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Understanding why private property owners take actions to conserve bats has become increasingly important in U.S. states where the fungus causing white-nose syndrome (Pseudogymnoascus destructans) has decimated bat populations. We surveyed property owners in three New York State counties (n = 2,500) and used multiple linear regression analyses to test predictors of intentions to conserve bats. Intentions to take actions that contribute to bat conservation directly were predicted by severity of rabies consequences, sense of bat conservation self efficacy, beliefs about responsibility for bat conservation, and attitudes toward bats (R² =.39). Intentions to take actions that conserve bats indirectly were predicted by biospheric value orientations, beliefs about responsibility for bat conservation, and attitudes toward bats (R² =.27). The relationship between beliefs about rabies and intentions to take actions that contribute to bat conservation highlights the need for coordinated risk communication between public health and wildlife conservation organizations.

Hunter education (HE) is offered in all 50 states, with oversight provided by state wildlife agencies (SWAs). The vast majority of HE courses are taught by volunteers. Recruiting and retaining volu...

Insufficient funding is a major impediment to conservation efforts around the world. In the United States, a decline in hunting participation threatens sustainability of the “user‐pay, public benefit” model that has supported wildlife conservation for nearly 100 years, forcing wildlife management agencies to contemplate alternative funding strategies. We investigated support for potential funding options among diverse college students, a rapidly expanding and politically active voting bloc with a potentially powerful influence on the future of conservation. From 2018 to 2020, we surveyed 17,203 undergraduate students at public universities across 22 states. Students preferred innovative approaches to conservation funding, with 72% supporting funding derived from industry sources (e.g., natural resource extraction companies), 63% supporting state sources (e.g., general sales tax), and 43% supporting conventional user‐based sources such as license fees and excise taxes associated with outdoor recreation activities (e.g., hunting). Findings emphasize the need to broaden the base of support for conservation funding and highlight the importance of considering the preferences and perspectives of young adults and other diverse beneficiaries of wildlife conservation.

Birds are common pests in fruit orchards. They frequently consume and damage fruit resulting in decreased yields for growers. The true extent of damage is difficult to measure. Producer surveys are often implemented to estimate damage, but the accuracy of these estimates is uncertain. We compared damage estimates obtained through field studies with estimates from a producer survey for three fruit crops: wine grapes, sweet cherries, and ‘Honeycrisp’ apples. We also analyzed relationships between use of various damage management methods and levels of bird damage. We found wine grape and sweet cherry growers accurately assessed bird damage, while ‘Honeycrisp’ apple growers may overestimate damage. Growing region appears to be an important damage predictor for wine grape and sweet cherry crops. Significant relationships between management methods and damage were positive, suggesting growers only use these methods when bird damage is substantial.

The last 25 years have witnessed growing recognition that natural resource management decisions depend as much on understanding humans and their social interactions as on understanding the interactions between non-human organisms and their environment. Decision science provides a framework for integrating ecological and social factors into a decision, but challenges to integration remain. The decision-analytic framework elicits values and preferences to help articulate objectives, and then evaluates the outcomes of alternative management actions to achieve these objectives. Integrating social science into these steps can be hindered by failing to include social scientists as more than stakeholder-process facilitators, assuming that specific decision-analytic skills are commonplace for social scientists, misperceptions of social data as inherently qualitative, timescale mismatches for iterating through decision analysis and collecting relevant social data, difficulties in predicting human behavior, and failures of institutions to recognize the importance of this integration. We engage these challenges, and suggest solutions to them, helping move forward the integration of social and biological/ecological knowledge and considerations in decision-making.

As a fundamental social process, communication can help natural resource managers prevent or manage many human–wildlife conflicts, but research on how to present effectively information that contributes to the reduction of human–wildlife conflicts is scant. We examined the effectiveness of point-of-reference and gain-versus-loss framing in heightening intentions to prevent human–black bear conflicts. We randomly assigned 811 participants to one of six message conditions as part of a 3 (point of reference: family versus community versus bear) × 2 (message framing: gain versus loss) between-subjects factorial design or a control condition. The findings show that a match between loss framing and low-construal referencing point (e.g., family-referencing), and a congruency between gain framing and high-construal referencing point (e.g., bear-referencing) lead to higher risk perception and behavioral intentions. This study provides guidance for continuing research and design of risk communication in the context of human–bear conflicts.

Urban wildlife management is growing in importance in the U.S. and Canada. This paper describes the archetypical history of wildlife population exploitation, recovery, impact management, and the anthropogenic root-causes for management of many species in urban environments. Although urban and traditional wildlife management situations differ in many ways, in both contexts, some species are welcome to co-exist with humans, while other species are considered intolerable. Management approaches and techniques tailored to urban situations are still in early days of development. Urban wildlife management issues tend to be “wicked problems” (problems where disparate human values lead to different interpretations of desirable outcomes and acceptable means of achieving them). People sharing the same space with each other and with wildlife inevitably perceive different impacts from wildlife. Experience has amply demonstrated the difficulty of finding a management response that is accepted across all segme...

We present a case study from New York, USA, of the use of structured decision making (SDM) to identify fall turkey harvest regulations that best meet stakeholder objectives, in light of recent apparent declines in abundance of wild turkeys in the northeastern United States. We used the SDM framework to incorporate the multiple objectives associated with turkey hunting, stakeholder desires, and region-specific ecological and environmental factors that could influence fall harvest. We identified a set of 4 fall harvest regulations, composed of different season lengths and bag limits, and evaluated their relative achievement of the objectives. We used a stochastic turkey population model, statistical modeling, and expert elicitation to evaluate the consequences of each harvest regulation on each of the objectives. We conducted a statewide mail survey of fall turkey hunters in New York to gather the necessary information to evaluate tradeoffs among multiple objectives associated with hunter satisfaction. The optimal fall harvest regulation was a 2-week season and allowed for the harvest of 1 bird/hunter. This regulation was the most conservative of those evaluated, reflecting the concerns about recent declines in turkey abundance among agency wildlife biologists and the hunting public. Depending on the region of the state, the 2-week, 1-bird regulation was predicted to result in 7–32% more turkeys on the landscape after 5 years. The SDM process provided a transparent framework for setting fall turkey harvest regulations and reduced potential stakeholder conflict by explicitly taking the multiple objectives of different stakeholder groups into account. © 2017 The Wildlife Society.

Wildlife rehabilitation is a publicly popular practice, though not without controversy. State wildlife agencies frequently debate the ecological impact of rehabilitation. By analyzing case records, we can clarify and quantify the causes for rehabilitation, species involved, and treatment outcomes. This data would aid regulatory agencies and rehabilitators in making informed decisions, as well as gaining insight into causes of species mortality. In New York State, the Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) has licensed rehabilitators since 1980 and annual reporting is required. In this study, we analyzed 58,185 individual wildlife cases that were attended by New York rehabilitators between 2012 and 2014. These encompassed 30,182 (51.9%) birds, 25,447 (43.7%) mammals, 2,421 (4.2%) reptiles, and 75 (0.1%) amphibians. We identified patterns among taxonomic representation, reasons for presentation to a rehabilitation center, and animal disposition. Major causes of presentation were trauma (n = 22,156; 38.1%) and orphaning (n = 21,679; 37.3%), with habitat loss (n = 3,937; 6.8%), infectious disease (n = 1,824; 3.1%), and poisoning or toxin exposure (n = 806; 1.4%) playing lesser roles. The overall release rate for animals receiving care was 50.2% while 45.3% died or were euthanized during the rehabilitation process. A relatively small number (0.3%) were permanently non-releasable and placed in captivity; 4.1% had unknown outcomes. A comparable evaluation in 1989 revealed that wildlife submissions have increased (annual mean 12,583 vs 19,395), and are accompanied by a significant improvement in release (50.2% in the study period vs 44.4% in 1989) (χ2(1) = 90.43, p < 0.0001). In this manuscript, we aim to describe the rehabilitator community in New York State, and present the causes and outcomes for rehabilitation over a three-year period.

Wildlife agencies liberalize hunting seasons and bag limits to reduce white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) density in peri-urban areas, often without knowing how hunters or private landowners will respond. To reduce deer density effectively, such programs must attract 1) hunters who are willing and able to harvest antlerless deer and 2) private landowners who are willing to permit needed hunter access. We assessed these conditions for a program in New York State, USA, that permitted participants to harvest 2 antlerless deer/day, over a 96-day period, within a 20,530-ha management unit. A mail survey (n = 683; 65% response) documented that participating hunters were interested in taking multiple antlerless deer, but few were able to do so. Moreover, the participant drop-out rate was high between program years 1 and 2, primarily because many hunters could not gain access to land and fulfill their expectations about seeing and harvesting deer. Telephone interviews with a random sample of 100 (from a population of 4 ha revealed that, despite their concerns about negative impacts of deer, few area landowners allowed additional hunters on their lands, often citing concerns about 1) interference with personal or family hunting activities or 2) the behavior of unknown hunters. We concluded that the program only minimally increased antlerless deer harvest, due in large part to limits on hunter access. Wildlife agencies need to understand hunters and landowners to create conditions necessary for local hunting programs to be effective tools to manage peri-urban deer populations. © 2016 The Wildlife Society.

A significant development in wildlife management is the mounting concern of wildlife professionals and the public about wildlife health and diseases. Concurrently, the wildlife profession is reexamining implications of managing wildlife populations as a public trust and the concomitant obligation to ensure the quality (i.e., health) and sustainability of wildlife. It is an opportune time to emphasize the importance of wildlife health, specifically to advocate for comprehensive and consistent integration of wildlife health in wildlife management. We summarize application of public trust ideas in wildlife population management in the US. We argue that wildlife health is essential to fulfilling public trust administration responsibilities with respect to wildlife, due to the central responsibility of trustees for ensuring the well-being of wildlife species (i.e., the core resources of the trust). Because both health of wildlife and risk perceptions regarding threats posed by wildlife disease to humans and domestic animals are issues of growing concern, managing wildlife disease and risk communication vis-à-vis wildlife health is critical to wildlife trust administration. We conclude that wildlife health professionals play a critical role in protecting the wildlife trust and that current conditions provide opportunities for important contributions by wildlife health professionals in wildlife management.

To test the effects of message framing on intentions to participate in seven behaviors to prevent coyote problems, we randomly assigned 461 participants to a control (no message) group or one of fo...

Japanese wolves (Canis lupus hodophilax) became extinct in the early 1900s. Because the country is experiencing growth in populations of ungulates, the potential of reintroducing wolves to promote self-regulating biodiverse ecosystems has been discussed by various Japanese and international researchers. However, limited research exists regarding public attitudes toward the reintroduction of wolves, which is indispensable to the success of such projects. We conducted a survey of 360 undergraduate students at a university in Japan and found that while most respondents believed that government officials and local residents should be responsible for the decision-making, a majority felt that this responsibility should not rest with the general citizens. Multiple regression analysis revealed that respondents disagreed with the reintroduction of exotic species generally, while those who thought wolves are necessary to a healthy ecosystem were supportive. Text mining analysis revealed that those who disagreed with the reintroduction were thinking about “people” while those who agreed emphasized the need to control an increasing deer population and to prevent related damage. In contrast to previous research, our survey revealed that it is not people’s propensity for wolves (i.e., whether they like or hate wolves), but their understanding of the ecological impact of reintroduced wolves, that influences their support. In summary, our findings suggest that public attitudes toward the reintroduction of wolves may become more favorable if people were informed of the scientific findings that Japanese and continental wolves are the same species and that their presence will positively impact the ecosystem.

The trend in wildlife management over the last two decades has been to develop locally based approaches for responsiveness to local conditions, but some state wildlife agencies are finding the amount of staff time required to service this approach prohibitive. Although local engagement strategies have been lauded as assuring that public trust obligations of state government to citizens are met, we can expect that states with a local focus as their operational level of stakeholder engagement may opt to change their approach to reflect their resource limitations. We argue for comprehensive regional level effort to understand stakeholders augmented with local engagement processes where needed to deal with special circumstances in smaller areas within a region. Such an approach can be anticipated to have implications for stakeholder engagement and human dimensions research needs, which we discuss in the context of public trust resource administration and good governance of wildlife resources.

We developed a partial equilibrium model to examine the welfare impacts of bird damage and its control in California wine grape production. The model incorporates the impacts of pest damage and its control and allows the impacts to vary regionally. Importantly, the model requires minimal information to apply; only elasticities, current market price and production data, and information on the cost and effectiveness of the pest control methods are needed. We rely on data from a recent survey of California growers and use the model to estimate changes in wine grape prices, production levels, and consumer and producer surplus that result from both bird damage and its control in three grape-growing regions of California. Results suggest that eliminating the threat of bird damage and control costs results in an increase in producer and consumer surplus of 1.3% and 3%, respectively. Furthermore, eliminating current bird control and allowing any resulting damage would decrease producer and consumer surplus by 6.6% and 11.5%, respectively. (JEL Classifications: Q11, Q18, Q57)

Decades of decline in the number of hunters in the United States have made hunter recruitment and retention (HRR) a high priority within the North American wildlife management community. Sociodemographic changes (e.g., urbanization, shifting racial/ethnic composition, parcelization of rural properties) suggest a need to re-examine conventional knowledge of HRR processes and develop insight that reflects contemporary contexts. In this article, we emphasize the “social habitat” for hunting and adopt a social–ecological model of hunting behavior to explore the myriad factors that interact to influence HRR at multiple scales. We examine the dynamic, hierarchical social structures that influence HRR, including forces that operate at the individual, micro (e.g., family), meso (e.g., community), and macro (e.g., society) levels. The review suggests that future research addressing HRR could expand to account for a broader, more diverse social habitat for hunting that includes these multiple scales.

Fish and wildlife harvest management at large spatial scales often involves making complex decisions with multiple objectives and difficult tradeoffs, population demographics that vary spatially, competing stakeholder values, and uncertainties that might affect management decisions. Structured decision making (SDM) provides a formal decision analytic framework for evaluating difficult decisions by breaking decisions into component parts and separating the values of stakeholders from the scientific evaluation of management actions and uncertainty. The result is a rigorous, transparent, and values‐driven process. This decision‐aiding process provides the decision maker with a more complete understanding of the problem and the effects of potential management actions on stakeholder values, as well as how key uncertainties can affect the decision. We use a case study to illustrate how SDM can be used as a decision‐aiding tool for management decision making at large scales. We evaluated alternative white‐tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) buck‐harvest regulations in New York designed to reduce harvest of yearling bucks, taking into consideration the values of the state wildlife agency responsible for managing deer, as well as deer hunters. We incorporated tradeoffs about social, ecological, and economic management concerns throughout the state. Based on the outcomes of predictive models, expert elicitation, and hunter surveys, the SDM process identified management alternatives that optimized competing objectives. The SDM process provided biologists and managers insight about aspects of the buck‐harvest decision that helped them adopt a management strategy most compatible with diverse hunter values and management concerns.

In many states, case law, statutes, or constitutions establish a “public trust in wildlife,” a derivative of the public trust doctrine. Although interpretation differs across jurisdictions, the underlying principle of wildlife as a public trust resource, explicitly expressed or not, carries with it broad obligations and standards of trust administration by government to ensure benefits of wildlife are available to all citizens, present and future. The standards for execution of responsibilities by trustees (elected officials or their appointees, such as commissions) and trust managers (e.g., wildlife professionals working for state wildlife agencies) require understanding beneficiaries' varied interests in the wildlife resource, which in turn requires effective public input and involvement, following the precepts of good governance, such as inclusiveness, openness, fairness, transparency, and accountability. Managing wildlife resources as public trust assets entails providing sustainable net benefits from the existence of wildlife and its co-existence with humans. Wildlife managers need an approach to wildlife management that is philosophically consistent with the benefits-production focus of trust administration. We explain that impacts management is such an approach, essentially tailor-made for fulfilling trust-management responsibilities because of its focus on diverse, stakeholder-value-defined outcomes (desired impacts) and its reliance on stakeholders' input for identifying and weighing competing outcomes desired by them. Impacts management is a wildlife resource management approach for providing sustainable, highly relevant public trust administration. © 2013 The Wildlife Society.

Fruit loss to birds is a long-standing and costly problem for many producers. We conducted a survey of Honeycrisp apple, blueberry, cherry, and wine grape growers in California, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Washington to estimate costs of bird damage and benefits of bird damage management. We also assessed grower perceptions of impacts on profits and effectiveness of bird management techniques. Current yield-loss estimates provided by growers and market price data were used to monetize current bird damage in each crop and growing region. Data on expected damage without management were used to estimate the benefits of bird damage management as it is currently being employed in the different crops and growing regions. We estimated that current bird damage costs per hectare ranged from $104 in Oregon tart cherries to $7267 in Washington Honeycrisp apples. Estimated benefits of bird management ranged from $299 per hectare in Oregon tart cherries to $36,851 in California blueberries. Aggregate bird damage in the five crops and states was estimated at $189 million, and the aggregate benefits of managing that damage were estimated at $737 million to $834 million. Growers viewed most techniques for bird damage management as ineffective, or only slightly effective, and a majority of blueberry and sweet cherry growers viewed bird damage as having a significant impact on profits. Enhancing the effectiveness of bird damage management would increase both the efficiency and profitability of fruit production.

Fish and wildlife disease outbreaks are increasing globally, negatively affecting wildlife, domestic animals, and humans. Responding to such outbreaks presents a challenge for fish and wildlife age...

A set of interrelated social and environmental changes have accelerated the transmission of wildlife-associated infectious diseases around the world. Emerging infectious disease (EID) events take a heavy toll on human health and have significant global economic impacts. In the risk-averse society of the United States, EID events associated with wildlife, particularly zoonoses, have potential to diminish the value of wildlife for society, depress interest in wildlife-related activities and decrease support for wildlife conservation. Messages about wildlife-associated zoonotic diseases should promote human and animal health, while avoiding development of exaggerated risk perceptions that can have deleterious effects on participation in wildlife-related outdoor activities or support for wildlife conservation. We outline 3 categories of negative consequences arising from current communication conditions with respect to zoonoses. We then describe key communication links that the wildlife profession needs to address to obviate these consequences. Finally, we propose a number of actions the wildlife professional community can take to improve communication about zoonotic diseases. In this regard, we discuss the One Health concept and other opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration on communication between wildlife health, wildlife management, and public health professionals. We conclude that a foundation for effective communication about zoonotic diseases needs to be built on stronger interdisciplinary collaboration between the wildlife profession and the public health profession. Starting from a solid foundation of collaboration among wildlife veterinarians and wildlife biologists and managers, wildlife professionals should build strong bridges with the public health profession. We suggest that the latter can be spanned by wildlife veterinarians. © 2011 The Wildlife Society.

The degree to which professionals can improve wildlife management processes and outcomes depends in part on their ability to integrate knowledge from multiple disciplines, including those that deta...

In Massachusetts, USA, both human and beaver (Castor canadensis) population levels are increasing, beaver damage complaints are escalating, and beaver management options are restricted by the 1996 Wildlife Protection Act. We looked at the public's norms toward beavers in Massachusetts. In 2002 we sent a mail-back questionnaire to a random sample of 5,563 residents in 3 geographic regions in Massachusetts and to residents who submitted a beaver complaint to Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife (MassWildlife) in 1999–2000 (47.3% overall response rate). Respondents supported some form of beaver management. As severity of beaver damage was perceived to increase, respondents were more willing to accept lethal management and control of beavers. These results emphasize the importance of how tolerance and acceptability of wildlife are influenced by the type of activity the animal is engaged in, the type of management action that is proposed, the positive or negative perception of a species in...

Problematic human–black bear interactions have increased in North America. Research is needed to clarify influences on human concern about and reaction to bear behavior, such that wildlife managers can better understand and maintain stakeholder acceptance capacity for bears. This article uses mail survey data (n = 1,038, response rate = 42%) and structural equation modeling (SEM) to test a conceptual model of factors affecting concern about bears and predisposition to contact authorities for assistance. Findings support hypotheses that both variables are influenced by wildlife value orientation, personal experience with bears, and television viewing. Use of print media is not a predictor of concern or behavioral predisposition, leading to rejection of those hypotheses. Strong wildlife benefits beliefs and neutral personal experience with bear presence attenuate concern, while exposure to television has the opposite effect. Findings suggest that improving measures of personal experience and basic beliefs w...

Wildlife managers conducting situation analyses typically turn to key informants to gain insight into community experiences and opinions. Although expedient, relying only on informants has shortcomings. We examined informants as potential sources of information about community residents with respect to human–coyote issues in Westchester County, New York. We employed a mixed-method approach that included both interviews with informants (n = 40) and a telephone survey of residents (n = 1,160). Although we found agreement on some measures, disparities between key informants' and residents' perceptions of coyotes in the community were revealed, suggesting caution about reliance on informants to guide management decisions. This study highlights the value of multiple data sources to improve insight and increase confidence in efforts to assess community perspectives regarding suburban wildlife issues.

We completed a content analysis of newspaper, radio, and television reports (n = 117) available to people in New York State between January 1999 and March 2002, to characterize how news stories differed with regard to problem identification, attributions of responsibility, and proposed solutions to black bear management problems. Nearly all reports could be characterized as episodic rather than thematic (i.e., focused on specific events rather than general outcomes or conditions). Reports identified few bear-related problems, suggested few solutions to problems, and tended to attribute responsibility for solving problems to individuals, not government agencies. We suggest that wildlife managers make efforts to raise stakeholder awareness about a wider array of bear–human interactions and effects of interactions than are reported by mass media as management issues emerge. By improving media relations plans and investing in stakeholder issue education, wildlife agencies can enable communities to create fram...

As stakeholder attitudes, values, and management preferences become increasingly diverse, managing human-wildlife conflicts will become more difficult. This challenge is especially evident in Massachusetts, USA, where furbearer management has been constrained by passage of a ballot initiative that outlawed use of foothold and body-gripping traps except in specific instances involving threats to human health or safety. Without regulated trapping, beaver (Castor canadensis) populations and damage attributed to them have increased. To develop an understanding of public attitudes regarding beaver-related management issues, we surveyed a random sample of Massachusetts residents in the spring of 2002 within 3 geographic regions where beaver are prevalent, as well as all individuals who submitted a beaver-related complaint to the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife in 1999 and 2000. We found that respondents held generally positive attitudes toward beaver. Respondents who experienced beaver-related problems tended to have less favorable or negative attitudes toward beaver than people who did not experience beaver damage. Attitudes toward beaver became increasingly negative as the severity of damage experienced by people increased. We believe continued public support for wildlife conservation will require implementation of strategies that are responsive to changing attitudes of an urban population and within social-acceptance and biological carrying capacities.

Adaptive wildlife management seeks to improve the integration of science and management by focusing decision-making on hypothesis-testing and structuring management actions as field experiments. Since the early 1990s, adaptive resource management (ARM) has advocated enhancing scientific rigor in evaluating management actions chosen to achieve “enabling objectives” typically directed at wildlife habitat or population characteristics. More recently, the concept of adaptive impact management (AIM) has emphasized a need to articulate “fundamental objectives” in terms of wildlife-related impacts to be managed. Adaptive impact management seeks to clarify why management is undertaken in a particular situation. Understanding the “why” question is viewed in AIM as a prerequisite for establishing enabling objectives, whether related to changes in wildlife habitats and populations or to human beliefs and behaviors. This article describes practical aspects of AIM by exploring relationships between AIM and ARM within a comprehensive model of decision-making for wildlife management. Adaptive impact management clarifies and differentiates fundamental objectives (i.e., wildlife-related impacts to be modified) and enabling objectives (i.e., conditions that affect levels of impacts), whereas ARM reduces uncertainty about how to achieve enabling objectives and seeks an optimal management alternative through hypothesis-testing. The 2 concepts make different contributions to development of management hypotheses about alternative actions and policies and should be nested for optimal application to comprehensive wildlife management. Considered in the context of the entire management process, AIM and ARM are complementary ideas contributing to adaptive wildlife management.

The discovery of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in New York in March 2005 resulted in a major effort by state and federal natural resource agencies to contain the disease, protect wild deer herds, and inform the public about the disease. One of the most urgent information needs of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) concerned the level of awareness of CWD among hunters and other New York residents. A “rapid response” survey effort was designed jointly by staff from the Human Dimensions Research Unit at Cornell University and NYSDEC. The survey assessed the effect of the discovery of CWD on hunters' plans to hunt deer in fall 2005. The results showed hunters were much more aware of the discovery of CWD than the general public. Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) was perceived by most respondents as a highly credible source of information on CWD, and the various agencies were rated above the midpoint between not trusting at all and greatly trusting information on CWD.

Increasing human-wildlife interactions in urban and suburban environments have created new challenges for management agencies as residents seek to become more involved in the decision-making process. White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) management may best illustrate both the challenges and the opportunities that exist in human-dominated environments. In these settings wildlife managers are increasingly being expected to engage stakeholders in identifying objectives and implementing management actions tailored to local needs and circumstances. We argue that successful management in these environments is closely related to several attributes of the stakeholder involvement process. Thus, additional theoretical developments and more empirical research will be needed to help managers facilitate community-based decision-making processes that are truly collaborative. We believe the next frontier for continued advancement and increased community and agency satisfaction with suburban deer management is improving local knowledge and leadership. We contend this can best be done through comprehensive intervention programs. In this paper we draw on the body of wildlife agency collaborative management process research to identify and describe the role of knowledge and local leadership in collaboration.

Community involvement with white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) management in suburban areas has increased recently, presenting wildlife agencies, interest groups, local governments, and other stakeholders with challenges and opportunities for collaboration. Community-based deer management requires that stakeholders involved have capacity to engage in situation analysis, decision making, and management implementation (in some cases). The authors interviewed 55 stakeholders involved in collaborative deer management in six suburban communities in New York and Massachusetts, identifying dimensions of stakeholder capacity and capacity-developing intervention for effective collaboration. Capacity dimensions identified included: partnerships, credibility, funding, relationships, common purpose, knowledge, and leadership. Intervention dimensions included: stakeholder involvement, education, communication, assessment, agency flexibility, and planning. Using a public-issue evolution model, this article descr...

Wildlife professionals need better ways to integrate ecological and human dimensions of wildlife management. A focus on impacts, guided by a structured decision process, will orient wildlife management toward rigorous, integrative decision making. Impacts are important socially defined effects of events and interactions related to wildlife that merit management. To manage impacts we propose adaptive impact management (AIM). This approach has seven primary components: situational analysis, objective setting, development of system model(s), identification and selection of management alternatives, actual management interventions, monitoring, and refinement of models and eventually interventions. Adaptive impact management builds upon strengths of systems thinking and conventional adaptive management, yet differs in that fundamental objectives of management are impacts on society, rather than conditions of a wildlife population or habitat. Emphasis is placed on stakeholder involvement in management and shared...

The authors surveyed 619 participants in a national fishing education program (Hooked on Fishing-Not on Drugs) designed for youth in Grades 6-8. The survey of the youth assessed fishing and aquatic stewardship outcomes associated with different levels of program exposure (i.e., no program, programs without fishing, and programs with fishing). Youth who participated in programs that included experience-based fishing were more likely to report several desired fishing and stewardship outcomes. These data support the assumption that such programs are more likely to influence antecedents to environmentally responsible behavior than are programs without experience-based fishing.

The West Nile virus outbreak of 1999 revealed many weaknesses in this country's ability to respond to disease threats that cross species lines. There were issues of poor communication among human, domestic animal, and wildlife health agencies that delayed diagnosis; a lack of diagnostic capacity of wildlife agencies at the state level; the exclusion of captive wildlife from any surveillance efforts; an inability to visualize the geospatial relationship between the human and avian outbreaks in a timely manner; and marked disparities of funding levels across agencies. Wildlife has played an important role in recent emerging infectious diseases, and it is clear that a One Health approach will be necessary to respond to future threats. The question is, are we any better prepared to recognize and respond to a wildlife-related emerging infectious disease than we were 14 years ago? Have the lessons of WNV been learned?

Declines in populations of forage fish are leading fisheries management agencies to predict declining growth and survivorship of some Lake Ontario salmonids in coming years. These expectations have stimulated additional interest in research that can help managers predict how changes in fish populations or other fishing conditions may influence participation in the open lake fishery. Managers need additional understanding of angler motivations and satisfactions to effectively predict rates of fishing participation. We utilized a study of Lake Ontario salmonid anglers to test hypotheses about the relative importance of catch-related motivations and satisfactions within two angler subgroups (fishing tournament and salmon snagging participants) and among anglers at two levels of personal investment (i.e., high and low). Anglers were identified through a randomized sample of boat registrants in five New York State counties bordering Lake Ontario. Data on motivations and satisfactions were gathered through a self-administered mail-back questionnaire. Tournament anglers, salmon snaggers, and highly invested anglers were found to hold a range of motivations and satisfactions. Nevertheless, results also led to acceptance of our hypotheses that tournament anglers, salmon snaggers, and highly invested anglers all place high personal importance on catch-related motivations and satisfactions. Based on these results it is reasonable to expect some decrease in fishing participation by these angler subgroups if fish size or abundance decreases. Findings related to highly invested anglers are particularly noteworthy, given the fact that this group accounts for the majority of angler days and angler expenditures on Lake Ontario.

Inclusion of wildlife in the concept of One Health is important for two primary reasons: (1) the physical health of humans, domesticated animals, and wildlife is linked inextricably through shared diseases, and (2) humans' emotional well-being can be affected by their perceptions of animal health. Although an explicit premise of the One Health Initiative is that healthy wildlife contribute to human health, and vice versa, the initiative also suggests implicitly that wildlife may pose threats to human health through zoonotic disease transmission. As people learn more about One Health, an important question surfaces: How will they react to communications carrying the message that human health and wildlife health are linked? In the absence of adequate relevant research data, we recommend caution in the production and dissemination of One Health messages because of possible unintended or collateral effects. Understanding how and why individuals perceive risks related to wildlife diseases is essential for determining message content that promotes public support for healthy wildlife populations, on the one hand, and, on the other, for identifying messages that might inadvertently increase concern about human health effects of diseased wildlife. To that end, we review risk perception research and summarize the few empirical studies that exist on perceived risk associated with zoonoses. We conclude with some research questions that need answering to help One Health practitioners better understand how the public will interpret their messages and thus how to communicate positively and without negative collateral consequences for wildlife conservation.

Purpose – The purpose is to explore public participation as a means to overcome jurisdictional barriers in governance of trans-boundary wildlife management issues. Methodology/approach – We present one model, defining six philosophical approaches to public participation, then examine relationships between these approaches and traits of stakeholder communities, revealing three distinct governance paradigms: top–down governance, public input, and public engagement. These paradigms illustrate that the different approaches represent fundamentally different types of participation, not simply varying amounts of participation. Using case studies from the United States, we demonstrate how some state, federal, and local government institutions have successfully applied public input and public engagement models of governance to suburban white-tailed deer management. While both models can be used effectively, certain approaches may be preferable to others depending on specific management context, public participation goals, and target publics. Findings – Public input approaches appear better suited to addressing complex problems and communities of interest, while public engagement approaches may better resolve wicked problems that affect communities of place. Future research is needed to clarify the relationship between success of governance paradigms and contextual considerations. Originality/value of chapter – The chapter goes beyond many existing approaches to public participation and governance and presents interesting findings related to exurbanized and protected areas in the USA.