Wildlife species preferences differ among children in continental and island locations

Abstract

SUMMARYEfforts to prioritize wildlife for conservation benefit from an understanding of public preferences for particular species, yet no studies have integrated species preferences with key attributes of the conservation landscape such as whether species occur on islands (where invasive exotics are the primary extinction threat) or continents (where land use change is the primary extinction threat). In this paper, we compare wildlife species preferences among children from a continental location (North Carolina, USA, n = 433) and an island location (Andros Island, The Bahamas, n = 197). Children on the island preferred feral domesticated species and different types of taxa than mainland children, perhaps due to the strongly divergent species richness between the regions (e.g. island children showed greater preferences for invertebrates, lizards and aquatic species). Boys preferred fish, birds and lizards more than girls, whereas girls preferred mammals. The fact that island children showed strong preferences for invasive species suggests challenges for conservation efforts on islands, where controlling invasive exotic species is often of paramount importance, but can conflict with cultural preferences for these same species.

Youth wildlife preferences and species-based conservation priorities in a low-income biodiversity hotspot region

“…The youth in Bahía de Jiquilisco listed turtles among their favourite species far more often than children and youth in areas with relatively large sea turtle populations, such as the Bahamas (Shapiro et al 2017). This finding may be explained by the high percentage of our sample that participated in ICAPO's activities, whose programming focused on hawksbill turtle conservation, and supports other research that demonstrates pedagogical hands-on activities improve students' knowledge and attitudes towards biodiversity, especially reptiles and amphibians (Ballouard et al 2012, Sousa et al 2016.…”

“…For youth wildlife preferences, we assigned each species listed by students to 1 of 26 taxonomic categories. A single species received its own category if it occurred in at least 10% of surveys for favourite species overall and favourite species in El Salvador (Shapiro et al 2017). For all other species, we used relevant taxonomic categories (e.g., amphibian).…”

“…We hypothesized that youth would prefer native species or taxa to non-native species. We based our hypothesis on previous studies demonstrating that children establish relationships with animals through interaction (Kellert 2002, Aguirre & Orihuela 2010; native speciesincluding aquatic species such as fish and crabs play a central role in the lives of people living in less developed, rural areas on the coast (Shapiro et al 2017). Second, we hypothesized that participants in ICAPO's environmental education activities would rank declining species and ecologically important species as more important than those who have not participated in ICAPO's activities.…”

Invasive alien species on islands: impacts, distribution, interactions and management

“…This inevitably reduces native species richness, and indeed all species richness in highly urbanized areas, but in suburban areas it increases introduced species richness (McKinney 2008). Densely populated cities have long been hubs for IAS transportation (Hulme 2009), and urbanized populations tend to associate nature firstly with introduced species (Shapiro et al in press). Trade in pets and ornamental plants is focused around urban areas, which are source points for IASs into surrounding landscapes (Carrete & Tella 2008; Hulme 2015), and air and sea ports of urban areas on islands are the primary entry points for IAS incursions.…”

Gender Concerns When Noah the Economist Ranks Biodiversity Protection Policies

“…Further, the distinction between species could be gender differentiated. Olive (2012) found that her sample of U.S. women were more concerned about the viability of a tortoise than a snake's viability and Shapiro et al (2017) found that boys in the US and Bahamas preferred fish and lizards while girls from those countries preferred rabbits and horses. Thus, the lack of generalizable evidence implies that Noah would not know how to factor gender differentiation into his assessment of the value of particular species.…”