Collective Aspects of Mitigating Interactions Between Large Carnivores and Humans

Understanding how to coexist with wildlife is of critical importance for successful conservation, particularly for large carnivores, who pose risks to human safety, livestock, and game species. In Montana (USA), black and grizzly bears occur across much of the western half of the state. In particular, grizzly bears are protected by the Endangered Species Act and their populations and ranges are expanding, resulting in increased overlap between humans and bears. Interactions with bears can be mitigated when landowners take certain actions to secure bear attractants – such as using bear resistant garbage cans and feed storage, using electric fences, removing livestock carcasses, and taking down bird feeders in the spring and fall. Few studies have examined what drives uptake of these actions, but factors include perceived risks and benefits and personal experience at the individual level. This research aims to understand how individual and collective aspects drive uptake of actions to secure bear attractants. We administered a mail-back questionnaire to Montana landowners and used the collective interest model to determine the relative effects of collective and individual factors in influencing whether landowners secure bear attractants. We developed logistic regression models for each behavior. Collective aspects that drove behavior included social norms (i.e., what individuals think they should do and what others are doing) and network centrality (i.e., how much social influence an individual has). This research suggests that outreach campaigns that only highlight the risks of large carnivores could be substantially improved by describing the collective aspects of mitigation