From worship to subjugation: Understanding stories about bears to inform conservation efforts

Abstract

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Working Together for Grizzly Bears: A Collaborative Approach to Estimate Population Abundance in Northwest Alberta, Canada

“…Another challenge in BMA 1 are the differing perspectives and experiences people have across the region concerning grizzly bears, which can hinder effective conservation and management efforts. Grizzly bears are a charismatic species valued for their aesthetics as well as ecosystem function, but also a species that poses serious human safety risk and economic costs to peoples' livelihoods (Morehouse and Boyce, 2017;Proctor et al, 2018;Hughes and Nielsen, 2019;Hughes et al, 2020a;Morehouse et al, 2020). People across BMA 1 hold values and cultural identity linked to the concept of "frontiersmen, " with their ancestors being hardy pioneers of this harsh boreal landscape (Hughes and Nielsen, 2019).…”

“…This may be related to a lack of trust in grizzly bear science and scientists, or inaccessibility of scientific information and lack of layperson understanding, as well as local perspectives that problem bears were simply "dumped" (i.e., reor translocated) into BMA 1 thus contributing to human-bear conflict (Hughes and Nielsen, 2019). During this time public reporting of human-grizzly bear interactions was limited, and a "shoot, shovel, and shut up" sentiment was commonly expressed to occur across rural communities in the northwest (Hughes et al, 2020a).…”

“…To address challenges associated with a population inventory of BMA 1 grizzly bears and improve local relationships to enable progress on grizzly bear management, we implemented a collaborative approach that engaged representative stakeholders from across this multi-use working landscape (Wondolleck and Yaffee, 2000;Wilson et al, 2017;Hughes et al, 2020a). Collaborative approaches have been used around the world, including to address bear hunting in Romania (Hartel et al, 2019), conflicts with gray wolves in Montana (Wilson et al, 2017), lion conservation in Zimbabwe (Sibanda et al, 2020), and human-bear coexistence in southwestern Alberta (Morehouse et al, 2020).…”

“…Collaborative approaches have been used around the world, including to address bear hunting in Romania (Hartel et al, 2019), conflicts with gray wolves in Montana (Wilson et al, 2017), lion conservation in Zimbabwe (Sibanda et al, 2020), and human-bear coexistence in southwestern Alberta (Morehouse et al, 2020). Collaborative approaches are considered effective at bringing different people across multiple disciplines, perspectives, and experiences together to identify and achieve defined outcomes (Yang, 2017;Hartel et al, 2019;Hughes et al, 2020a). Additionally, collaborative approaches enable participants to decentralize decision-making and share power, foster fairness, and improve credibility and trust in project or policy processes (Singleton, 1998;Wondolleck and Yaffee, 2000;Carlsson and Berkes, 2005;Mattson et al, 2006;Clement et al, 2020).…”

Understanding People’s Relationship With Wildlife in Trans-Himalayan Folklore

“…Human-wildlife interactions are instead better viewed along a spectrum ranging from negative to positive (Bhatia et al, 2019). One way to understand how people build and sustain complex and multifarious connections with wildlife is to examine folklore and narratives in which the two are intertwined (Hughes et al, 2020).…”