The Predictive Ability of Wildlife Value Orientations for Mammal Management Varies with Species Conservation Status and Provenance

“WVOs resolve internal collisions by prioritizing certain values over other values in the context of wildlife [5].”

“For these reasons, coypu is on the list of the 100 World’s Worst Invasive Alien Species [20].”

“An individual holds various values [36], and one’s behavior is most often guided by more than one value [5].”

“Our results suggest, in agreement with theoretical predictions [1,4,5,41] and previous research [6–8], that people with a domination orientation were more likely to accept strategies that imply harm to animals than people with a mutualism orientation.”

“[3] developed a measurement instrument for basic beliefs concerning human–wildlife interactions based on the concept of value orientation.”

“Value orientations are networks of basic beliefs organized around values and provide contextual meaning to those values in relation to a particular domain, such as wildlife [1,2].”

“Our results suggest, in agreement with theoretical predictions [1,4,5,41] and previous research [6–8], that people with a domination orientation were more likely to accept strategies that imply harm to animals than people with a mutualism orientation.”

“The level of endangerment of a species is an important predictor of the support for wildlife conservation [37,38,43,44].”

“[7] suggested that mutualism might better predict support for the conservation of rare species, while domination might better explain support for the control of common species in common situations.”

“The level of endangerment of a species is an important predictor of the support for wildlife conservation [37,38,43,44].”

“Their high reproductive rates and their habit to consume whole plants, including roots, allows for their rapid population increase and spatial expansion and has severe impacts, predominantly damage to crops and disease transmission [18,19].”

“[42] reported that mutualism was a better predictor of a conservation intervention, supporting the return of the endangered grey wolf (Canis lupus) and European bison (Bison bonasus) in Germany.”

“However, as WVOs are relatively stable [1,5,52] and the internal conflict of values is intense in lethal strategies, managers should keep in mind that communication and outreach plans are less likely to be successful for lethal than for non-lethal strategies [7].”

“Previous research has shown that lethal strategies were more acceptable and controversial for managing coypus than native pest species [28].”

“The level of endangerment of a species is an important predictor of the support for wildlife conservation [37,38,43,44].”

“The two main brown bear populations are on the Pindos mountain range, the backbone of mainland Greece, running north to south from Albania to central Greece (estimated at about 300–350 individuals), and on the Rhodope mountain range in Northeast Greece (estimated at about 70–100 individuals), with the total Greek popu…”

“[6] found that WVOs were the best predictors of the acceptability of lethal control to minimize the impacts of geese and deer on agricultural crops in the Netherlands.”

“They, mostly farmers, resort to fencing for protecting their property from brown bears and red foxes, demanding compensation when damage occurs [11,32].”

“They, mostly farmers, resort to fencing for protecting their property from brown bears and red foxes, demanding compensation when damage occurs [11,32].”

“In addition, people place higher values on species when they are rare and a lower value on species perceived as common [45].”

“Coypus (Myocastor coypus) are large semi-aquatic rodents native to southern South America [15], which have been introduced for fur farming into Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America [16,17].”

“The level of endangerment of a species is an important predictor of the support for wildlife conservation [37,38,43,44].”

“Our results suggest, in agreement with theoretical predictions [1,4,5,41] and previous research [6–8], that people with a domination orientation were more likely to accept strategies that imply harm to animals than people with a mutualism orientation.”

“Their high reproductive rates and their habit to consume whole plants, including roots, allows for their rapid population increase and spatial expansion and has severe impacts, predominantly damage to crops and disease transmission [18,19].”

“[12] found goat kids, lambs, calves, and piglets in red fox diet.”

“Glas et al [8] evaluated the predictive ability of WVOs for six meso-predator species (striped skunks (Mephitis mephitis), coyotes (Canis latrans), common raccoons (Procyon lotor), red foxes (Vulpes vulpes), American badgers (Taxidea taxus), river otters (Lontra canadensis)) in Indiana, USA, across conflict situations…”

“In contrast, farmers actively pursuit and illegally kill coypus when they find them on their land, fearing losing their crops [30].”

“For example, rare species are generally considered to have greater value than abundant species (Leong, 2009), which often results in greater tolerance, positive attitudes, and conservation support from the public (e.g., Kontsiotis et al., 2021).”

“Wildlife value orientations have proved important predictors of public attitudes and behaviors toward wildlife, with those who are more mutualist being more positive toward and supportive of wildlife conservation than those who are more dominionistic [19,43,45–47].”

“Our data contradict that WVOs would be more predictive of acceptance of measures that are more harmful to wildlife 38 but support the position of Jacobs et al. 20 that WVOs are particularly important when there is a value conflict given the focus on tools that are more extreme at either side of the…”

“Model performance was evaluated using the omnibus likelihood ratio test, Nagelkerke’s R 2 , overall classification accuracy, and the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) [18,19].”

“Respondents’ attitudes toward wildlife management, which were measured using 10 items based on previous literature (Jacobs et al. 2014; Kontsiotis et al. 2021).”

“Utilization-related domination wildlife value orientations have been linked to lower support for austere conservation strategies (Teel and Manfredo 2010; Gigliotti and Sweikert 2019; Kontsiotis et al. 2021).”

“Studies show that wildlife values orientation and attitudes have predicted support for general wildlife management actions in many contexts and can be strong predictors of support for lethal wildlife management actions (Kontsiotis et al., 2021; Sijtsma et al., 2012; Whittaker et al., 2006).”