The prohibition of recreational hunting of wild ungulates in Spanish National Parks: Challenges and opportunities.

A new regulation has led to the prohibition of recreational hunting on estates located within Spanish National Parks (NPs). Before the ban, eleven NPs in Spain had already reported negative ecological consequences associated with high densities of wild ungulates. The new situation that has occurred after the ban signifies that policies with which to control populations of wild ungulates in NPs, most of which do not have a sufficient natural capacity to regulate populations, depend exclusively on the parks' authorities. The banning of recreational hunting implies a series of social, ecological, economic and logistic challenges. The control of wild ungulate populations in NPs requires: i) the legal basis for culling; ii) social acceptance as regards removing animals and the extractive procedures employed in NPs; iii) the long-term monitoring of wild ungulates and the damages that they cause, and iv) sufficient financial and human resources. A more integrated management and policy plan is, therefore, required, which should be supported by two pillars: i) the sustainability of natural resources and the conservation of functional environments, and ii) providing society with explanations regarding the need to manage wild ungulates. In order to bridge the potential gap between these key pillars, it is important to involve stakeholders in the decision-making processes concerning wild ungulate management. The forthcoming changes in Spanish NPs provide a promising opportunity to make a substantial improvement to wild ungulate management in these protected areas. This management approach could, moreover, serve as an example and be transferred to other protected spaces.

Low Level of Concern Among European Society About Zoonotic Diseases.

Zoonotic emerging diseases (ZEDs) are increasing and may deeply impact human wellbeing, but our recent survey of public opinion in six European countries (n = 2415 participants) suggests a low concern among Europeans about the risk associated with ZEDs. This contrasts with Europeans' high awareness of climate change risks, which was confirmed by our survey. Given the increasing risk of ZEDs, it is therefore essential to increase Europeans' awareness of their impacts. In addition, our study suggests that Europeans may be more likely to support sustainable environmental policies that would reduce the risk associated with ZEDs, consequently improving the human wellbeing.

Beyond rural vs urban differences: A close match in european preferences in some basic wildlife management and conservation principles.

The EU biodiversity strategy for 2030 sets out a framework of commitments and actions to tackle the main drivers of biodiversity loss. Such framework needs to be built on a whole-of-society approach to biodiversity protection, mobilizing private and public funding. In this context, our goal was estimating societal support and preferences about some basic wildlife management principles, which may be useful to inform EU decision-makers about societal priorities and other additional funding sources for wildlife conservation. A discrete choice experiment was conducted by 2415 inhabitants in six European countries (Spain, France, Italy, UK, Germany, Sweden), including residents in both rural (47% of respondents) and urban areas. Our findings reveal a clear pattern across western Europe with similar trends along the studied countries, and even between rural and urban citizens, on some basic wildlife management principles. According to our survey, payments for environmental services contribute to achieving a higher well-being from European citizens in any of the prospective wildlife programs considered, which suggests it is an acceptable tool to share out funds for biodiversity conservation. In addition, managing scarce species is preferred over managing too abundant species; management in forest, agricultural and aquatic habitats is prioritized over that in urban landscapes; and management in protected areas is preferred over management in non-protected ones. These findings suggest that there is a common culture in Europe related to the management of wildlife even when considering citizens with contrasted ways of life: rural vs urban citizens from northern to southwestern Europe. Overall, this study may help in the design of wildlife management policies that maximize societal acceptability and gather higher support.

Let Us Give Voice to Local Farmers: Preferences for Farm-Based Strategies to Enhance Human-Elephant Coexistence in Africa.

Local communities surrounding wildlife corridors and natural reserves often face challenges related to human-wildlife coexistence. To mitigate the challenges and ensure the long-term conservation of wildlife, it is important to engage local communities in the design of conservation strategies. By conducting 480 face-to-face interviews in 30 villages along and adjacent to the Selous-Niassa Wildlife Corridor (Tanzania), we quantified farmers' preferences for farm-based measures to mitigate African elephant damage using choice experiments. Results show that farmers considered no action the least preferred option, revealing that they are open to trying different measures. The most preferred management strategy matched with the preferences of wildlife rangers in the area, suggesting low concern about the potential conflicts between stakeholders. However, a latent class model suggests that there are significant differences among responses triggered by farmers' previous experience with elephants, the intensity of the elephant damage, and the socioeconomic situation of the farmer. Results show a marked spatial distribution among respondents, highlighting the benefits of zone management as conflicts were found to be highly context dependent. Understanding the human dimension of conservation is essential for the successful planification and implementation of conservation strategies. Therefore, the development and broad utilization of methodologies to gather specific context information should be encouraged.

Addressing social attitudes toward lethal control of wildlife in national parks.

The extraordinary population growth of certain ungulate species is increasingly a concern in agroforestry areas because overabundance may negatively affect natural environments and human livelihoods. However, society may have negative perceptions of killing wildlife to reduce their numbers and mitigate damage. We used an online survey that included a choice experiment to determine Spanish citizens' (n = 190) preferences toward wildlife population control measures related to negative effects of ungulate overabundance (negative impacts on vegetation and other wildlife species and disease transmission to livestock) in 2 agroforestry national parks in Spain. We used latent-class and willingness-to-pay in space models to analyze survey results. Two percent of respondents thought a national park should have no human intervention even if lack of management may cause environmental degradation, whereas 95% of respondents favored efforts to reduce damage caused by overabundant ungulate species. We estimated human well-being losses of survey respondents when sustainable effects of deer overabundance on the environment became unsustainable effects and well-being gains when sustainable effects transitioned to no visible effects. We found that the type of wildlife-control program was a very relevant issue for the respondents; indirect control in which killing was avoided was the preferred action. Sixty-six percent of respondents agreed with the option of hunters paying for culling animals to reduce ungulate impacts rather than management cost coming out of taxes, whereas 19% of respondents were against this option and willing to pay for other solutions in national parks. Our results suggest that killing wildlife in national parks could be a socially acceptable tool to manage overabundance problems in certain contexts, but it could also generate social conflicts.

Soluciones para las Actitudes Sociales hacia el Control Letal de la Fauna en Parques Nacionales Resumen El extraordinario crecimiento de ciertas poblaciones de ungulados es cada vez más preocupante en las áreas agroforestales ya que la sobreabundancia puede afectar negativamente al ambiente natural y el sustento humano. Sin embargo, la sociedad puede percibir negativamente el exterminio de fauna para reducir sus números y mitigar el daño. Usamos una encuesta en línea que incluía un experimento de elección para determinar las preferencias de los ciudadanos españoles (n = 190) por las medidas de control poblacional relacionadas con los efectos negativos de la sobreabundancia de ungulados (impactos negativos sobre la vegetación y otras especies silvestres y el contagio de enfermedades al ganado) en dos parques nacionales agroforestales de España. Usamos la clase latente y la disposición para pagar dentro modelos espaciales para analizar los resultados de la encuesta. El 2% de los respondientes creyó que un parque nacional no debería tener intervención humana, incluso si la falta de manejo pudiera causar una degradación ambiental. Mientras tanto, el 95% de los respondientes estuvieron a favor de los esfuerzos para reducir el daño causado por la sobreabundancia de ungulados. Cuando los efectos sustentables sobre el ambiente de la sobreabundancia de venados se convertían en efectos insostenibles, los estimamos como pérdidas de bienestar humano para los respondientes de la encuesta; cuando los efectos sustentables transitaron hacia la nula visibilidad de efectos, los estimamos como ganancias de bienestar. Descubrimos que el tipo de programa de control de fauna era un tema muy relevante para los respondientes; el control indirecto, en el que se evita el exterminio, fue la acción preferida por los respondientes. El 66% de los respondientes estuvo de acuerdo con la opción de que los cazadores paguen por sacrificar animales para reducir el impacto de los ungulados en lugar de que el costo del manejo provenga de los impuestos, mientras que el 19% de los respondientes estuvo en contra de esta opción y dispuesto a pagar por otras soluciones en los parques nacionales. Nuestros resultados sugieren que el exterminio de vida silvestre en los parques nacionales podría ser una herramienta socialmente aceptable para manejar problemas de sobreabundancia en ciertos contextos, pero también podría generar algunos conflictos sociales.

Mitigation strategies for conserving bird diversity under climate change scenarios in Europe: The role of forest naturalization.

There are many possible strategies to promote naturalization in anthropogenic landscapes to mitigate global change effects. We combined large-scale databases available for continental Spain on: (1) distribution of breeding birds, (2) forest inventory stands, (3) land-use cover, (4) 18 global climate models recently developed at local scales, and (5) historical and genetically-based information on the distribution of natural versus planted pine forests, to analyze whether back to nature strategies may help to mitigate biodiversity loss due to climate change. We performed the analysis along environmental and ecological gradients of pine forests in Southern Europe. Models suggested that, naturalization strategies, in this case defined by the replacement of planted pine forests and eucalyptus forests by natural pine forests, could help to mitigate the expected loss of bird diversity due to climate change, but that mitigation efficiency will vary along environmental and ecological gradients. Maximum levels of diversity mitigation were predicted at intermediate levels of naturalization, with lower bird richness in areas where all pine forests were either planted or naturalized. Efficiency also varied spatially, given that both cold- and hot-spots of climate-driven bird diversity loss were identified. Transforming planted forest into natural forest is not a mitigation panacea, and additional regionally-adapted strategies may be identified to mitigate the expected biodiversity loss in forest ecosystems.