Are protected areas effective at maintaining large carnivore populations?

UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI

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IMAGE: BROWN BEAR IN EASTERN FINLAND. INTERESTINGLY, THE EFFECTS OF PROTECTED AREAS ON BEAR DENSITIES VARIED DEPENDING ON THE METHODOLOGY USED. view more 

CREDIT: DANIEL BURGAS-RIERA

A recent study, led by the University of Helsinki, used a novel combination of statistical methods and an exceptional data set collected by hunters to assess the role of protected areas for carnivore conservation in Finland.

Overall, protected areas do not harbour higher densities of large carnivore species than unprotected lands. These areas even had declining wolverine densities within their limits while populations outside remained overall stable over a 30-year study period. The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.

The international group of authors, led by Dr Julien Terraube from the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Helsinki, proposes that the results do not indicate that protected areas are unimportant for carnivore conservation, as they may support seasonal habitats and prey for these highly mobile species. However, the outcomes highlight complex socio-ecological pressures on carnivore populations that vary in both time and space and affect the conservation outcomes of protected areas. For example, the largest Finnish protected areas are located in Lapland, and due to their sizes these areas are most suitable for large carnivores. However, the areas seem unable to maintain stable wolverine populations, which may be linked to increased conflicts with herders in the reindeer husbandry area.

"Wolverines are only found in three Nordic countries within the European Union, and therefore Finland plays an important role for the conservation of this species", explains Dr Terraube. He adds: "The negative trend of wolverine populations inside northern protected areas is alarming and highlights that further research is needed to understand the dynamics of wolverine populations in Lapland, how this species is affected by illegal killing and what protected areas could do to improve this situation".

On a brighter note, the researchers also found lynx densities to be higher within protected areas located in eastern Finland than those located in the western part of the country. The ecological factors that may influence this, such as prey abundance or connectivity to healthy Russian populations, remain unexplored.

The po­ten­tial of cit­izen science for as­sess­ing the im­pact of pro­tec­ted areas

The results show that counterfactual approaches applied to long-term and large-scale data are powerful analytical tools for evaluating the effectiveness of protected areas in maintaining wildlife populations. A counterfactual approach means comparing protected and unprotected sites that have similar environmental characteristics or human-caused threats. The method has been increasingly used to assess the effectiveness of protected areas in halting deforestation. This allows researchers to isolate the effect of protection on land cover from other confounding factors such as elevation. Until now, these types of approaches focused on matching analyses have been restricted to studies investigating the effects of protected areas on land-use changes. Finding wildlife time series with enough temporal and spatial coverage to conduct such robust effectiveness assessments is often difficult.

Dr. Terraube explains: "We were able to use data collected through the Finnish Wildlife Scheme to conduct this study. Hunters throughout the country have collected this data set since 1989, offering a fantastic opportunity to apply matching analyses to wildlife data for the first time and to assess large-scale and long-term patterns of protected area effectiveness. We chose to focus on large carnivores, as this species group is particularly prone to rising conflicts with local communities. Carnivore-human conflicts have increased in Finland following the recent recovery of most carnivore species. This has resulted in increasingly negative attitudes towards certain species, such as the wolf, and to increased levels of illegal killing".

Main­stream­ing im­pact eval­u­ation: to­wards bet­ter man­age­ment of pro­tec­ted areas

The study highlights the need to design robust methodological tools to strengthen our understanding of conservation outcomes and opens new avenues for improving protected area impact assessments. This is of the utmost importance, as the international community is currently turning to the post-2020 targets drafted by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity aiming to upgrade protected areas in an attempt to halt global biodiversity loss.

"We argue that this study shows that, despite methodological challenges, robust assessments of protected area effectiveness for the conservation of wide-ranging species, such as large carnivores, are possible and greatly needed as a basis for further research. It also highlights the extraordinary value of long-term wildlife monitoring activities conducted by citizens across an entire country", concludes Dr Terraube.

Positive YouTube videos of wolves linked to greater tolerance

NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY

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A new study from North Carolina State University suggests that people have more tolerance for wolves after seeing positive videos about them, which could make YouTube an important wolf conservation tool.

"One of the cool things about these results is that positive messaging was effective for changing people's views. People had more positive attitudes, greater willingness to accept wolves, and were more likely to take action to help their conservation - no matter their political identity or their age - after watching positive videos," said Nils Peterson, senior author of the study and a professor in NC State's Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources.

"A lot of wildlife species we care about only need tolerance to persist in a landscape," Peterson added. "They're not domestic animals that need a lot of help from us. They just need us not to kill them or destroy their habitat."

In the study, researchers evaluated how a group of 273 people rated their tolerance for wolves before and after watching either a playlist of five different negative videos, a playlist of five different positive videos, or a neutral video.

To measure their tolerance, researchers asked questions in three categories: they asked participants about their overall attitudes toward wolves, such as whether they thought wolves were "good" or "bad;" their level of acceptance of wolves in their state and near populated areas; and their intended behaviors, or whether they would be likely to act for or against wolves or their conservation.

Survey participants had positive attitudes, acceptance and behavior intentions about wolves prior to receiving any treatment, but researchers saw that positive videos could still increase attitudes, acceptance and participants' willingness to act. They also saw those changes regardless of whether the viewer identified as conservative or liberal.

"Everybody is on social media these days, including state wildlife agencies, federal agencies, nonprofits, and everybody is putting content out there," said the study's lead author Will Casola, a Ph.D. student at NC State. "This study shows that this material actually has the potential to influence people, and they're not just putting time and resources into something that goes in one ear and out the other."

However, people who identified as liberal were more likely than conservatives to show positive changes in favor of wolves in measures of attitudes, acceptance and intended behaviors regardless of the videos they watched.

"We didn't see anything that would suggest people reacted differently to each video treatment depending on their political affiliation," Casola said. "Instead, we saw that no matter which videos they watched, liberals were more likely to exhibit positive changes."

The largest changes in tolerance were linked to older age. People above the age of 40, regardless of political background, were more likely to have larger changes in their attitudes for or against wolves.

While negative videos also led to decreased tolerance for wolves, this change was less dramatic.

"There's a lot of literature out there that shows that positively framed messages are more powerful than negatively framed messages, and these findings reinforce that," Casola said.

Researchers saw improvements in respondents' willingness to act for wolf conservation overall, but except for signing petitions to support wolf re-introduction, respondents showed reluctance to take other specific actions to aid wolf conservation.

"People in general said they weren't likely to participate in many of these behaviors, but they were also less likely to participate in behaviors that were directly opposed to wolf recovery and conservation," Casola said.

Researchers focused on wolves since they can be controversial. While researchers said wolves are essential for maintaining a diversity of species in a landscape and improving the health of populations they prey on, they can also compete with people for space and resources, and can pose a risk for livestock.

Researchers said one unanswered question in their work is about how effective the videos were at reaching people who may not already agree with the underlying message.

"People are already asking the question: How do we get media to cross ideological bubbles that people have created?" Peterson said.