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Conflicts involving wildlife are, in essence, often conflicts between human parties with differing wildlife management objectives. However, the study and management of wildlife conflicts often focuses on the ecological context without addressing disagreements between people over these objectives. This research uses quantitative approaches to examine actors' views on a complex wildlife-related conflict: a raptor of conservation concern that impacts on game-bird management. Four dominant elements of the debate emerged from initial semi-structured interviews: perceptions of conflict related issues; perceptions of each other; perceived barriers to consensus within the debate; and assessment of proposed practical management solutions. A quantitative survey that built on these elements demonstrates the degree to which perceptions differ between groups and how local variation in these elements may be obscured in a regional or national level debate. The findings emphasise the importance of understanding the social issues involved in wildlife related conflicts if management aims are to be agreed and achieved.

Resource managers are involved in difficult decisions that affect rare species and habitats but often lack relevant ecological knowledge and experience. Ecological models are increasingly being looked to as a means of assisting the decisionmaking process, but very often the data are missing or are unsuited to empirical modelling. This paper describes the development and application of the Delphi approach to develop a decision support tool for wildlife conservation and management. The Delphi process is an expert-based approach to decision support that can be used as a means for predicting outcomes in situations where 'absolute' or 'objective' models are unavailable or compromised by lack of appropriate data. The method aims to develop consensus between experts over several rounds of deliberation on the assumption that combining the expertise of several individuals will provide more reliable results than consulting one or two individuals. In this paper the approach is used to engineer soft knowledge on the conservation requirements of capercaillie Tetrao urogallus, an endangered woodland grouse, into a model that can be used by forests managers to improve the quality of forest habitat for capercaillie over extensive commercial forest areas. This paper concludes with a discussion of the potential advantages and disadvantages of Delphi and other soft knowledge approaches to ecological modelling and conservation management.

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Principles of good practice for collaborative resource management were derived from the literature and their use studied in a range of integrated catchment management processes. Desk-based reviews and interviews with participants allowed the principles to be refined and described within a framework that illustrates the interrelationships between core principles, enabling principles, precursors to a project and the influence of external factors on such collaborative processes. The findings illustrate the importance of these relationships in understanding how success is defined and under what conditions successful outcomes can be achieved. Understanding how these procedural aspects influence outcomes contributes to the wider literature on collaborative resource management that often treats processes separately from their context.catchment management, good practice, watershed management, collaborative management, resource management,

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The need for stakeholder participation in natural resource management is widely acknowledged. Many have noted that real-life processes fall short of theoretical ideals in the literature, but less attention is given to understanding if and how participation may produce positive outcomes within these imperfect processes. For example, policies prescribing specific goals and statutory timelines are potentially in tension with goals for stakeholder participation, but the implications of this tension are not well understood.We studied this tension in order to inform future participatory natural resource management. We used qualitative inductive analysis of river basin management planning in Scotland to explore to the extent to which benefits of participation were possible under prescribed conditions, and how prescribed constraints influenced the processes of participation.Participation was constrained by the prescribed targets and timeline. However, participants in advisory groups challenged assumptions and provided additional information, leading to a more balanced analysis of pressures and a more collaborative approach to potential solutions. Overall, their interaction and inputs produced a mix of substantive and instrumental benefits to the process. More attention is needed to understand if and how such benefits would be realized from other processes, but our findings support the value of encouraging participation in natural resource management, even when that participation is constrained.

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