Natural Environments

Human-carnivore interactions in national parks

Over the past several years there was an increase in the recorded number of encounters between people and large carnivores (wolves and cougars) in the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. Some cougars and wolves have become less fearful of humans and have learned to forage in areas of human activity. Some wolves have become food-conditioned as a result of direct feeding by people. There is a heightened level of concern by park management toward finding an optimal balance between public safety and the conservation dimensions of the park’s social ecological system. Optimal Environments provided the BC Parks Canada team with an up-to-date literature review of international and North American research relevant to wolf and cougar management, with particular reference to the human side of human-wolf and human-cougar interactions. This annotated bibliography has the objective of acquiring a good knowledge of human-carnivore encounters, understanding factors that lead to negative encounters, and identifying management communication strategies that might be useful for addressing the problem.
- Report available on demand

A very unusual project that perhaps could not be done everywhere. The Parks ministry wished to understand the deeper reasons and motives for visiting different types of provincial parks. To get at these deeper reasons and motives, OE went beyond normal questionnaires, surveys, and interviews, which are subject to a number of well-known response biases, such as social desirability. OE created a parks version of the TAT, a classic therapeutic tool in which respondents create stories about ambiguous pictures. As a projective test, the idea is that the stories will allow respondents to verbalize themes and motives about the characters in the pictures that represent their own views. This led to the discovery of an original set of outdoor recreation motives that parks staff could use in marketing the parks.
- Report available on demand

The provincial parks were experiencing a decline in visitor rates, and the Ministry of Parks wanted to understand why. 10,000 surveys from homes in every corner of the province and from visitors to the parks were collected. Respondents were asked many questions about their park experiences, or lack thereof, including preferences, likes, dislikes, and wishes. OE’s task was to create meaningful segments from the surveys and to analyse their responses by segment, so that programs and policies geared to each segment might be created. We did so in a massive, 4-volume set of analyses.
- Report available on demand

NEXT>>