Pay to conserve: what we have achieved in 10 years of compensatory releases of threatened with extinction guitarfishes

Wosnick, Natascha; Wosiak, C. Da Costa De Lima; Filho, O. C. Machado

doi:10.1111/acv.12651

Cited by 21 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…it remains legal to catch and domestically-trade hammerhead sharks and wedgefish, both of which have commercial and subsistence value, while whale sharks are legally and customarily protected (Booth et al, 2021;Hau et al, 2018;Simeon et al, 2020). Similarly, control beliefs are consistent with independent studies on catchability and survivability of hammerheads and shovelnose rays (Ellis et al, 2017;Wosnick et al, 2020).…”

Section: Interpretation Within the Spectrum Of Bycatch And Management Implicationssupporting

confidence: 85%

“…"I released a small one" "If she gets help, we get help" "Whale shark is protected, and we cannot sell it" However, in both cases, incentives or compensation may be required to re-shape beliefs regarding the outcomes of bycatch-relevant behaviour -such as performance-based compensation for live release (Wosnick et al, 2020) or marine conservation agreements which 'buy out' fishing rights in spatio-temporal closures (Sykes et al, 2018).…”

Section: Wedgefish Hammerhead Whale Sharkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When seeking to manage bycatch in a particular context, it is important to diagnose where along this spectrum a given species falls, to design interventions that can effectively change bycatch-relevant behaviour. For example, if bycatch is undesirable, a low-cost technical fix may be feasible, however if bycatch mitigation has opportunity costs, incentives or compensation may be required to promote uptake (Hall, 1996;Matwal et al, 2014;Wosnick et al, 2020) (Figure 1). In SSFs where all catches contribute to fishers' overall livelihood strategies, the latter is most likely to be the case.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

A socio-psychological approach for understanding and managing bycatch in small-scale fisheries

Booth¹,

Ichsan²,

Hermansyah³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Fisheries bycatch is the greatest threat to migratory, long-lived marine animals. Managing bycatch can be particularly problematic in small-scale mixed-species fisheries, where perceptions of target and non-target vary widely, and all catches have economic or subsistence value. Such fisheries are ubiquitous throughout the world’s oceans, and represent a cross-disciplinary challenge for biodiversity, food security and livelihoods. We offer a novel approach for addressing this challenge, drawing on well-established theories from behavioural and social sciences. We first typify bycatch as a spectrum rather than a clearly delineated component of catch, where the position of a species on this spectrum depends on fishers’ beliefs regarding the outcomes of bycatch-relevant behaviour. We then outline an approach to diagnose the underlying socio-psychological drivers of bycatch, based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour. Finally, we illustrate the approach using an empirical case study, exploring fishers’ beliefs regarding bycatch-relevant behaviour for three endangered species in a small-scale gill net fishery in Indonesia. We show how a socio-psychological approach can help to identify conflicts and synergies between bycatch mitigation and fishers’ beliefs, thus informing more effective and socially-just interventions for marine megafauna conservation. We emphasize the need to understand human dimensions of bycatch, especially in SSFs, where technical fixes alone will be insufficient to change behaviour. Rather, interdisciplinary approaches are needed to align fishers’ needs with conservation objectives. Our spectrum and approach could be widely applied for disentangling drivers of bycatch in other SSFs, and designing interventions which support effective and equitable marine conservation.

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Section: Interpretation Within the Spectrum Of Bycatch And Management Implicationssupporting

confidence: 85%

Section: Wedgefish Hammerhead Whale Sharkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

A socio-psychological approach for understanding and managing bycatch in small-scale fisheries

Booth¹,

Ichsan²,

Hermansyah³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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“…Our findings also contribute to broader debates regarding reconciling biodiversity conservation with social justice and human rights (Newing & Perram, 2019;Shoreman-Ouimet & Kopnina, 2015); and in particular the need to ensure the costs of conservation are equitably distributed, and that conservation interventions "do no harm" (Balmford & Whitten, 2003;Bennett et al, 2019;Giron-Nava et al, 2021;Griffiths, Bull, Baker, & Milner-Gulland, 2019). In small-scale fisheries, one option for simultaneously delivering conservation and social welfare outcomes could be through compensation or payment for ecosystem service schemes, which incentivize fishers to reduce capture of the most threatened species while maintaining their material well-being (Bladon, Short, Mohammed, & Milner-Gulland, 2016;Booth, Arlidge, & Squires, 2021;Wosnick, Da Costa De Lima Wosiak, & Machado Filho, 2020). Given the high value of the shark and ray tourism industry in Indonesia (Mustika, Ichsan, & Booth, 2020;O'Malley, Lee-Brooks, & Medd, 2013), it could be possible to gather funding through tourism taxes or donations, and channel this into conservation, including fisher compensation for economic losses incurred from not catching sharks (Vianna et al, 2018).…”

Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating economic losses to small‐scale fishers from shark conservation: A hedonic price analysis

Booth

Squires

Yulianto

et al. 2021

Conservat Sci and Prac

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Understanding wildlife markets is central to effective conservation: it can help managers and policy-makers to predict how interventions might influence supply and demand of wildlife products, and economic welfare of wildlife users; and thus, design interventions which have better outcomes for wildlife and people. Here we apply a revealed preference method of economic valuationhedonic price analysis (HPA)-to understand shark markets and explore the economic costs of shark conservation for small-scale fishers. We focus on a targeted semi-commercial shark fishery in Indonesia-which poses a threat to some shark species, but provides important economic and subsistence value for a coastal community in an impoverished region of Indonesia-and use HPA to estimate market prices and welfare measures for threatened and CITES-listed sharks. This represents a pertinent case study with practical implications because Indonesia is the world's largest shark fishing nation, where management interventions to reduce shark fishing mortality are needed. However, such interventions will create short-term socio-economic trade-offs for fishing communities, which may hamper cooperation and compliance, and raise concerns regarding the fairness and equity of conservation.Our results give significant marginal price estimates for five species of conservation and commercial importance. Dusky sharks (Carcharhinus obscurus) and bottlenose wedgefish (Rhynchobatus australiae) have the highest implicit marginal prices, at US$ 157 and US$ 144, respectively. Our estimates suggest that conservation measures, such as catch limits for endangered and CITESlisted species, could have significant economic opportunity costs (i.e., 3.4-17.6% revenue foregone) for low-income fishers. Innovative policy instruments are required to transform shark markets and fisheries-to effectively reduce threats to endangered species and implement CITES, whilst doing no harm to vulnerable coastal communities. Methods from econometrics can help conservation scientists to better understand wildlife markets, and make management decisions which create better outcomes for wildlife and people.

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“…Economic theory and empirical studies of fisher behaviour indicate that conditional monetary rewards and exogenously-imposed rules and sanctions can influence marine resource extraction (Arias et al, 2015;Booth et al, 2020;Gutiérrez et al, 2011;Wosnick et al, 2020). However, theories of collective action show that trust, norms and institutional arrangements can also shape individual behaviour in ways that differ from those predicted by rational self-interest (Ostrom, 1990(Ostrom, , 2000.…”

Section: Scenario Interviewsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Designing locally-appropriate conservation incentives for small-scale fishers

Booth¹,

Ramdlan²,

Hafizh³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Large, long-lived marine animals (‘marine megafauna’) play critical roles in ocean ecosystems, however, they are threatened by overfishing. Technologies and practices that reduce fisheries’ impacts on marine megafauna are well documented, yet less is known about how to encourage their adoption. This is particularly challenging in small-scale fisheries (SSFs), where endangered species can have important consumptive use values. We used a novel combination of methods – scenario interviews with contingent valuation (CV) – to investigate how incentive-based interventions might influence fisher behaviour and reduce mortality of Critically Endangered taxa (hammerhead sharks (Sphyrna spp.) and wedgefish (Rhynchobatus spp.)) in two case study SSFs in Indonesia. Scenario interviews revealed that positive performance-based incentives were almost unanimously supported (98% and 96% of fishers would stop landing hammerheads and wedgefish, respectively). This is in contrast to 1% and 6% under a business as usual control scenario, and 52% and 46% in response to a regulation with a fine. Using CV, we estimated that an incentive-based scheme for catch mitigation of all hammerheads and wedgefish across both sites could cost US$71,620-298,820 annually, and save up to 18,500 hammerheads and 2,140 wedgefish relative to current catch baselines. This study provides empirical evidence that performance-based payments could offer a cost-effective, legitimate and socially-just approach for marine conservation in SSFs, and support “a sustainable and equitable blue economy” and “living in harmony with nature”. This is particularly important with the growing adoption of net-outcome goals for biodiversity, with studies such as this providing the basis for locally-appropriate investment ready schemes for bycatch-neutral seafood supply chains.

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Pay to conserve: what we have achieved in 10 years of compensatory releases of threatened with extinction guitarfishes

Cited by 21 publications

References 7 publications

A socio-psychological approach for understanding and managing bycatch in small-scale fisheries

A socio-psychological approach for understanding and managing bycatch in small-scale fisheries

Estimating economic losses to small‐scale fishers from shark conservation: A hedonic price analysis

Designing locally-appropriate conservation incentives for small-scale fishers

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