Predators and the public trust

Abstract

Many democratic governments recognize a duty to conserve environmental resources, including wild animals, as a public trust for current and future citizens. These public trust principles have informed two centuries of U.S.A. Supreme Court decisions and environmental laws worldwide. Nevertheless numerous populations of large‐bodied, mammalian carnivores (predators) were eradicated in the 20th century. Environmental movements and strict legal protections have fostered predator recoveries across the U.S.A. and Europe since the 1970s. Now subnational jurisdictions are regaining management authority from central governments for their predator subpopulations. Will the history of local eradication repeat or will these jurisdictions adopt public trust thinking and their obligation to broad public interests over narrower ones? We review the role of public trust principles in the restoration and preservation of controversial species. In so doing we argue for the essential roles of scientists from many disciplines concerned with biological diversity and its conservation. We look beyond species endangerment to future generations' interests in sustainability, particularly non‐consumptive uses. Although our conclusions apply to all wild organisms, we focus on predators because of the particular challenges they pose for government trustees, trust managers, and society. Gray wolves Canis lupus L. deserve particular attention, because detailed information and abundant policy debates across regions have exposed four important challenges for preserving predators in the face of interest group hostility. One challenge is uncertainty and varied interpretations about public trustees' responsibilities for wildlife, which have created a mosaic of policies across jurisdictions. We explore how such mosaics have merits and drawbacks for biodiversity. The other three challenges to conserving wildlife as public trust assets are illuminated by the biology of predators and the interacting behavioural ecologies of humans and predators. The scientific community has not reached consensus on sustainable levels of human‐caused mortality for many predator populations. This challenge includes both genuine conceptual uncertainty and exploitation of scientific debate for political gain. Second, human intolerance for predators exposes value conflicts about preferences for some wildlife over others and balancing majority rule with the protection of minorities in a democracy. We examine how differences between traditional assumptions and scientific studies of interactions between people and predators impede evidence‐based policy. Even if the prior challenges can be overcome, well‐reasoned policy on wild animals faces a greater challenge than other environmental assets because animals and humans change behaviour in response to each other in the short term. These coupled, dynamic responses exacerbate clashes between uses that deplete wildlife and uses that enhance or preserve wildlife. Viewed in this way, environmental assets demand sophisticated, ca...

Interpreting ‘favourable conservation status’ for large carnivores in Europe: how many are needed and how many are wanted?

“…The striking of this balance for FCS and for similar concepts-such as 'significant effect' under the Habitats Directive, or 'recovery' under the US Endangered Species Act (Verschuuren 2003;Treves et al 2015)-is ultimately a task of public authorities, and most especially of judges, with scientists and other stakeholders assigned an indirect role at best. The meaning of FCS is, in other words, ultimately a legal question with a legal answer.…”

“…Large carnivores in Europe: a special challenge Across the globe, large carnivores present a special set of conservation issues, including from a legal perspective (Trouwborst 2010(Trouwborst , 2015bTreves et al 2015). In Europe, wolves, brown bears, Eurasian lynx and wolverines are all covered by the Habitats Directive, although their precise legal status varies from one member state to another (see the detailed maps at www.tilburguniversity.edu/iuscarnivoris).…”

International law and lions (Panthera leo): understanding and improving the contribution of wildlife treaties to the conservation and sustainable use of an iconic carnivore

“…Experience, including our own, indicates that this is best achieved through a multidisciplinary approach , whereby legal experts join forces with ecologists and experts from other disciplines with a good understanding of the broader context and the actual Tables 3 and 4. conservation needs of species. Such cooperation has, encouragingly, been gathering momentum in recent years (Cliquet et al 2009;Trouwborst et al 2015;Epstein et al 2016;Selier et al 2016;Treves et al 2017;Trouwborst et al 2017a;Chapron et al 2017;Redpath et al 2017;Trouwborst et al 2017c). Our review, performed by legal experts, conservation biologists and social scientists, builds on this momentum.…”

“…Depending on the particular circumstances and the treaty obligation(s) involved, there is a time and a place for top-down as well as bottom-up approaches, for coercive as well as flexible approaches, and for all manner of combinations of these (Treves et al 2017;Chapron et al 2017;Redpath et al 2017). It is important to note in this regard that the participation of local and indigenous communities, poverty alleviation, awareness raising and education have become key features in the implementation of all the major conservation treaties, as expressed in COP decisions, strategies, funding allocations, and guidance documents (see, e.g., Ramsar Convention Secretariat 2010; CBD Secretariat 2011; UNESCO et al 2012).…”

Values-led management: the guidance of place-based values in environmental relationships of the past, present, and future

“…This is in contrast to the centralized approach to trophy hunt management imposed by the Province of British Columbia (see British Columbia Ministry of Environment, Fish, Wildlife and Habitat Branch 2010), an approach that used relatively imprecise data and subjected grizzly populations to considerable risks (Artelle et al 2013) until a province-wide moratorium was enacted in 2017. These different management approaches are driven by very different worldviews: one that sees grizzly bears as close relatives and teachers , another that sees wildlife as resources to be managed for maximum benefit of stakeholders, mostly individual hunters (e.g., Treves et al 2017).…”