Data for: Conservation professionals agree on challenges to coexisting with large carnivores but not on solutions

Although many studies explore characteristics of stakeholders or publics “for” or “against” carnivores, disagreements among conservation professionals advocating different conservation strategies also occur and are not well recognized. Differing viewpoints on whether and how humans can share landscapes with large carnivores can influence conservation actions. To characterize current viewpoints about terrestrial carnivore conservation, we conducted an online survey assessing a wide range of viewpoints about large carnivore conservation among international professionals (n=505). We explored how variation in viewpoints was related to expertise, background, and broader institutional contexts in which one lives and works. The majority of participants agreed people and large carnivores can share the same landscapes (86%). Human adaptation to carnivores (95% agreement) and acceptance of some conflict (93%) were the highest ranked requirements for human-carnivore coexistence. We found broad consensus regarding intrinsic value of carnivores, reasons carnivores are imperilled, conflict drivers, and importance of proactive solutions, such as adopting preventative livestock husbandry methods or avoiding situations that put people at risk. The greatest polarization was observed in issues related to lethal control, where we only found broad consensus for killing carnivores in situations where humans are in immediate risk. Participants did not support killing large carnivores for purposes of decreasing population sizes or increasing human tolerance, profits, livelihoods, or fear of humans. Results point to considerable diversity, perhaps driven by local context, concerning how to proceed with large carnivore conservation in increasingly human-influenced landscapes of the Anthropocene. The different observed viewpoints represent both different strategies about how to best conserve, but also different moral platforms about what, how, where, and for whom conservation should occur. Our study underlines that challenges to adopting and implementing long-lasting carnivore conservation strategies may well occur as much within the conservation community as outside it.

尽管众多研究探讨了利益相关者或公众对食肉动物“支持”或“反对”的特征，但倡导不同保护策略的 conservation professionals 之间的分歧亦时有发生，且并未得到充分的认识。关于人类能否以及如何与大型食肉动物共享景观的不同观点，可能影响保护行动的实施。为描绘当前关于陆生食肉动物保护的观点，我们进行了一项在线调查，评估了来自国际专业人士（n=505）关于大型食肉动物保护的各种观点。我们探讨了观点的多样性如何与专业知识、背景以及个人生活和工作所处的更广泛制度环境相关联。大多数受访者同意人类和大型食肉动物可以共享同一景观（86%）。人类对食肉动物的适应（95%的认同度）以及对某些冲突的接受（93%）被认为是人类与食肉动物共存的最重要要求。我们发现，在关于食肉动物内在价值、食肉动物濒危原因、冲突驱动因素以及主动解决方案（如采用预防性的畜牧业管理方法或避免使人类处于风险中的情况）的重要性等方面，存在广泛的共识。在涉及致命控制的问题上，我们仅发现对于人类处于直接风险的情况，对杀死食肉动物有广泛的共识。受访者不支持为了减少食肉动物种群数量、增加人类容忍度、利润、生计或对人类的恐惧而杀害大型食肉动物。结果指出，在人类影响日益增强的全新世景观中，关于如何进行大型食肉动物保护的方法存在相当大的多样性，这可能是由地方环境所驱动的。观察到的不同观点既代表了关于如何最佳保护的不同策略，也代表了关于什么、如何、在哪里以及为谁进行保护的不同道德立场。我们的研究强调，在保护社区内外采纳和实施长期食肉动物保护策略可能面临的挑战可能是相当大的。