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Hunting is a primary driver of biodiversity loss across South-east Asia. Within Cambodia, the use of wire snares to capture wildlife is a severe threat in protected areas but there have been few studies of the behaviour of hunters from local communities. Here, we combine the unmatched count technique with direct questioning to estimate the prevalence of hunting behaviours and wildlife consumption amongst 705 households living within Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary, Cambodia. We assessed respondents' knowledge of rules, and their perceptions of patrols responsible for enforcing rules. Estimates of hunting behaviour were variable: results from the unmatched count technique were inconclusive, and direct questioning revealed 9% of households hunted, and 20% set snares around farms to prevent wildlife eating crops. Hunting with domestic dogs was the method most commonly used to catch wildlife (87% of households owned dogs). Wild meat was consumed by 84% of households, and was most frequently bought or caught, but also gifted. We detected a high awareness of conservation rules, but low awareness of punishments and penalties, with wildlife depletion, rather than the risk of being caught by patrols, causing the greatest reduction in hunting. Our findings demonstrate the challenges associated with reliably estimating rule-breaking behaviour and highlight the need to incorporate careful triangulation into study design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social science methods are increasingly applied in conservation research. However, the conservation sector has received criticism for inadequate ethical rigor when research involves people, particularly when investigating socially sensitive or illegal behaviors. We conducted a systematic review to investigate conservation journals' ethical policies when research involves human participants, and to assess the types of ethical safeguards documented in conservation articles. We restricted our review to articles that used social science methods to gather data from local people about a potentially sensitive behavior: hunting. Searches were conducted in the Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar for research articles in English published from January 2000 to May 2018. Only studies conducted in countries in south and Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central and South America were considered. In total, 4456 titles and 626 abstracts were scanned, with 185 studies published in 57 journals accepted for full review. For each article, any information regarding ethical safeguards implemented to protect human participants was extracted. We identified an upward trend in the documentation of provisions to protect human participants. Overall, 55% of articles documented at least one ethical safeguard. However, often safeguards were poorly described. In total, 37% of journals provided ethics guidelines and required authors to report ethical safeguards in manuscripts, but a significant mismatch between journal policies and publication practice was identified. Nearly, half the articles published in journals that should have included ethics information did not. We encourage authors to rigorously report ethical safeguards in publications and urge journal editors to make ethics statements mandatory, to provide explicit guidelines to authors that outline journal ethical reporting standards, and to ensure compliance throughout the peer‐review process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Conservation Biology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Methods in Ecology & Evolution is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Agriculture threatens biodiversity across the tropics, particularly in semi-natural grassland landscapes, where human populations are high, habitat is easily converted and agriculture is prone to intensification. Over the last 20 years intensive, commercial dry season rice cultivation has emerged as the dominant threat to the Bengal florican Houbaropsis bengalensis , a globally threatened bustard that breeds in the seasonally inundated grasslands of central Cambodia. Although floricans have been extensively monitored for 10 years, no socioeconomic research has been undertaken to examine how local livelihood activities interact with the florican. We conducted household questionnaires and focus groups in 21 villages in the Northern Tonle Sap Conservation Landscape to gather information on household demographics, rice farming and bird hunting in protected and unprotected areas of florican breeding habitat. We identified a significant increase in dry season rice adoption by local communities since 2005. Dry season rice cultivation was strongly associated with agrochemical use and rice fields directly overlapped with florican breeding habitat, reducing habitat availability throughout the breeding season. We identified a low but significant level of bird hunting in grassland households (8%) and revealed a demand for wild bird meat amongst local communities. Our findings suggest an urgent need for conservation interventions in unprotected farmland and emphasize the role of enforcement and community engagement in improving protection within protected areas. We highlight the potential of private sector initiatives such as the Sustainable Rice Platform in reconciling conservation and development for impoverished rural communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protected area management often depends heavily on law enforcement to secure compliance with rules. However, this can contribute to conflict between protected area authorities and local people, negatively affecting both human well-being and conservation outcomes. Compliance is affected by many factors, including whether those who enforce rules are perceived to do so fairly, as well as the perceived rule-related behavior of others. We used factorial survey experiments to explore how fair respondents living around protected areas in Indonesia and Tanzania perceive sanctions distributed by law enforcers to be. We presented scenarios to respondents to assess how crime type, offender characteristics, and corruption influenced their judgments regarding the fairness of administered sanctions. We also assessed how descriptive norms and corruption influenced individuals' willingness to obey protected area rules. Data were collected from 229 people in Indonesia and 217 in Tanzania. Results showed that in both locations, lawful sanctions, such as arrests or warnings, were perceived as fairer, and sanctions that involved corruption were perceived as least fair. Attitudes toward protected area rules, corruption, and descriptive norms all influenced people's willingness to comply, whereas multidimensional poverty did not. Our results highlight the need for conservation policy and practice to move beyond narratives that focus on the need for more law enforcement. To improve protected area compliance and secure better outcomes for people and nature, conservation must focus on ensuring the fair administration of rules and enhancing the legitimacy of rules themselves., (© 2024 The Author(s). Conservation Biology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology.)

Conservation takes place within social-ecological systems, and many conservation interventions aim to influence human behaviour in order to push these systems towards sustainability. Predictive models of human behaviour are potentially powerful tools to support these interventions. This is particularly true if the models can link the attributes and behaviour of individuals with the dynamics of the social and environmental systems within which they operate. Here we explore this potential by showing how combining two modelling approaches (social network analysis, SNA, and agent-based modelling, ABM) could lead to more robust insights into a particular type of conservation intervention. We use our simple model, which simulates knowledge of ranger patrols through a hunting community and is based on empirical data from a Cambodian protected area, to highlight the complex, context-dependent nature of outcomes of information-sharing interventions, depending both on the configuration of the network and the attributes of the agents. We conclude by reflecting that both SNA and ABM, and many other modelling tools, are still too compartmentalized in application, either in ecology or social science, despite the strong methodological and conceptual parallels between their uses in different disciplines. Even a greater sharing of methods between disciplines is insufficient, however; given the impact of conservation on both the social and ecological aspects of systems (and vice versa), a fully integrated approach is needed, combining both the modelling approaches and the disciplinary insights of ecology and social science. This article is part of the theme issue 'Linking behaviour to dynamics of populations and communities: application of novel approaches in behavioural ecology to conservation'.