And its Allies
Here’s a fascinating new study published by Margarita Gil-Fernández (2023) and colleagues. It’s about big cats in Costa Rica; or, more specifically, how receiving attention from conservationists following attacks on livestock can affect ranchers’ attitudes towards big cats. The findings from this study have crucial implications for conservation.
Conservation often involves changing people’s behavior, ideally in ways that help both them and wildlife. There are many disciplines that provide strategies for how to initiate behavior change, and two of the overarching “flavors” are behavioral science and social marketing. This blog post by Sara Isaac of Marketing for Change does a good job of explaining the differences between the two approaches.
Often, the persecution of predators like jaguars (Panthera onca) is blamed – at least in part – on livestock depredation: jaguars kill cattle, and hence people kill jaguars. But what happens when there are no cattle? In areas where human communities do not rely on livestock for their livelihoods, would they be more tolerant of jaguars? That is the question that Jillian Knox and her co-authors set out to answer.
Intro Many people have different opinions about wildlife, even within the same geographical area. So, how can wildlife professionals predict how the public will respond to their initiatives? One useful…
A Q&A with the intelligent and charming Charmaine Pedrozo, who is studying people’s emotional responses to wildlife as part of her master’s thesis.
Introduction This Q&A is with Dr. Silvio Marchini: a scientist, educator, and one of the foremost experts on the “human dimensions” of conservation – the realm of conservation science that focuses…
I am thrilled to be able to bring you this Q&A with Dr. Kalli Doubleday. Dr. Doubleday is a geographer who recently earned her PhD from the University of Texas…
A new study has recently been completed by Monica Engel, Jerry Vaske, Alistair Bath, and Silvio Marchini. It describes research conducted in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, one of the most…
The Jaguar 