Published July 20, 2017 | Version Unformatted accepted manuscript. Postprint.
Journal article Open

Are wildlife value orientations useful tools to explain tolerance and illegal killing of wildlife by farmers in response to crop damage?

Authors/Creators

  • 1. Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Piazza Martiri della Libertà, 33, 56127 Pisa, Italy
  • 2. Research Unit of Behavioural Ecology, Ethology and Wildlife Management, Department of Life Sciences, University of Siena, Via P.A. Mattioli 4, 53100 Siena, Italy
  • 3. Dipartimento di Scienze delle Produzioni AgroAlimentari (DISPAA), Università degli Studi di Firenze, Piazzale delle Cascine 18, 50100 Florence, Italy
  • 4. Dipartimento di Biologia, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Via Madonna del Piano 6, 50019, Sesto Fiorentino, Florence, Italy

Description

Understanding human-wildlife conflicts and monitoring their consequences, such as wildlife
persecution, is crucial for biological conservation. Although most theoretical models suggest that
the influence of value orientations on behavior is mediated by higher order constructs such as
attitudes and norms, wildlife value orientations are widely used to assess human-wildlife relationships and to predict human behavior towards wildlife. We have no evidence of studies which have measured them in Mediterranean countries, where the highest biodiversity level in temperate Western countries is present. In spring 2016, we administered a questionnaire to local farmers in Central Italy to measure the association be tween wildlife value orientations and illegal killing of wildlife, in response to crop or poultry damages (n = 352). We obtained the prevalence of illegal killing with the Randomized Response Technique, ensuring complete individual protection to respondents. We modeled the effect of wildlife value orientations over illegal wildlife killing with a Bayesian logistic regression for three taxa: the red fox, the crested porcupine, and birds, as most of persecution by farmers in our study site is exerted towards them. We found that domination predicted illegal killing for the red fox only. On the other hand, mutualism predicted tolerance towards all the study taxa. Combining wildlife value orientations and the Randomized Response Technique can be a promising approach to explore human-wildlife conflicts and their consequences. Furthermore, the Mediterranean setting of our study filled existing geographical gaps about wildlife value orientations in Europe. We encourage future research on the application of wildlife value orientations to conflicts involving wildlife and extensive farmers, i.e., at large scale, as well as future large-scale research on wildlife value orientations in Europe.

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