Uncertainty in Human Wildlife Conflicts and how to measure it

A constant among HWC-ers is that we don´t know what we don´t know, specially when we need to know whether the stakeholders we are working with will engage.

In an article published just last week (Feb, 15, 2019), researchers in Europe address the intention to cooperate of farmers in goose management. Yeah, not carnivores but their perspectives are refreshing because there is also a conflict involved...

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Reference: Pollard, C. R., Redpath, S., Bussière, L. F., Keane, A., Thompson, D. B., Young, J. C., & Bunnefeld, N. (2019). The impact of uncertainty on cooperation intent in a conservation conflict. Journal of Applied Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.13361

Open Access: No, but you can email the authors (or me, I got it!) and request a copy.

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The authors address the importance of cooperation from stakeholders to manage conflicts and how uncertainty can reduce their trust and cooperation intentions in conservation actions. They carried a research using economic experimental methods to measure uncertainty (scientific, administrative and political) in real-life aspects of the conflict such as knowledge of the system, underlying values , and perceptions of others.

They focus on geese, because they damage crops and livestock-pastures in Scotland, and there are conflicting interests from farmers to further prevent geese damage and conservationists interested in a better land-management scheme. The greylag goose (Anser anser) saw their numbers reduced in the 20th century, and after conservation efforts to protect the species, the populations are steadily increasing again. Non -lethal methods are not as successful as they wish to scare the geese, and they can be legally shot during a winter open season or under licence only.

They study this dynamic in crofts, a well-distinguished farming practice in Scotland, which are small (5 Ha) fenced parcels. There is actually a Register of Crofts, held by the Crofters Commission, and regulated by special laws contained in the Crofting Acts. So, these are culturally important farming methods, not just another way to earn a living.

Anyway, they interviewed 149 crofters whether they would be willing to:

1. Pay for a project which would completely mitigate all the negative impacts of the geese.

2. Cooperate in a joint effort to manage geese, and they could either support the plan (intention to cooperate), or not (intention to defect). They were given four scenarios (worth reading the actual paper to learn more about this), a "control", and three additional uncertain scenarios:

a) Scientific: the impact was unknown

b) Administrative: the cost was unknown

c) Political: support from other crofters was unknown

3. Also, they asked crofters how they think others would behave in the same scenario.

Then they ran some maths and statistics in an already complex methodology to obtain:

• Most of the crofters were willing to pay for goose management. Those who didn´t, argued that geese didn´t cause enough harm to their properties.

• Interestingly they found that the longer an individual had been a crofter the lower the predicted probability of cooperation, and crofters who showed concern for others had a higher predicted probability of cooperation than those who didn’t.

• In the absence of uncertainty (baseline), predicted probability of cooperation was >0.98 [stats in Table 4 of the paper]. Uncertainty significantly decreased the predicted probability of cooperation compared to the baseline. The greatest effect was seen in the administrative scenario, followed by small but significant effects with scientific and political.

• The perception of other´s willingness to cooperate were predicted by: Individual cooperation, type of uncertainty, membership of the Scottish Crofting Federation and perceived relative level of goose damage. The greatest effect was seen with administrative uncertainty, followed by scientific, and then political.

• Compared to the baseline model those who perceived they have suffered less than average damage were less likely to predict others as cooperating. Having the perception of suffering more damage than others or a “don’t know” response had no significant impact. Crofters who didn’t cooperate themselves were less likely to predict others would cooperate also.

In their discussion they further explain that administrative (how much crofters would be paying) uncertainty causes the largest decrease of probability of cooperation. Administrative uncertainty caused crofters to question the commitment of another stakeholder group, causing defection. The negative effect of scientific uncertainty caused general aversion and mistrust, contributing to much of the decrease in intention to cooperate .

Financial loss via goose damage was not a significant predictor variable for any model. Furthermore, crofters were more likely to cooperate on a goose management plan and would pay more into such a plan when they indicated concern for others suffering from goose impacts. The largest predictor of whether crofters thought others would cooperate with each management scheme was their own preference to cooperate or defect.

It is also relevant to note that the probability of cooperation decreased with increased time as a crofter . However, those who have spent their own time scaring geese were willing to pay more into a cooperative goose management plan.

Many crofters chose to defect but not one crofter indicated that they were aiming to gain benefits without contributing. Crofters may not want to gain benefits this way because they see it as unfair, or they wouldn’t want to be seen as being unfair by their community.

Finally, they state that: "The three sources of uncertainty affected crofters’ intention to cooperate in different ways. In the presence of administrative uncertainty, defecting crofters indicated that other groups should shoulder some of the burden caused by uncertainty . In the presence of scientific uncertainty, no actions by any other group were mentioned as being involved in crofter cooperation. In the presence of political uncertainty, cooperating crofters were confident that others would act like them and not try to gain benefits without contributing. Our study shows that managers should also include an assessment of how stakeholders ’ actions may change under different sources of uncertainty, especially if sources are associated with particular stakeholder groups.".

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Whew, thank you for getting here!

Now a brief personal perspective:

This study becomes relevant to human-carnivore interactions because, as stated early, we don´t know what we don´t know. Measuring for uncertainty and stakeholder potential engagement, using the methodology proposed above or another, through different model species can provide us better information to create targeted coexistence campaigns and also to improve our communication skills.

Why? Well, when presenting a coexistence scheme or proposing deterrents and other prevention tools it is important to know whether giving the affected parties information regarding how costs will be covered, what is the scientific trust placed in those technologies and whether it is supported by their peers or other farmers in the world, could help in the adoption rates of such technologies.

I imagine the following scenario: convincing a rancher to protect their cattle using guard dogs from coyotes in Montana may have a higher success if: they know who will cover the costs (how much and for how long), if this measure was supported by farmers (maybe not from Montana, but from Namibia?), and what scientific evidence/knowledge we have about this strategy.

Or maybe not, but this again is an interesting topic to further research.

Thank you for reading!

-Xim Neri