-related socio-psychological factors (risk perceptions, beliefs about tigers and the people that kill tigers, general attitude towards tigers), perceived failings on the part of local authorities whom villagers believe should resolve village tiger incidents, perceived personal rewards (financial rewards, enhanced social status, medicinal or protective value of tiger body parts), and contextual factors (the severity and location of tiger incidents) motivate people to kill tigers when they enter villages and foster the widespread acceptance of this behaviour. The complexity of these factors highlights the need for conservation practitioners to explore and understand people’s motivations for killing endangered carnivore species, in order to address better the community-led killing of these animals. For the Sundarbans area, knowledge of these motivational factors can be used to develop conservation actions suitable for developing both communities’ capacity and, crucially, desire to co-exist with tigers and to respond with non-lethal action to village tiger incidents.

As wolf populations expand across Europe, many countries face challenges in finding ways to address the concerns of some elements among the rural stakeholders who are being asked to share their landscapes with wolves for the first time in several generations. In these recovery landscapes, wolves are associated with a wide range of conflicts that include economic, psychological, perceptional, social, cultural and political dimensions. A recurring demand concerns the desire to introduce the use of carefully regulated lethal control of wolves, through either culling by state employees or hunting conducted by rural hunters. Introducing such measures can be very controversial, and many critics challenge their legality under the international wildlife conservation instruments that have nurtured wolf recovery. We evaluate this issue for the case of wolves in Norway, which are strictly protected under the Bern Convention. Drawing on the latest results of social science research, we present the multiple lines of argumentation that are often used to justify killing wolves and relate these to the criteria for exceptions that exist under the Bern Convention. We conclude that while the Convention provides apparent scope for allowing the killing of wolves as a means to address conflicts, this must be clearly justified and proportional to the conservation status of wolves so as to not endanger their recovery.

Scientific Reports 6: Article number: 20552; published online: 03 February 2016; updated: 28 March 2017 This corrigendum aims to correct errors detected in the outputs of the Extended Data Tables from our article Scientific Reports 6, 20552 (2016). A mistake occurred due to a failure in the conversion of the variable “species” from integer to a categorical (factor) variable.

The present study examined the feasibility of experimentally manipulating perceptions of benefit and control via communications to increase public acceptance of bears. We assigned subjects to either a pseudo-control (basic bear biology message) or 1 of 3 treatments adding a benefits message, a perceived control message, or combining messages about both benefits and perceived control. Within-subjects pre–post t-tests showed a significant increase in acceptance among those in the benefits and combined treatments. A between-subjects 1-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed a significant difference between the perceived control and combined treatments (where the perceived control message actually decreased acceptance). Our results highlight the importance of including information about benefits stemming from the presence of black bears, as adding this information tended to increase stakeholder acceptance of black bear populations. © 2013 The Wildlife Society.

The 15th North American Caribou Workshop (NACW) was held from 12-16 May 2014, in the traditional territories of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation and the Ta’an Kwäch’än Council, in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. This biennial meeting is the largest technical conference of its kind dealing specifically with caribou biology and management. The first NACW was held in Whitehorse over three decades ago in 1983, and 13 subsequent workshops have been held across North America until now. With nearly 400 delegates from Canada, the United States, Norway, and Greenland attending the 2014 conference, it is evident that this “North American” gathering has truly become an international event. Furthermore, delegates attending this 15th NACW represented federal, provincial, territorial, state and First Nation governments, academia, non-governmental organizations, co-management boards and councils, private consultants, and industry, creating a relatively unique conference setting bringing together a variety of perspectives and concerns. The breadth of the participants in terms of geography, expertise and affiliation resulted in a rich base of human capacity to discuss issues related to caribou conservation and management.Given that it had been nearly three decades since the inception of this workshop, and with its return to the location of the first NACW, the organizing committee felt it was a fitting opportunity to look back and assess what had been achieved with respect to caribou conservation and management. As such, the theme of the 15th NACW was “Caribou Conservation and Management: What’s Working?” The opening session of the conference focussed on invited presentations explicitly addressing this question, and included topics on structured decision making, forest management, harvest monitoring, carnivore management, regional land use planning and management, and aboriginal perspectives on a long-term collaborative caribou recovery program in the southwest Yukon. We challenged our speakers to share what was working and why, and the information provided was valuable and timely, prompting many questions and discussion throughout the conference.

To discuss the fate of my discipline entails the old problem of Nietzschean perspectivism: how can I observe my own practices if there is no vantage point from which I can view my own culture, my own scientific lifeworld, and so on? Isn’t it asking for too much? Can one be one’s own prophet? Probing fate reminds us of tragedies and their relationship to action and death. Sailing with the tailwind of a future fate reminds us of Walter Benjamin’s angel of history; it is the storm of the past that blows the angel into the future.1 For Benjamin this storm is the image of progress. One can ask oneself whether or not reading the future in the signs of the past is a futile endeavor. To speak about fate is to speak in terms of life and death. Therefore I

Information on the ecology and evolution of a species can be enhanced by studying spatial ecology. Even though space use has been a focus of carnivore research for decades, the theoretical framework for such studies remains poorly developed. Most spatial ecology theory has instead been developed and tested with invertebrates and expanded into fishery and ornithological research. The goal of this review is to examine spatial theories being tested in other taxonomic groups that could positively influence how carnivore biologists design studies. Details are provided from studies that illustrate methods to quantify space use, and four broad areas of spatial theory are reviewed: conspecific attraction, territory establishment, within-territory space use, and inheritance of space use. Suggestions are given on how carnivore biologists could incorporate each of these components into study designs. Carnivore biologists have opportunities to test spatial theory at small and large scales that could ultimately advance the entire field of spatial ecology. Although this review focuses on improving studies of terrestrial carnivores, our suggestions are relevant for studies of spatial theories across taxa.

Contemporary moral philosophy assumes an account of what it means to legitimately change one's mind in ethics, and I wish to challenge this account by enlarging the category of the legitimate. I am just as eager to avoid illegitimate mind-changing brought on by deceit or brainwashing, but I claim that legitimacy should be defined in terms of transparency of method. A social reformer should not be embarrassed to admit that he acquired many beliefs about justice while reading Dickens. As such, appeals to the heart and the imagination are just as legitimate, within limits, as appeals to the mind; and showing can be as legitimate as telling. To demonstrate this, I consider the example of a vegetarian trying to 'convert' a carnivore. I then ask what it means when the carnivore claims to have been previously mistaken.

Carnivore is a surveillance technology, a software program housed in a computer unit, which is installed by properly authorized FBI agents on a particular Internet Service Provider's (ISP) network. The Carnivore software system is used together with a tap on the ISP's network to “intercept, filter, seize and decipher digital communications on the Internet”. The system is described as a “specialized network analyzer” that works by “sniffing” a network and copying and storing a warranted subset of its traffic. In the FBI's own words “Carnivore chews on all data on the network, but it only actually eats the information authorized by a court order”. This article, in two parts, provides an overview of the FBI's Carnivore electronic surveillance system.

The third sentence in the second paragraph of the Methods summary should have cited several authors [20-25] instead of Spencer de Gruchy and Roberts [17]. The correct sentence should read as follows, "Percussion marks were identified according to criteria described by several authors [20-25] and compared with cut-marks, carnivore tooth-marks and geochemical etching [48,57-58]."

Se llevó a cabo una revisión bibliográfica en varias universidades y bases de datos de los Estados Unidos y México, del mismo modo se estableció contacto con investigadores de carnívoros para tratar de resumir en forma comprensiva el conocimiento actual sobre la ecología del puma (Puma concolor). El objetivo principal fue el actualizar nuestro conocimiento ecológico desde las últimas revisiones bibliográficas publicadas en 1987. Se hacen comentarios sobre los tamaños de muestra, asi como de las diferentes metodologías y como éstas dificultan la comparasión entre áreas y estudios, del mismo modo se sugieren direcciones que deben tomar las investigaciones en el futuro con base en los huecos encontrados de la revisión bibliográfica.

Noninvasive genetic sampling has been embraced by wildlife managers and ecologists, especially those charged with monitoring rare and elusive species over large areas. Challenges arise when desired population measures are not directly attainable from genetic data and when monitoring targets trans-border populations. Norwegian management authorities count individual brown bears (Ursus arctos) using noninvasive genetic sampling but express management goals in the annual number of bear reproductions (females that produce cubs), a measure that is not directly available from genetic data. We combine noninvasive genetic sampling data with information obtained from a long-term intensive monitoring study in neighboring Sweden to estimate the number of annual reproductions by females detected within Norway. Most female brown bears in Norway occur near the border with neighboring countries (Sweden, Finland, and Russia) and their potential reproduction can therefore only partially be credited to Norway. Our model includes a simulation-based method that corrects census data to account for this. We estimated that 4.3 and 5.7 reproductions can be credited to females detected with noninvasive genetic sampling in Norway in 2008 and 2009, respectively. These numbers fall substantially short of the national target (15 annual reproductions). Ignoring the potential for home ranges to extend beyond Norway's borders leads to an increase in the estimate of the number of reproductions by ;30%. Our study shows that combining noninvasive genetic sampling with information obtained from traditional intensive/invasive monitoring can help answer contemporary management questions in the currency desired by managers and policy makers. Furthermore, combining methodologies and thereby accounting for space use increases the accuracy of the information on which decisions are based. It is important that the information derived from multiple approaches is applicable to the same focal population and that predictions are cross- validated. When monitoring and management are constrained to administrative units, census data should be adjusted by discounting portions of individual space utilization that extend beyond the focal jurisdiction. Our simulation-based approach for making such an adjustment may be useful in other situations where management authorities target portions of trans- border populations.

We present CARNIVORE, a system for in situ, unobtrusive monitoring of cryptic, difficult-to-catch/observe wildlife in their natural habitat. CARNIVORE is a network of mobile and static nodes with sensing, processing, storage, and wireless communication capabilities. CARNIVORE's compact, low-power, mobile animal-borne nodes collect sensor data and transmit it to static nodes, which then relay it to the Internet. Depending on the wildlife being studied, the network can be quite sparse and therefore disconnected frequently for arbitrarily long periods of time. To support "disconnected operation", CARNIVORE uses an "opportunistic routing" approach taking advantage of every encounter between nodes (mobile-to-mobile and mobile-to-static) to propagate data. With a lifespan of 50–100 days, a CARNIVORE mobile node, outfitted on a collar, collects and transmits 1 GB of data compared to 450 kB of data from comparable commercially available wildlife collars. Each collar records 3-axis accelerometer and GPS data to infer animal behavior and energy consumption.Testing in both laboratory and free-range settings with domestic dogs shows that galloping and trotting behavior can be identified. Data collected from first deployments on mountain lions (Puma concolor) near Santa Cruz, CA, USA show that the system is a viable and useful tool for wildlife research.

Many countries, including Sweden and Finland, are decentralizing the management of large carnivore species within their borders and emphasizing the role of stakeholder participation in legitimizing formal policy. Regional large carnivore committees (RLCCs), including representatives of authorities and non-governmental organizations, are essential to these endeavors. These committees are formally constituted in Sweden, whereas in Finland, they are informally developed from the bottom-up. In both countries, the declared roles of these committees are consultative. A comparative study based on survey data is described here, which address the question of how procedural legitimacy is shaped and maintained in institutional settings with different origins, such as top-down or bottom-up. The results indicate no clear difference in the representatives’ general satisfaction with the country-specific arrangements. Notable differences were found in specific perceptions of the clarity and purposes of the RLCCs. In both countries, the perceived rationale for the establishment of RLCCs emphasized the knowledge and expertise of the represented interest groups and authorities. Between the countries, similarities were also found in the strong links between overall satisfaction and personally perceived success and progress in communication and information exchange, i.e., deliberative processes. The capacity of the RLCCs to improve trust and acceptability with regard to different opinions was viewed as a key element underlying satisfactory RLCC activities, irrespective of the institutional settings.

Environmental and Resource Economics, 48 (2), ISSN:0924-6460, ISSN:1573-1502

Jonah Brucker-Cohen va desenvolupar un projecte anomenat Police State , que es un dels diferents treballs artistics que van sortir del projecte Carnivore . Carnivore es una aplicacio basada en el programa de vigilancia de l'FBI que te el mateix nom. L'RSG (Radical Software Group) va crear aquesta versio de Carnivore com a servidor que permetia a la gent connectar-s'hi i disposar de la informacio que hi trobessin per a fer un treball artistic. Jonah Brucker-Cohen va connectar-se al servidor de Carnivore i en va fer servir la informacio per al projecte Police State . Tambe va fer servir una interficie de sortida fisica amb cotxes de policia de joguina teledirigits. Aquests cotxes reben senyals d'un transmissor mitjancant un programa que capta qualsevol tipus d'informacio de Carnivore que tingui a veure amb activitats terroristes com ara explosio o terror. Quan troba aquestes paraules a la xarxa, la informacio s'envia als cotxes de policia com a patro de moviment. Aixi, els cotxes estan controlats per la informacio que s'ha obtingut tafanejant. Els treballs artistics i d'investigacio de Jonah Brucker-Cohen se centren en la connexio d'aparells o objectes fisics a la xarxa, la relacio interpersonal futura en les xarxes i la visualitzacio d'informacio en l'espai. Jonah es investigador, artista i candidat a doctor del Networking and Telecommunications Research Group . Tambe va ser investigador al Human Connectedness Group en el Media Lab Europe i es cofundador de Dublin Art and Technology Association (DATA Group) Entrevistat per Alba Colombo (Berlinale) a Ars Electronica 2002. Text complet (HTML) Vull veure el video de l'entrevista [YouTube - 12 min]

According to documents released to the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) on 4 December 2000, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is not only expanding the role of Carnivore to interact with other electronic surveillance systems but is marketing the tool to other Federal and state law enforcement agencies. The documents were released pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request and a subsequent US Federal Court order.