Social science is becoming increasingly important in conservation, with more studies involving methodologies that collect data from and about people. Conservation science is a normative and applied discipline designed to support and inform management and practice. Poor research practice risks harming participants and, researchers, and can leave negative legacies. Often, those at the forefront of field-based research are early-career researchers, many of whom enter their first research experience ill-prepared for the ethical conundrums they may face. We draw on our own experiences as early-career researchers to illuminate how ethical challenges arise during conservation research that involves human participants. Specifically, we considered ethical review procedures, conflicts of values, and power relations, and devised broad recommendations on how to navigate ethical challenges when they arise during research. In particular, we recommend researchers apply reflexivity (i.e., thinking that allows researchers to recognize the effect researchers have on the research) to help navigate ethical challenges and encourage greater engagement with ethical review processes and the development of ethical guidelines for conservation research that involves human participants. Such guidelines must be accompanied by the integration of rigorous ethical training into conservation education. We believe our experiences are not uncommon and can be avoided and hope to spark discussion to contribute to a more socially just conservation.
Pokémon Go, an augmented reality (AR) smartphone game, replicates many aspects of real-world wildlife watching and natural history by allowing players to find, capture, and collect Pokémon, which are effectively virtual animals. In this article, we consider how the unprecedented success of Pokémon Go as a smartphone game might create opportunities and challenges for the conservation movement. By encouraging players to go outside and consider various aspects of virtual species' biology, the game could increase awareness and engagement with real-world nature. However, interacting with Pokémon could alternatively encourage exploitation of wildlife or replace players' desire to interact with real-world nature. We suggest a number of ways in which Pokémon Go could be adapted to increase its conservation impact, and how new conservation-orientated AR games could be created. We conclude that Pokémon Go sets a precedent for well-implemented AR games from which the conservation movement could borrow a number of ideas.
1.The common hippopotamus Hippopotamus amphibius ('hippo') is a keystone species whose foraging activities and behaviour have profound effects on the structure and dynamics of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems within its habitat. 2. Although hippos are typically regarded as obligate herbivores and short-grass grazing specialists, field studies have demonstrated that hippos are facultative carnivores that consume flesh and intestinal tissues from the carcasses of other animals. Carnivory by hippos is not an aberrant behaviour restricted to particular individuals in certain localities, but a behaviour pattern that occurs within populations distributed in most of the hippo's current range in eastern and southern Africa. Carnivory is frequently associated with communal feeding involving multiple individuals or entire social groups of hippos. 3. The observed tendency of hippos to feed on carcasses, including those of other hippos, has important implications for the ecology and epidemiology of anthrax and other ungulate-associated zoonotic diseases in African landscapes. Scavenging and carnivory by hippos may explain why the spatiotemporal patterns and dynamics of anthrax mortality among hippos often differ markedly from those of other anthrax-susceptible herbivores within the same habitats, and why levels of hippo mortality from anthrax may be orders of magnitude higher than those of other anthrax-susceptible ungulate populations within the same localities. 4. Recognition of the role of carnivory as a key factor in modulating the dynamics of mass anthrax outbreaks in hippos can provide a basis for improved understanding and management of the effects of anthrax outbreaks in hippo and human populations.
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