Problem Solving and Decision-Making in Project Management of Problematic Wildlife: A Review of Some Approaches and Conceptual Tools

Cross-Landscape Approaches to Human Wildlife Conflicts—Naïve or Necessary?

“…However, one thing quickly became apparent during the preparation and the attempt to interest colleagues in participating: many scientists seem to have very definite ideas and follow static concepts when it comes to human-wildlife conflict-namely wildlife being "inconvenient to humans". Well-known examples are carnivore-induced losses of livestock, crop raiding elephants, and so-called "problematic" wildlife or pest rodents, to mention only a few [3][4][5][6][7][8].…”

How to make (in)effective conservation projects: look at the internal context!

“…This low disciplinary heterogeneity and the consequent low cognitive diversity (Shin et al, 2012), together with conservatism and conformism, polarization, and dogmatic behavior may adversely affect the decision-making phase of a project where particularly creativity and multiple approaches are important (Adams, 1996). Secondly, at the dynamic level, I have observed that the project team could be affected by (1) a drift towards bureaucracy (the means becomes the end) with administrative loops (inducing frustration and time-wasting); (2) unnecessary use of regulations and laws to induce fear in potential defaulters (often to justify a role for administrative and jurisprudence professionals); (3) organizational and politically driven bad behaviors, for example, lack of time management, presence of 'alien' components inside the project team with the imposition of political outsiders who do not have any background in conservation projects ('time-thieves'; Carr & Hancock, 2006), or strong top-down hierarchy (inducing de-motivation in operators); and (4) poor behaviors, both at the individual and group level, such as procrastination (Gafni & Geri, 2010), negative/destructive thinking and cynicism (Smol, 2016), exclusion, and the 'boss-effect' (Battisti & Amori, 2016).…”