Tag: Conservation

Conservation, Science

New publication: Effectiveness of animal conditioning interventions

Lysanne Snijders

Our systematic map protocol, outlining the background and methods of our approach to map and review the effectiveness of animal conditioning interventions in reducing human-wildlife conflict, is now online.

SysMap_print

This map is part of a special initiative of a team of behavioural ecologists, who all committed to systematically map and/or review a topic in conservation behaviour. Read more about our plans and the protocols of the other team members here.

SysMap_print2

 

Reference
Snijders L, Greggor A.L., Hilderink F., Doran C. (2019) Effectiveness of animal conditioning interventions in reducing human-wildlife conflict: a systematic map protocol. Environmental Evidence 8: 1-10
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13750-019-0153-7

Communication, Conservation

Culling hyenas to save horses

Lysanne Snijders

We (Tanja and I) just published our very first conservation conflict exploration on our Medium blog!

We asked three experts from the fields of Human Dimensions, Wildlife Research and Moral Philosophy to share their perspectives with us on a particular case study:

Namibia starts controversial hyena cull to save its wild horses

“Shooting hyenas to save wild horses raises heated debate about whether conservation authorities should intervene between endemic wildlife and ‘feral’ animals.”

Please follow this link for more details.

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Namib desert horses (Equus ferus caballus)

We asked the experts:

  1. What approach would you recommend decision-makers to take to best address this conflict?
  2. Why this approach (e.g. which processes, perspectives or values should be prioritized in your view)?
  3. What should be the first step?

Curious about what they had to say? Read our blog post here!
You can also follow us on Twitter.

Photo credits: Hyena Project – Oliver Höner; Pixabay

 

Communication, Conservation, Science

Exploring Conservation Conflicts

Lysanne Snijders

“The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge” – Thomas Berger –

Tanja Straka and I like asking questions. Even more so, we like animals, nature and people. Unfortunately, these three do not always mix well and we want to learn why.

Coming from our respective backgrounds in social sciences and animal sciences, we want to learn about the ins and outs of wildlife conservation conflicts by exploring different perspectives. Because we are convinced that understanding the diverse aspects of conservation conflicts could also open our minds to a diversity of (new) ways to address them.

With that in mind, we are keen to explore Conservation Biology and Animal Behaviour (Ethology), Moral Philosophy (Ethics) and the Human Dimensions of Wildlife (Social Sciences) and their perspectives on real-life conservation conflict situations.

In a blog on Medium (and on Twitter), we would like to share the different viewpoints we encounter in our daily lives and work and to invite people to share their perspectives.

Connect to us and let’s explore together!

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Conservation, Science

New publication: Systematic reviews and maps as tools for applying behavioral ecology to management and policy

Lysanne Snijders

Yeah! Our recent open access paper on systematic maps and reviews in behavioural ecology is now available in, how appropriate, Behavioral Ecology. It is the first concrete output of a group of behavioral ecologists, passionate to effectively contribute to wildlife conservation. This is just the beginning! Many thanks to Oded Berger-Tal, Alison Greggor and Dan Blumstein for bringing us all together.

Paper_head

Summary of the paper:

Although examples of successful applications of behavioral ecology research to policy and management exist, knowledge generated from such research is in many cases under-utilized by managers and policy makers. On their own, empirical studies and traditional reviews do not offer the robust syntheses that managers and policy makers require to make evidence-based decisions and evidence-informed policy.

Similar to the evidence-based revolution in medicine, the application of formal systematic review processes has the potential to invigorate the field of behavioral ecology and accelerate the uptake of behavioral evidence in policy and management. Systematic reviews differ from traditional reviews and meta-analyses in that their methods are peer reviewed and prepublished for maximum transparency, the evidence base is widened to cover work published outside of academic journals, and review findings are formally communicated with stakeholders. This approach can be valuable even when the systematic literature search fails to yield sufficient evidence for a full review or meta-analysis; preparing systematic maps of the existing evidence can highlight deficiencies in the evidence base, thereby directing future research efforts.

To standardize the use of systematic evidence syntheses in the field of environmental science, the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence (CEE) created a workflow process to certify the comprehensiveness and repeatability of systematic reviews and maps, and to maximize their objectivity. We argue that the application of CEE guidelines to reviews of applied behavioral interventions will make robust behavioral evidence easily accessible to managers and policy makers to support their decision-making, as well as improve the quality of basic research in behavioral ecology.

Key words: applied animal behavior, conservation behavior, evidence-based management, literature review, meta-analysis, policy impact, systematic maps.

Link to the paper: https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/ary130

Reference
O Berger-Tal, AL Greggor, B Macura, CA Adams, A Blumenthal, A Bouskila, U Candolin, C Doran, E Fernandez-Juricic, KM Gotanda, C Price, B Putman, M Segoli, L Snijders, BBM Wong, DT Blumstein. (2018) Systematic reviews and maps as tools for applying behavioral ecology to management and policy.” Behavioral Ecology.

Conservation, Science

Conservation behaviour

Lysanne Snijders

How can a behavioural ecologist contribute to conservation? It is a question I often ask myself. Therefore I am very happy to have become part of a team of behavioural ecologists that asks the same question. Together we followed a workshop by Mistra EviEM on how to conduct a systematic map or review and are now answering questions about the effectiveness of conservation interventions. In our case, behavioural interventions.

It is not an easy challenge, to gather and review all the literature that is out there on a given intervention, academic and grey. But, without a good overview of the best evidence available, how are we going to stop ourselves from doing the same thing over and over again? Are certain interventions effective, also on the long-term, or not at all? Are there certain conditions to be met for them to be of use?

I set out to answer these questions for an intervention in a very urgent and increasingly bigger conservation challenge: Human-Wildlife-Conflict (HWC). More specifically, I will map and review studies on the effectiveness of conditioning-interventions in reducing HWC with vertebrate carnivores. In other words Can carnivores be taught to stay away?

It will be a long, challenging, but useful task and I am very keen to work on it!