Suchergebnisse

As climate change continues to impact New England's coastal ecosystems and their related fisheries, the need for measuring, projecting, interpreting, and applying those impacts for adaptive management is expanding. In New England, different types of formal and informal research efforts that involve collaboration between the fishing community and traditional university and government researchers continue to develop to address some of this need. To better understand the opportunities and challenges that these collaborative research efforts face, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 members of the fishing and research communities who are engaged in advancing New England climate change and fisheries science. Participants showed clear concern for the impacts of climate change on New England fisheries and about the insufficient availability of the necessary science to manage for those impacts. They also noted a number of challenges in collaborative research, including poor communication and a lack of trust among fishers, researchers, and decision makers, as well as a lack of perceived credibility for research coming out of the fishing community. We identify a number of opportunities for improving collaboration and communication among these groups, which could build upon the identified value of existing collaborations.

Policies and regulations designed to address nutrient pollution in coastal waters are often complicated by delays in environmental and social systems. Social and political inertia may delay implementation of cleanup projects, and even after the best nutrient pollution management practices are developed and implemented, long groundwater travel times may delay the impact of inland or upstream interventions. These delays and the varying costs of nutrient removal alternatives used to meet water quality goals combine to create a complex dynamic decision problem with trade-offs about when, where, and how to intervene. We use multi-objective optimization to quantify the trade-offs between costs and minimizing the time to meet in-bay nutrient reduction goals represented as a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL). We calculate the impact of using in-bay (in-situ) nutrient removal through shellfish aquaculture relative to waiting for traditional source control to be implemented. We apply these methods to the Three Bays Watershed in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. In gross benefit terms, not accounting for any social costs, this equates to an average value of 37¢ (2035 TMDL target date) and 11¢ (2060 TMDL target date) per animal harvested over the plan implementation period. Our results encourage the consideration of alternative and in-situ approaches to tackle coastal pollution while traditional source control is implemented and its effects realized over time.

Context Given the decline in amphibian populations worldwide, it is essential to build a better understanding of human behaviours that jeopardise their survival. Much of the literature regarding the social–psychological determinants of behaviours related to wildlife has focussed solely on general wildlife beliefs rather than specific attitudes towards a particular species. Aims The goal of this study was to assess how individuals' behavioural intentions towards a rare and little-known species, the hellbender salamander (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis), are influenced by their attitudes towards the animal and their more general beliefs about wildlife. Methods Questionnaires were distributed to landowners in Missouri (n = 1 065) and Indiana (n = 1 378) in counties where the hellbender is known to exist. A multinomial logit regression model was used to assess the relationship between basic wildlife beliefs, species-specific attitudes and behavioural intentions towards the hellbender. Key results The response rate was 36.6% in Missouri and 41.0% in Indiana. The more value individuals placed on non-hunting wildlife experiences, the less likely they were to say they would engage in a behaviour harmful to the animal (β = –0.47, P = 0.030). The more negative the attitudes towards the hellbender held by individuals, the less likely they were to say they would remove the hook (β = –0.55, P < 0.001), put the animal back (β = –0.77, P < 0.001), or call a resource professional (β = –0.33, P = 0.023). A comparison of the Akaike information criterion (AIC) scores and model log-likelihood values without (AIC = 2 858.36; LLV = –1 395.18) and with (AIC = 2 232.60; LLV = –1 077.30) the species-specific attitude measure showed that its inclusion improved the model. Conclusions Positive attitudes towards the hellbender and mutualistic wildlife beliefs were related to non-detrimental behavioural intentions. However, attitudes towards the animal were found to be a stronger and more consistent predictor of behavioural intentions than basic wildlife beliefs. Implications Efforts to conserve rare or little-known species should focus outreach strategies on developing positive attitudes towards these species, so as to achieve desired changes in behaviour.