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Transformed landscapes caused by human activity leave remnant patches of natural habitat for wildlife. The persistence of species in the face of such transformation depends on individuals’ ability to adapt to novel habitat, and to secure resources and reproductive opportunities despite habitat alterations. The leopard, Panthera pardus, is the last free-roaming top carnivore in South Africa whose high trophic status and wide-ranging movements make them an effective focal species in conservation planning. Using location data from leopards, we investigated key correlates of habitat selection in human-altered landscapes at two spatial scales. We compared sex-related differences and predicted how conspecific home range locations influenced habitat selection. Leopards avoided human-altered landscapes more strongly at the large spatial scale, where both sexes selected core areas near formally protected areas. Conspecific home range locations had a strong positive effect at both spatial scales for males, while for females, conspecifics explained fine-scale habitat selection by selecting areas near neighboring females. Spatial scale, sex-related differences, and conspecific location play roles in habitat selection for solitary felids and have implications for conservation planning and management. Excluding these factors may result in inappropriate species management policies.

In the face of biodiversity crises and concerns raised about animal ethics, some societies are re-examining many human uses of animals. One activity that may once have been unobjectionable has undergone little scrutiny in most countries: hunting mammals with free-running hounds. We present two novel datasets about this under-studied ‘behavioral interaction and hunting method. In the state of Wisconsin, USA, hounds and gray wolves occasionally interacted aggressively and human by-standers reported adverse interactions with hounds and their handlers. Such self-selected samples cannot be used to extrapolate rates in space or time but do provide new information. Between 1999 and 2012, 176 hounds were reported to have suffered injury during encounters with wolves. No government data were collected on how many wolves or other non-target animals were injured by hounds. We describe the grouping ‘behavior, patterns of injury and vulnerability to attack, hound phenotypes, and other ethological data associated with aggressive wolf-hound interactions. We analyze wolf life history, seasonal life history patterns, bite locations on hound bodies, consumption of hound carcasses, and the outcomes of interactions to test two hypotheses for wolf-hound interactions. We find weak or no support for either and propose new hypotheses focusing on the behavior of hounds and handlers primarily. We also report handler and hound interactions with human bystanders. Between 2015-2021, bystanders (n=105) reported various adverse incidents with hounds and handlers, interactions with law enforcement, and other events associated with hunting with hounds. We propose reforms to policy for wildlife, hunting, and law enforcement, and reforms to husbandry by hound handlers.

The social license to operate framework considers how society grants or withholds informal permission for resource extractors to exploit publicly owned resources. We developed a modified model, which we refer to as the social license to hunt (SLH). In it we similarly consider hunters as operators, given that wildlife are legally considered public resources in North America and Europe. We applied the SLH model to examine the controversial hunting of large carnivores, which are frequently killed for trophies. Killing for trophies is widespread, but undertaken by a minority of hunters, and can pose threats to the SLH for trophy‐seeking carnivore hunters and potentially beyond. Societal opposition to large carnivore hunting relates not only to conservation concerns but also to misalignment between killing for trophies and dominant public values and attitudes concerning the treatment of animals. We summarized cases related to the killing of grizzly bears (Ursus arctos), wolves (Canis lupus), and other large carnivores in Canada, the United States, and Europe to illustrate how opposition to large carnivore hunting, now expressed primarily on social media, can exert rapid and significant pressure on policy makers and politicians. Evidence of the potential for transformative change to wildlife management and conservation includes proposed and realized changes to legislation, business practice, and wildlife policy, including the banning of some large carnivore hunts. Given that policy is ultimately shaped by societal values and attitudes, research gaps include developing increased insight into public support of various hunting policies beyond that derived from monitoring of social media and public polling. Informed by increased evidence, the SLH model can provide a conceptual foundation for predicting the likelihood of transient versus enduring changes to wildlife conservation policy and practice for a wide variety of taxa and contexts., Article impact statement: A social license to hunt model can improve understanding of how opposition to carnivore hunting can shape policy development.

Recent advances in genomics have increased our understanding of geographic patterns of intraspecific variation and the importance of this variation in enhancing species’ potential to adapt to novel threats. However, as part of an effort to limit the scope of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the US government has proposed the removal of the gray wolf from the list of protected species on the basis of a claim that the statute permits a species to be declared recovered given the existence of a single presently secure population. We rebut this interpretation and propose a framework for the conservation of adaptive potential that builds on current agency practice in delineating subspecific recovery units and reconciles the definition of significance in the statute's “distinct population segment” and “significant portion of range” clauses. Such a coordinated policy would enhance the ESA's effectiveness in stemming loss of biodiversity in the face of climate change and other factors altering Earth's ecosystems.

Governments around the world invest considerable resources to reduce damages caused by large carnivores on human property. To use these investments more efficiently and effectively, we need to understand which interventions successfully prevent such damages and which do not. In the European Union, the LIFE program represents by far the largest financial instrument to help EU Member States with the implementation of conservation activities, including mitigation of damages caused by large carnivores. However, we currently lack information about the effectiveness of this funding program in reducing carnivore damages. We reviewed 135 LIFE projects dealing with large carnivores between 1992 and 2019 to provide an overview of the use of damage prevention methods and evaluate their functional and perceived effectiveness. Methods evaluated ranged from non-lethal and lethal interventions, to information dissemination and compensation schemes. The largest number of the projects was focused on grey wolf (Canis lupus) and brown bears (Ursus arctos) in the Mediterranean countries and in Romania. Electric fences were reported as the most successful method for reducing damages by large carnivores, and most of the non-lethal methods used showed at least moderate effectiveness. However, standards of measuring and reporting effectiveness were in general relatively low, which limits our ability to measure actual impact. We urge project managers and evaluators to improve these standards, as well as the dissemination of the project results. We provide a list of recommendations for improving measuring and reporting success of implemented interventions for the benefit of future projects aimed to reduce damages caused by wildlife., The study was funded by the European Union as part of the EuroLargeCarnivores LIFE project (grant number LIFE16 GIE/DE/000661). JVLB was additionally supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (RYC-2015–18932; CGL2017–87528-R AEI/FEDER EU). MK was additionally supported by the Slovenian Research Agency (grants P4–0059 and N1–0163).

Poaching is the main cause of mortality for many large carnivores, and mitigating it is imperative for the persistence of their populations. For Wisconsin gray wolves (Canis lupus), periods of increased risk in overall mortality and poaching seem to overlap temporally with legal hunting seasons for other large mammals (hunting wolves was prohibited). We analyzed monitoring data from adult, collared wolves in Wisconsin, USA (1979–2012, n = 495) using a competing-risk approach to test explicitly if seasons during which it was legal to train hunting hounds (hounding) or hunt other large mammals (hunting) affected wolves’ hazard of cause-specific mortality and disappearance. We found increases in hazard for disappearances and documented (‘reported’) poaching during seasons with hunting, hounding or snow cover relative to a season without these factors. The ‘reported poached’ hazard increased > 650% during seasons with hunting and snow cover, which may be due to a seasonal surge in numbers of potential poachers or to some poachers augmenting their activities. Snow cover was a major environmental factor contributing to poaching, presumably through increased detection of wolves. Our study suggests poaching is by far the highest mortality hazard for wolves and reinforces the need for protections and policies targeting poaching of protected populations.

Governments around the world invest considerable resources to reduce damages caused by large carnivores on human property. To use these investments more efficiently and effectively, we need to understand which interventions successfully prevent such damages and which do not. In the European Union, the LIFE program represents by far the largest financial instrument to help EU Member States with the implementation of conservation activities, including mitigation of damages caused by large carnivores. However, we currently lack information about the effectiveness of this funding program in reducing carnivore damages. We reviewed 135 LIFE projects dealing with large carnivores between 1992 and 2019 to provide an overview of the use of damage prevention methods and evaluate their functional and perceived effectiveness. Methods evaluated ranged from non-lethal and lethal interventions, to information dissemination and compensation schemes. The largest number of the projects was focused on grey wolf (Canis lupus) and brown bears (Ursus arctos) in the Mediterranean countries and in Romania. Electric fences were reported as the most successful method for reducing damages by large carnivores, and most of the non-lethal methods used showed at least moderate effectiveness. However, standards of measuring and reporting effectiveness were in general relatively low, which limits our ability to measure actual impact. Therefore we urge project managers and evaluators to improve these standards, as well as the dissemination of the project results. We provide a list of recommendations for improving measuring and reporting success of implemented interventions for the benefit of future projects aimed to reduce damages caused by wildlife.Article impact statementElectric fences were reported as the most effective method to prevent large-carnivore damages and are recommended for future use.

The reintroduced red wolf population in northeastern North Carolina declined to 7 known wolves by October 2020. Poaching (illegal killing) is the major component of verified anthropogenic mortality in this and many other carnivore populations, but it is still not well understood. Poaching is often underestimated, partly as a result of cryptic poaching, when poachers conceal evidence. Cryptic poaching inhibits our understanding of the causes and consequences of anthropogenic mortality which is important to conservation as it can inform us about future population patterns within changing political and human landscapes. We estimate risk for marked adult red wolves of 5 causes of death (COD: legal, nonhuman, unknown, vehicle and poached) and disappearance, describe variation in COD in relation to hunting season, and compare time to disappearance or death. We include unknown fates in our risk estimates. We found that anthropogenic COD accounted for 0.724 – 0.787, including cryptic and reported poaching estimated at 0.510 – 0.635 of 508 marked animals. Risk of poaching and disappearance was significantly higher during hunting season. Mean time from collaring until nonhuman COD averaged 376 days longer than time until reported poached and 642 days longer than time until disappearance. Our estimates of risk differed from prior published estimates, as expected by accounting for unknown fates explicitly. We quantify the effects on risk for three scenarios for disappearances, which span conservative to most likely COD. Implementing proven practices that prevent poaching or hasten successful reintroduction may reverse the decline to extinction in the wild of this critically endangered population. Our findings add to a growing literature on endangered species protections and enhancing the science used to measure poaching worldwide.

The reintroduced red wolf (Canis rufus) population in northeastern North Carolina declined to 7 known wolves by October 2020, the majority of which is due to poaching (illegal killing), the major component of verified anthropogenic mortality in this and many other carnivore populations. Poaching is still not well understood and is often underestimated, partly as a result of cryptic poaching, when poachers conceal evidence. Cryptic poaching inhibits our understanding of the causes and consequences of anthropogenic mortality, which is important to conservation as it can inform us about future population patterns within changing political and human landscapes. We estimate risk for marked adult red wolves of 5 causes of death (COD: legal, nonhuman, unknown, vehicle and poached) and disappearance, describe variation in COD in relation to hunting season, and compare time to disappearance or death. We include unknown fates in our risk estimates. We found that anthropogenic COD accounted for 0.78–0.85 of 508 marked animals, including poaching and cryptic poaching, which we estimated at 0.51–0.64. Risk of poaching and disappearance was significantly higher during hunting season. Mean time from collaring until nonhuman COD averaged 376 days longer than time until poached and 642 days longer than time until disappearance. Our estimates of risk differed from prior published estimates, as expected by accounting for unknown fates explicitly. We quantify the effects on risk for three scenarios for unknown fates, which span conservative to most likely COD. Implementing proven practices that prevent poaching or hasten successful reintroduction may reverse the decline to extinction in the wild of this critically endangered population. Our findings add to a growing literature on endangered species protections and enhancing the science used to measure poaching worldwide.

Although poaching (illegal killing) is an important cause of death for large carnivores globally, the effect of lethal management policies on poaching is unknown for many populations. Two opposing hypotheses have been proposed: liberalizing killing may decrease poaching incidence (‘tolerance hunting’) or increase it (‘facilitated poaching’). For gray wolves in Wisconsin, USA, we evaluated how five causes of death and disappearances of monitored, adult wolves were influenced by policy changes. We found slight decreases in reported wolf poaching hazard and incidence during six liberalized killing periods, but that was outweighed by larger increases in hazard and incidence of disappearance. Although the observed increase in the hazard of disappearance cannot be definitively shown to have been caused by an increase in cryptic poaching, we discuss two additional independent lines of evidence making this the most likely explanation for changing incidence among n = 513 wolves’ deaths or disappearances during 12 replicated changes in policy. Support for the facilitated poaching hypothesis suggests the increase (11–34%) in disappearances reflects that poachers killed more wolves and concealed more evidence when the government relaxed protections for endangered wolves. We propose a refinement of the hypothesis of ‘facilitated poaching’ that narrows the cognitive and behavioral mechanisms underlying wolf-killing.

Intergenerational rights to a healthy environment are protected by the constitutions of 74% of the world’s nations. These explicit commitments and similar, ancient principles of sovereign public trust are often overlooked but, if enforced, they offer sustainable protection for the biosphere.

In January 2021, there were 7 known individual red wolves (Canis rufus) remaining in the only wild population, located in Northeastern North Carolina (NENC). Anthropogenic mortality is the largest threat to survival of this population. Leading theory predicts that by understanding the attitudes and behavioral inclinations of the general public toward red wolves, better decisions can be made about how and where to concentrate outreach and interventions. Another view is that a very small minority of individuals must refrain from killing endangered species before restoration can succeed, so research and interventions need to focus on those few. We conducted interviews and surveys in nine counties in and around the NENC reintroduction area to measure attitude and behavioral inclinations toward red wolves, acceptance of the red wolf recovery program, and trust in the lead agency. We used two sampling techniques and in both samples pluralities or majorities liked red wolves, supported their restoration, disliked policy that would limit red wolf protections, trusted the agency, and would not kill a wolf illegally. While these data seem favorable for red wolf recovery, our results show a small group of people are driving the species to extinction through poaching. Self-identified male hunters in the probability group reported the greatest inclination to poach, with 11% saying they would kill any wolf they encountered on their own. We recommend engaging peer processes that discourage illegal behaviors and focusing energetic anti-poaching interventions on hostile actors to restore red wolves in this human dominated landscape.

Although participatory planning for conservation has gained prominence over the past few decades, whether this process is successful in protecting biodiversity is still controversial. Moreover, the initial, constitutive decisions about whom to include in the process may undermine the sometimes-implicit goal that non-participants will find the outcomes legitimate and equitable. Different pitfalls relate to the proper representation of all public interests, such as tyranny of the minority or conflicts of interest. We focus on the effective integration of the broad public interest into decisions on use and preservation of the environment, including biodiversity, and we argue why the broad public interest should be considered a prerequisite to processes that are democratic, legitimate and equitable. When narrower interests become entrenched, conservation conflicts can become chronic as opponents take irreconcilable positions and polarize debate. Participatory decision-making processes could be improved by codifying the democratic principles of intergenerational equity and the public trust doctrine. We make recommendations on how to integrate the broad public interest in conservation decisions.

Government agencies faced with politically controversial decisions often discount or ignore scientific information, whether from agency staff or nongovernmental scientists. Recent developments in scientific integrity (the ability to perform, use, communicate, and publish science free from censorship or political interference) in Canada, Australia, and the United States demonstrate a similar trajectory. A perceived increase in scientific-integrity abuses provokes concerted pressure by the scientific community, leading to efforts to improve scientific-integrity protections under a new administration. However, protections are often inconsistently applied and are at risk of reversal under administrations publicly hostile to evidence-based policy. We compared recent challenges to scientific integrity to determine what aspects of scientific input into conservation policy are most at risk of political distortion and what can be done to strengthen safeguards against such abuses. To ensure the integrity of outbound communications from government scientists to the public, we suggest governments strengthen scientific integrity policies, include scientists’ right to speak freely in collective-bargaining agreements, guarantee public access to scientific information, and strengthen agency culture supporting scientific integrity. To ensure the transparency and integrity with which information from nongovernmental scientists (e.g., submitted comments or formal policy reviews) informs the policy process, we suggest governments broaden the scope of independent reviews, ensure greater diversity of expert input and transparency regarding conflicts of interest, require a substantive response to input from agencies, and engage proactively with scientific societies. For their part, scientists and scientific societies have a responsibility to engage with the public to affirm that science is a crucial resource for developing evidence-based policy and regulations in the public interest.

Measuring rates and causes of mortalities is important in animal ecology and management. Observing the fates of known individuals is a common method of estimating life history variables, including mortality patterns. It has long been assumed that data lost when known animals disappear were unbiased. We test and reject this assumption under conditions common to most, if not all, studies using marked animals. We illustrate the bias for 4 endangered wolf populations in the United States by reanalyzing data and assumptions about the known and unknown fates of marked wolves to calculate the degree to which risks of different causes of death were mismeasured. We find that, when using traditional methods, the relative risk of mortality from legal killing measured as a proportion of all known fates was overestimated by 0.05–0.16 and the relative risk of poaching was underestimated by 0.17–0.44. We show that published government estimates are affected by these biases and, importantly, are underestimating the risk of poaching. The underestimates have obscured the magnitude of poaching as the major threat to endangered wolf populations. We offer methods to correct estimates of mortality risk for marked animals of any taxon and describe the conditions under which traditional methods produce more or less bias. We also show how correcting past and future estimates of mortality parameters can address uncertainty about wildlife populations and increase the predictability and sustainability of wildlife management interventions.

Starting in the 1970s, many populations of large-bodied mammalian carnivores began to recover from centuries of human-caused eradication and habitat destruction. The recovery of several such populations has since slowed or reversed due to mortality caused by humans. Illegal killing (poaching) is a primary cause of death in many carnivore populations. Law enforcement agencies face difficulties in preventing poaching and scientists face challenges in measuring it. Both challenges are exacerbated when evidence is concealed or ignored. We present data on deaths of 937 Wisconsin gray wolves (Canis lupus) from October 1979 to April 2012 during a period in which wolves were recolonizing historic range mainly under federal government protection. We found and partially remedied sampling and measurement biases in the source data by reexamining necropsy reports and reconstructing the numbers and causes of some wolf deaths that were never reported. From 431 deaths and disappearances of radiocollared wolves aged > 7.5 months, we estimated human causes accounted for two-thirds of reported and reconstructed deaths, including poaching in 39–45%, vehicle collisions in 13%, legal killing by state agents in 6%, and nonhuman causes in 36–42%. Our estimate of poaching remained an underestimate because of persistent sources of uncertainty and systematic underreporting. Unreported deaths accounted for over two-thirds of all mortality annually among wolves > 7.5 months old. One-half of all poached wolves went unreported, or > 80% of poached wolves not being monitored by radiotelemetry went unreported. The annual mortality rate averaged 18% ± 10% for monitored wolves but 47% ± 19% for unmonitored wolves. That difference appeared to be due largely to radiocollaring being concentrated in the core areas of wolf range, as well as higher rates of human-caused mortality in the periphery of wolf range. We detected an average 4% decline in wolf population growth in the last 5 years of the study. Because our estimates of poaching risk and overall mortality rate exceeded official estimates after 2012, we present all data for transparency and replication. More recent additions of public hunting quotas after 2012 appear unsustainable without effective curtailment of poaching. Effective antipoaching enforcement will require more accurate estimates of poaching rate, location, and timing than currently available. Independent scientific review of methods and data will improve antipoaching policies for large carnivore conservation, especially for controversial species facing high levels of human-induced mortality.

The growing complexity and global nature of wildlife poaching threaten the survival of many species worldwide and are outpacing conservation efforts. Here, we reviewed proximal and distal factors, both social and ecological, driving illegal killing or poaching of large carnivores at sites where it can potentially occur. Through this review, we developed a conceptual social–ecological system framework that ties together many of the factors influencing large carnivore poaching. Unlike most conservation action models, an important attribute of our framework is the integration of multiple factors related to both human motivations and animal vulnerability into feedbacks. We apply our framework to two case studies, tigers in Laos and wolverines in northern Sweden, to demonstrate its utility in disentangling some of the complex features of carnivore poaching that may have hindered effective responses to the current poaching crisis. Our framework offers a common platform to help guide future research on wildlife poaching feedbacks, which has hitherto been lacking, in order to effectively inform policy making and enforcement.

Livestock owners traditionally use various non-lethal and lethal methods to protect their domestic animals from wild predators. However, many of these methods are implemented without first considering experimental evidence of their effectiveness in mitigating predation-related threats or avoiding ecological degradation. To inform future policy and research on predators, we systematically evaluated evidence for interventions against carnivore (canid, felid, and ursid) predation on livestock in North American and European farms. We also reviewed a selection of tests from other continents to help assess the global generality of our findings. Twelve published tests – representing five non-lethal methods and 7 lethal methods – met the accepted standard of scientific inference (random assignment or quasi-experimental case-control) without bias in sampling, treatment, measurement, or reporting. Of those twelve, prevention of livestock predation was demonstrated in six tests (four non-lethal and two lethal), whereas counterintuitive increases in predation were shown in two tests (zero non-lethal and two lethal); the remaining four (one non-lethal and three lethal) showed no effect on predation. Only two non-lethal methods (one associated with livestock-guarding dogs and the other with a visual deterrent termed “fladry”) assigned treatments randomly, provided reliable inference, and demonstrated preventive effects. We recommend that policy makers suspend predator control efforts that lack evidence for functional effectiveness and that scientists focus on stringent standards of evidence in tests of predator control.

Recent extinctions often resulted from humans retaliating against wildlife that threatened people's interests or were perceived to threaten current or future interests. Today's subfield of human-wildlife conflict and coexistence (HWCC) grew out of an original anthropocentric concern with such real or perceived threats and then, starting in the mid-1990s, with protecting valued species from people. Recent work in ethics and law has shifted priorities toward coexistence between people and wild animals. To spur scientific progress and more effective practice, we examined 4 widespread assumptions about HWCC that need to be tested rigorously: scientists are neutral and objective about HWCC; current participatory, consensus-based decisions provide just and fair means to overcome challenges in HWCC; wildlife threats to human interests are getting worse; and wildlife damage to human interests is additive to other sources of damage. The first 2 assumptions are clearly testable, but if they are entangled can become a wicked problem and may need debunking as myths if they cannot be disentangled. Some assumptions have seldom or never been tested and those that have been tested appear dubious, yet the use of the assumptions continues in the practice and scholarship of HWCC. We call for tests of assumptions and debunking of myths in the scholarship of HWCC. Adherence to the principles of scientific integrity and application of standards of evidence can help advance our call. We also call for practitioners and interest groups to improve the constitutive process prior to decision making about wildlife. We predict these steps will hasten scientific progress toward evidence-based interventions and improve the fairness, ethics, and legality of coexistence strategies.Mitos y Suposiciones sobre el Conflicto y la Coexistencia entre el Humano y la Fauna Resumen Casi todas las extinciones recientes han resultado de las represalias que los humanos han realizado en contra de la fauna que amenaza o que ha sido percibida como una amenaza para intereses humanos actuales o futuros. Hoy en día, la disciplina de conflicto y coexistencia humano - fauna (HWCC, en inglés), surgió de la original preocupación antropocéntrica por las amenazas reales o percibidas y después, a partir de mediados de la década de 1990, por la preocupación de proteger a las especies valoradas por el los humanos. Trabajos recientes de ética y leyes han modificado sus prioridades hacia la coexistencia entre las personas y la fauna silvestre. Para estimular el progreso científico y una práctica más efectiva, examinamos cuatro suposiciones generalizadas sobre el HWCC que necesitan ser evaluadas rigurosamente: los científicos son neutrales y objetivos con el HWCC; las decisiones participativas actuales basadas en consensos proporcionan medios justos y razonables para sobreponerse a los retos del HWCC; las amenazas de la fauna hacia los intereses humanos cada vez son peores; y el daño causado por la fauna a los intereses humanos es aditivo a otras fuentes de daño. Las primeras dos suposiciones son claramente evaluables, pero si se entrelazan, pueden convertirse en un serio problema y necesitarían ser desacreditadas como mitos si no se pueden desenlazar. Algunas suposiciones nunca o rara vez han sido evaluadas y aquellas que sí lo han sido parecen ser dudosas. A pesar de esto, el uso de las suposiciones continua en la práctica y en la academia del HWCC. La adhesión a los principios de integridad científica y la aplicación de estándares de evidencia pueden ayudar a promover nuestra petición. También hacemos un llamado a los practicantes y a los grupos de interés para que mejoren el proceso constitutivo previo a la toma de decisiones sobre la fauna. Pronosticamos que estos pasos a seguir apresurarán el progreso científico hacia intervenciones basadas en evidencia y mejorarán la imparcialidad, ética y legalidad de las estrategias de coexistencia.近代发生的物种灭绝许多是因为人类对威胁其利益, 或是主观认为会威胁其当下或未来利益的野生动物进行的报复。目前人兽冲突与共存 (human-wildlife conflict and coexistence, HWCC) 子领域起源于最初以人类为中心对这些真实或感知中的威胁的关注, 随后自二十世纪九十年代中期起, 开始考虑保护有价值的物种不受人类威胁。近期伦理学和法律方面的工作已将重点转向人与野生动物的共存。为了促进科学进步和更有效的实践, 我们检验了四个有关 HWCC 普遍流传但需要严格检验的假设: 科学家对 HWCC 持客观中立的态度; 目前参与性的、基于共识的决策为克服 HWCC 中的挑战提供了公正公平的手段; 野生动物对人类利益的威胁越来越严重; 野生动物对人类利益的损害可以与其它来源的损害累加。最后两个假设明显可以检验, 但它们如果相互关联就可能成为一个棘手难题, 不能彼此理清的话则会发展为谬见, 需要得到揭露。还有一些假设很少或从未被检验过, 而那些已经被检验过的假设也显得可疑, 但 HWCC 的实践和学术研究中仍然在使用这些假设。我们呼吁在 HWCC 的学术研究中检验假设、消除谬见。而坚持科学诚信的原则和证据标准的应用有助于推动我们的呼吁。我们还呼吁实践者和利益团体在改进流程后再进行有关野生动物的决策。我们预计这些做法将推动以证据为基础的干预措施的科学进展, 并提高共存策略的公平性、道德性和合法性。 【翻译: 胡怡思; 审校: 聂永刚】.

Canadian and U.S. wildlife management needs an improved scientific basis and clearer definition of “science-based” expectations., Mawdsley et al. (2018) respond disapprovingly to our 2018 review of 667 wildlife management systems across Canada and the United States, which found that many of these systems lacked the scientific hallmarks of clear objectives, evidence, transparency, and independent review. Although we strongly agree with several of Mawdsley et al.’s points about the role of science in management, their response suggests confusion about three elements of our approach that we clarify herein: (i) the selection of hallmarks, (ii) the role of science in wildlife management, and (iii) our engagement with wildlife agencies. We contend that both critics and defenders of the current approach to wildlife management in Canada and the United States similarly desire rigorous management that achieves social and ecological benefits. Our original study—which used a clear approach to define hallmarks of science-based management, employed a reasonable set of indicator criteria to test for them, and was based on data available to the general public on whose behalf management is conducted—found evidence that the current approach falls short. However, it also provided a framework for addressing shortcomings moving forward. We suggest that advancing discussion on the operational role of science in management, including clarifying what “science-based management” actually means, could curtail practitioners and critics of the status quo talking over each other’s heads and encourage all parties to work constructively to improve the governance of wildlife at a continental scale.