Human-wildlife conflict has emerged as the central vocabulary for cases requiring balance between resource demands of humans and wildlife. This phrase is problematic because, given traditional definitions of conflict, it positions wildlife as conscious human antagonists. We used content analysis of wildlife conservation publications and professional meeting presentations to explore the use of the phrase, human-wildlife conflict, and compared competing models explaining its usage. Of the 422 publications and presentations using human-wildlife conflict, only 1 reflected a traditional definition of conflict, >95% referred to reports of animal damage to entities human care about, and <4% referred to human-human conflict. Usage of human-wildlife conflict was related to species type (herbivores with human food, carnivores with human safety, meso-mammals with property), development level of the nation where the study occurred (less developed nations with human food and more developed nations with human safety and property damage), and whether the study occurred on private lands or protected areas (protected areas with human-human conflict and other areas with property damage). We argue that the phrase, human-wildlife conflict, is detrimental to coexistence between humans and wildlife, and suggest comic reframing to facilitate a more productive interpretation of human-wildlife relationships.

No abstract

Environmental policy makers are embracing consensus‐based approaches to environmental decision making in an attempt to enhance public participation in conservation and facilitate the potentially incompatible goals of environmental protection and economic growth. Although such approaches may produce positive results in immediate spatial and temporal contexts and under some forms of governance, their overuse has potentially dangerous implications for conservation within many democratic societies. We suggest that environmental decision making rooted in consensus theory leads to the dilution of socially powerful conservation metaphors and legitimizes current power relationships rooted in unsustainable social constructions of reality. We also suggest an argumentative model of environmental decision making rooted in ecology will facilitate progressive environmental policy by placing the environmental agenda on firmer epistemological ground and legitimizing challenges to current power hegemonies that dictate unsustainable practices.

We question whether the growing popularity of model selection based on information theory (IT) and using the Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC) represent a useful paradigm shift in data analysis or a substitution of 1 statistical ritual for another, which leaves in place long-standing problems in wildlife science. We discuss the relevance of model selection in science, problems in the IT-AIC algorithm, errors of commission and omission in IT-AIC-based studies, and the role of IT-AIC in knowledge accrual. Model selection is just another minor tool in the grand panorama of science. The human mind, not statistical methods, produces scientific breakthroughs. Although IT-AIC might include elements of hypothetico-deductive science, it is arguably a form of sensitivity analysis, magnitude of effects estimation, or simple description as currently applied. Accordingly, it is largely an inductive approach to knowledge accrual and, therefore, subject to the pitfalls of induction. The algorithm tends to over fit data (i.e, use too many variables), resulting in models that contain useless variables and that generalize poorly. Errors of commission in IT-AIC-based papers include hopelessly uninformative lists of encrypted models and imposition of the model-selection approach on studies better executed in a simple, descriptive format. The major error of omission is an almost universal failure to test selected models on independent data. From our perspective, IT-AIC is a harmless human construct that is being ritualistically applied and therefore cannot be expected to correct long-standing problems in the conduct of wildlife science, such as failure to apply the hypothetico-deductive method. We view the growing application of IT-AIC as problematic because that growth might discourage use of the full panoply of available methods of inquiry. Accordingly, we urge colleagues to avail themselves of the rich pageant of available analytical techniques that can be applied in wildlife research under the hypothetico-deductive method and to keep ecology, rather than statistics, in the forefront of wildlife science. JOURNAL OF WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT 69(2):457-465; 2005

Conservationists commonly have framed ecological concerns in economic terms to garner political support for conservation and to increase public interest in preserving global biodiversity. Beginning in the early 1980s, conservation biologists adapted neoliberal economics to reframe ecosystem functions and related biodiversity as ecosystem services to humanity. Despite the economic success of programs such as the Catskill/Delaware watershed management plan in the United States and the creation of global carbon exchanges, today's marketplace often fails to adequately protect biodiversity. We used a Marxist critique to explain one reason for this failure and to suggest a possible, if partial, response. Reframing ecosystem functions as economic services does not address the political problem of commodification. Just as it obscures the labor of human workers, commodification obscures the importance of the biota (ecosystem workers) and related abiotic factors that contribute to ecosystem functions. This erasure of work done by ecosystems impedes public understanding of biodiversity. Odum and Odum's radical suggestion to use the language of ecosystems (i.e., emergy or energy memory) to describe economies, rather than using the language of economics (i.e., services) to describe ecosystems, reverses this erasure of the ecosystem worker. Considering the current dominance of economic forces, however, implementing such solutions would require social changes similar in magnitude to those that occurred during the 1960s. Niklas Luhmann argues that such substantive, yet rapid, social change requires synergy among multiple societal function systems (i.e., economy, education, law, politics, religion, science), rather than reliance on a single social sphere, such as the economy. Explicitly presenting ecosystem services as discreet and incomplete aspects of ecosystem functions not only allows potential economic and environmental benefits associated with ecosystem services, but also enables the social and political changes required to ensure valuation of ecosystem functions and related biodiversity in ways beyond their measurement on an economic scale.

No abstract

Northern bobwhites (Colinus virginianus) are one of the most broadly researched and intensively managed species in North America. However, we argue that a disadvantage of this status is that traditional management principles currently are incompatible with the spatial scale necessary to address the nationwide decline in bobwhite abundance. We maintain that halting or reversing this decline will entail 2 principal changes in the scale of management. Primarily we suggest that habitat oversight must switch from historical fine‐scale management (promotion of edge habitat, weedy fencelines, disked strips, living hedges, and food plots) to regional management of usable space. Secondly, within these regional management areas, we should apply harvest management that employs risk‐sensitive strategies that conservatively avoid undermining the primary goal. This entails narrowing the scale of harvest management from statewide to regional levels. If these ideological changes cannot be made and historical policies remain in force, we risk failing to stabilize, let alone increase, bobwhite populations.

Radiotelemetry is the standard method for monitoring wild turkey (Meleagris gallapavo) movements and habitat use. Spatial data collected using telemetry‐based monitoring are frequently inaccurate due to triangulation error. However, new technology, such as Global Positioning Systems (GPS) has increased ecologists' ability to accurately evaluate animal movements and habitat selection. We evaluated the efficacy of micro‐GPS backpack units for use on wild turkeys. We tested a micro‐GPS developed specifically for avian species that incorporated a GPS antenna with a lightweight rechargeable battery and a very high frequency (VHF) transmitter. We conducted a series of static tests to evaluate performance in varying types of vegetative canopy cover and terrain. After static testing, we deployed micro‐GPS on 8 adult male Rio Grande wild turkeys (M. g. intermedia) trapped in south Texas and 2 adult females trapped in the Texas panhandle. Micro‐GPS units collected 26,439 locations out of 26,506 scheduled attempts (99.7% fix rate) during static testing. Mean distance error across all static tests was 15.5 m (SE = 0.1). In summer 2009, we recovered micro‐GPS from 4 tagged males and both females to evaluate data collection. Units on males acquired approximately 2,500 locations over a 65‐day test period (94.5% fix rate). We recovered units from the 2 females after 19 days and 53 days; those units acquired 301 and 837 locations, respectively, for a 96% fix rate. Cost analysis indicated that VHF will be cost effective when 1 location per day is required up to 181 days, but micro‐GPS becomes less expensive as frequency of daily locations increases. Our results indicate that micro‐GPS have the potential to provide increased reliable data on turkey movement ecology and habitat selection at a higher resolution than conventional VHF telemetric methods. © 2011 The Wildlife Society.