Assessing Attitudes Towards Bears and Their Management at the Local and Global Scales

Abstract

As bear populations across the globe are increasing, bears and humans are being brought together more frequently and often into conflict. Because of this rise in human bear conflicts, it is becoming more crucial to understand public attitudes towards bears and management interventions. Management methods vary in effectiveness and public support, further complicating the management of bears and other large carnivores. Without proper understanding of public attitudes towards bears and specific management actions, conflict can ensue between stakeholders and managers, leading to a dissolution in social trust and management support. To address this need, I conducted a quantitative study in two phases, (1) a meta-analysis examining public attitudes towards bears and their management and human-bear conflict from studies around the world and (2) an online survey of students at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, as they will become the next stakeholders and policymakers. I sought to assess the local and global differences in public attitudes towards bears and their management and determine the factors associated with these trends, including personal experience with bears, socio-cultural influences, and stakeholder group membership. Globally, attitudes towards bears tended to be positive, with age, gender, education level, community type, knowledge of bears, and experiences with bears most frequently found to have significant effects on attitudes. Attitudes towards bears and towards specific management actions were also often impacted by region and species of bear. Lethal management, policy, relocation, and hunting were most regularly explored in management questionnaires. Support for interventions was often framed in a specific situational context (e.g., an attack versus a sighting), with many studies finding significant impacts of context on attitudes. Locally, students were generally positive in their attitudes towards bears, and these results indicate significant differences in attitudes based on bear species, home college, gender, and the frequency of and type of experiences with bears. While the effects of gender, college, and frequency of experiences with bears were fairly minimal, I found substantial effects of experience type on attitudes towards bears. Further, I found that support for specific management actions differed based on attitudes towards bears themselves, in addition to home college, stakeholder group affiliation, gender, experiences with bears, and the human-bear conflict context. As in the meta-analysis, student support for more intensive management actions tended to increase with the severity of the human-bear conflict. Further supported by the findings of both the meta-analysis and survey, attitudes towards bears and their management held by members of the public can be quite complex and diverse, thus it is essential to consider the social, experiential, and contextual variables as potential drivers of attitudes. This thesis reinforces the importance of experience on attitudes, the need to consider the situational context when evaluating support for management actions, and potential points for broader public outreach and education to better inform the public of management actions.