Hi there,
I am interested in designing a study to assess the perceptions held by residents of a particular community towards black bears. So far my thoughts are to design a series of questions and conduct interviews of residents. There seems to be an ever increasing need for work that attempts to ameliorate the existing and potential human-wildlife conflict. In the community where I am, black bears are part of the community and all attempts are made to be proactive in the approach. Any insight anyone may have about how to design and conduct interviews for such a study would be very helpful, as well as steering towards the appropriate ways to conduct qualitative research, interesting papers, etc.,
thanks in advance,
enjoy your day
jvk
Bear-Human Interaction in an Urban Setting
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Hi
My mom lives in South Lake Tahoe area and the bears come out like clockwork on trash pick up days. What community do you live in that has Black Bear interation?
Deborah Nares,
Conservation Project Coordinator
Resource Conservation
District of Monterey County
744 LaGuardia Street, Building A
Salinas, CA 93905
Mobile: 831.809.6507
Office: 831.424.1036 ext. 125
Fax: 831.424.7289
www.rcdmonterey.org
I live in Duluth, MN and we have bears occasionally coming in to town. There is a place about 2 hours north that is now set up as a black bear santucary (no fences, animals are completely free). Visitors come in and go up on platforms. The bears are fed -(lots of seeds and nuts). www.americanbear.org is their website. I've visited twice and they have come a long ways in educating people about living with bears.
Wendy
Hi there-
We conducted research on the efficacy of an education program Florida's Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission was conducting in a community with a lot of bear/ human interaction issues. We then took the recommendations from the first study and designed a follow up education effort. Our first project was multi-phased.
*We conducted phone interviews of local residents prior to the receipt of any education materials from the FWC. We then distributed education materials to some of the residents (5,000 residents were in our target area) and repeated the phone survey with residents that did and did not receive education materials to try and find out if the education materials changed attitudes, knowledge, and reported behaviors about and around bears. The second survey also contained questions about use of the materials that were sent out.
*In addition to surveys, we conducted "garbage patrols" of target neighborhoods before and after distribution of materials. Since garbage put out the night before pickup is a major bear attractor, we wanted to see if the education materials encouraged people to be more careful about when garbage went out. Garbage patrols were conducted in the evening before garbage pickup and any home that had trash out on the curb had its location recorded (address written down and location GPS'd in). Results before and after distribution of materials were compared.
*This area of Florida has a lot of subdivisions so we conducted interviews of subdivision managers to find out their bear issues and how they thought residents could be better informed of bear prepared behaviors.
*Lastly, we formed "bear liaison" groups that consisted of a community member that was trained by FWC to be a source of information about bears. The follow up program took the results of the first study and implemented a second education effort which was also evaluated in a similar manner. The follow up education effort included the creation of a variety of outreach materials including seasonal newsletters, stickers, and certificates. The results of the evaluation and other research led to the creation of the "Bear Prepared Community Manual" - a handbook designed with audience specific best practices for living with bears (handbook is still in development).
Hope this helps! I would be happy to give you more information if you would like. I have the text for the interviews we conducted during the first project in a final report that I could send to you.
Christine Denny
Pandion Systems, Inc.
Phone: 352-372-4747
Fax: 352-372-4714
Email: [email protected]
4603 NW 6th Street, Gainesville, FL 32609
Web: www.pandionsystems.com
Hi Deborah,
I live in Canmore, Alberta and we have many grizzly and black bear issues. Check out http://www.bvwildsmart.ca/ for info on what we have done in our community. The biggest decrease in human/wildlife encounters came from putting in bear proof garbage bins in each neighborhood, thus eliminating curbside pickup. Birdfeeders are also illegal during the bear-active months. Once these steps are done, education plays an important role. This is not always easy. We just had a 20 year old mother black bear and her cub relocated (her other cub died during capture) due to dogs-off-leash harrassing the bear to the point where she was chasing dogs. The bear had lived in the area for years and had previously posed no threat. Dog owners had been warned, given tickets, etc. but were not responding.
Melanie
E. Melanie Watt, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Biosphere Institute of the Bow Valley
Suite 201, 600 - 9th Street T1W 2T2
Tel: 403-678-3445
Fax: 403-678-5730
www.biosphereinstitute.org
Asking people to define their experience of the natural world (bears in this case) is a great opportunity to invite them to define what I think are a couple of important distinctions, for example:
1. Can the describe what they are experiencing through their senses in a way that is not sentimentalising or reducing nature to " it makes me feel like" perspective
2. To distinguish and describe the difference between personal feelings ( which are also valid) about nature and nature's intrinsic value, independant of human appreciation.
Susan
J,
I would use pictures during a focus group. Ask them what they see and try to make participants say adjectives that describe the image of the bear. Divide them by age groups and gender, maybe by areas where they live. Also, I would do a semantic differential with an image of a bear (but after the focus group and/or interviews), using adjective pairs of big- small, safe-dangerous, fuzzy- rough, etc.
Best regards,
Carlos F. Pardo
e-mail: [email protected]