TY - JOUR
T1 - Mapping the conflict of raptor conservation and recreational shooting in the Batumi Bottleneck, Republic of Georgia
AU - Sándor, Anna
AU - Anthony, Brandon P.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Sandor & Anthony. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. All Rights Reserved.
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - Illegal use of natural resources threatens biodiversity and often leads to conservation conflicts between affected parties. Such a conflict is emerging in the Batumi Bottleneck in the Republic of Georgia, where every autumn more than one million migrating birds of prey funnel above a handful of villages, and where thousands of these birds fall victim to illegal shooting. As a first step towards resolving this conflict, utilizing semi-structured interviews, we map the goals and opinions of relevant stakeholders associated with raptor migration in the bottleneck. Our results show that most stakeholders, except some local hunters, are on common ground considering the shooting unacceptable, but articulate different preferences concerning a solution, which hinged on institutional and enforcement issues. The hunters expressed a wide spectrum of responses concerning their involvement and motivation in raptor shooting, the role and importance of hunting in their lives, and preferred mitigation actions. The most urgent issues to be addressed via conservation actions are the wide-scale lack of awareness of the conflict, the potential loss of species, and the risk of conflict escalation.
AB - Illegal use of natural resources threatens biodiversity and often leads to conservation conflicts between affected parties. Such a conflict is emerging in the Batumi Bottleneck in the Republic of Georgia, where every autumn more than one million migrating birds of prey funnel above a handful of villages, and where thousands of these birds fall victim to illegal shooting. As a first step towards resolving this conflict, utilizing semi-structured interviews, we map the goals and opinions of relevant stakeholders associated with raptor migration in the bottleneck. Our results show that most stakeholders, except some local hunters, are on common ground considering the shooting unacceptable, but articulate different preferences concerning a solution, which hinged on institutional and enforcement issues. The hunters expressed a wide spectrum of responses concerning their involvement and motivation in raptor shooting, the role and importance of hunting in their lives, and preferred mitigation actions. The most urgent issues to be addressed via conservation actions are the wide-scale lack of awareness of the conflict, the potential loss of species, and the risk of conflict escalation.
KW - Human-wildlife conflict
KW - Hunter opinions
KW - Illegal hunting
KW - Interviews
KW - Issues
KW - Migratory raptors
KW - Solutions
KW - Stakeholders
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85119507597&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.11609/jott.3695.10.7.11850-11862
DO - 10.11609/jott.3695.10.7.11850-11862
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85049108140
SN - 0974-7893
VL - 10
SP - 11850
EP - 11862
JO - Journal of Threatened Taxa
JF - Journal of Threatened Taxa
IS - 7
ER -