1. HUMAN DIMENSIONS OF WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT (HDWM) M. Nils Peterson and Shari L. Rodriguez Fisheries, Wildlife & Conservation Biology Program Department of Forestry & Environmental Resources North Carolina State University Raleigh, NC 27606, USA Raleigh, NC 27606, USA

2. HDWM ► Portions of wildlife management that focus on the interactions between people and wildlife or between people regarding wildlife

3. Imperatives for HDWM ► Professional ► Moral ► Learning from constituents ► Investing in social capital ► Contributing to long term conservation solutions

4. Exercise ► What skills and abilities will you need to avoid becoming an “idiot savant wildlife manager?” See:   Jacobson, S.K. and M.D. McDuff. 1998. Training idiot savants: The lack of human dimensions in conservation biology. Conservation Biology 12(2): 263-267.   Cutler, M. R. 1982. What kind of wildlifers will be needed in the 1980s? Wildlife Society Bulletin 10: 75-79.

5. The Evolution of HDWM ► The client model  Sportspersons paid for & received services from wildlife managers ► The stakeholder model  Identifying stakeholders, incorporating their input into decision-making, resisting special interest groups, weighing stakeholder opinions, & employing effective communication strategies ► The citizen model  Adding duties associated with citizenship to the entitlements associated with being a stakeholder

6. Social Structural Approaches ► Political economy  Addresses how production, buying, selling and governance interact to shape society ► Biological basis of human interactions with wildlife  Humans as hunters ► Humans are preprogramed for inter- & intra-specific aggression due to selection for hunting success  Humans as hunted ► Natural selection makes people fear wildlife because humans were historically hunted by large carnivores before becoming hunters themselves  Biophilia ► Humans have an instinctive bond with living systems

7. Social Structural Approaches ► Coupled human-natural systems modeling  The simulation of human society, its environment and interactions between the two systems using physical or mathematical models ► Economic valuation  The act of assigning value to an object  Often involves determining the potential market value of an object

8. Social Psychology ► Attitudes  Positive or negative evaluations of an object which include affective and cognitive dimensions ► Values  Assigned value – meaning, goodness or worth placed on an object  Held value – beliefs formed early in life that differentiate good from bad and are difficult or impossible to change ► Value orientations  Basic beliefs a cultural group brings to bear on decision making

9. Social Psychology ► Behavior  An individual’s conscious or involuntary action or reaction to an object or environment ► Models for predicting behavior towards wildlife  The norm-activation model  Rational choice models ► Theory of Reasoned Action (TORA) ► Theory of Planned Behavior

10. Social Psychology ► Risk Studies  The study of actions or events that may lead to consequences harming people or things humans care about ► Unknown dimension – applies to risks that are non- observable, new, unknown to those exposed, have delayed effects and lack scientific knowledge about them ► Dread dimension – applies to risks that are uncontrollable, dreaded, catastrophic, fatal, difficult to reduce, pose risk to future generations, demonstrate increasing levels of risk and have involuntary exposure

11. Descriptive Research ► Quantitative examinations of populations or phenomenon  “What”, “where”, “when”, and “how much” questions

12. Philosophy ► Ethics  Philosophy that provides the moral justification for wildlife management decisions ► Justice  Philosophy associated with the distribution of benefits and costs associated with wildlife management ► Science  Philosophy of the norms, methods, and biases of wildlife science

13. Public Involvement ► How to Use Public Involvement  Trinity of voice theory ► Access – sufficient opportunity for public to express opinions ► Standing – respect & legitimacy given to public perspectives ► Influence – public’s ideas are considered in the management decision

14. Public Involvement ► When to Use Public Involvement  Decision tree (Fig. 23.3)

15. Decision tree for selecting public involvement methods for wildlife management decision making, adapted from (Lawrence and Deagen 2001).

16. Qualitative Approaches  “How” and “why” questions  Emic perspective ► A description of human behavior or belief that comes from within the culture  Ethnomethodology, focus groups, participatory action research, long interviews  Most useful social knowledge comes from qualitative inquiry

17. Qualitative Approaches Criteria for evaluating quantitative research Criteria for evaluating qualitative research internal validitycredibility external validitytransferability reliabilitydependability objectivityconfirmability Credibility emerges from: triangulation, informant validation, larger numbers of informants, longer time in the field, and using the actual words of informants

18. SUMMARY ► Future wildlife managers need HDWM skills more than any other type and have since the 1980s ► HDWM is evolving from providing a service for hunting groups to facilitating partnerships with diverse stakeholders ► Several key HDWM research programs ranging from social psychology to philosophy inform modern wildlife management ► Public participation is a powerful wildlife management tool, buts its success depends on careful consideration of 6 dimensions of social context