Biological Conservation

Although many studies explore characteristics of stakeholders or publics “for” or “against” carnivores, disagreements among conservation professionals advocating different conservation strategies also occur and are not well recognized. Differing viewpoints on whether and how humans can share landscapes with large carnivores can influence conservation actions. To characterize current viewpoints about terrestrial carnivore conservation, we conducted an online survey assessing a wide range of viewpoints about large carnivore conservation among international professionals (n=505). We explored how variation in viewpoints was related to expertise, background, and broader institutional contexts in which one lives and works. The majority of participants agreed people and large carnivores can share the same landscapes (86%). Human adaptation to carnivores (95% agreement) and acceptance of some conflict (93%) were the highest ranked requirements for human-carnivore coexistence. We found broad consensus regarding intrinsic value of carnivores, reasons carnivores are imperilled, conflict drivers, and importance of proactive solutions, such as adopting preventative livestock husbandry methods or avoiding situations that put people at risk. The greatest polarization was observed in issues related to lethal control, where we only found broad consensus for killing carnivores in situations where humans are in immediate risk. Participants did not support killing large carnivores for purposes of decreasing population sizes or increasing human tolerance, profits, livelihoods, or fear of humans. Results point to considerable diversity, perhaps driven by local context, concerning how to proceed with large carnivore conservation in increasingly human-influenced landscapes of the Anthropocene. The different observed viewpoints represent both different strategies about how to best conserve, but also different moral platforms about what, how, where, and for whom conservation should occur. Our study underlines that challenges to adopting and implementing long-lasting carnivore conservation strategies may well occur as much within the conservation community as outside it.

1. Presence-absence matrix with turtle species by HydroBASIN level-6 2. Biodiversity and conservation parameters used in the classification tree analyses.

This is the data used to calculate an indicator for Aichi Biodiversity Target 1

Species lists and species traits of carabid beetles analysed in Knapp et al. (2020) - Biological Conservation

Dataset for: competition for light as a bottleneck for endangered fen species: an introduction experiment

These data correspond to information on average description year of anuran, lizard, and snake species in multiple localities in the Atlantic Forest biodiversity hotspot, as well as data on geographic and socioeconomic variables that potentially explain species discovery trends. More specifically, we provided data on 376 species assemblages of anurans, 150 of lizards, and 235 of snakes. For each species assemblage, we present information on longitude, latitude, number of sampling years, number of survey methods applied, taxonomic group (anuran, lizard, or snake), species richness, average discovery trends (two metrics), and others 10 predictors related to human occupation, economic development, on-ground accessibility, biodiversity appeal (i.e. interest of first researching preserved areas), and expertise availability. The data format are csv files and R-scripts.

Data for bird-building collisions, artificial light emissions from windows, and polarized light reflected from facades of buildings

This data contains the monthly totals for evidence of Tigers, Tapirs and Snare Traps within Kerinci Seblat National Park between 2012-2015. Data for this report was collected and collated by the Tiger Protection and Conservation Units, based in Sumatra Indonesia. Also included are the number of days on patrol (PatrolDay: Total for multiple patrols), the distance covered by patrols (km), and the total area covered by patrols based on a MCP (km2).

Appendix data table for 55 sites with field collected data from seagrass beds in the Philippines, including island area, lat, long, marine protected status, seagrass condition metrics, environmental variables and land use variables from adjacent coastlines and watersheds.

Mitochondrial ND4 sequences and genotypes for 11 nuclear microsatellites for 473 individuals for three sea snake species: Aipysurus laevis, Aipysurus fuscus, Emydocephalus annulatus