Abstract:
attitudes to wildlife and its conservation. We assessed how the attention from wildlife authorities and non-profit
Human-wildlife conflict
institutions affects ranchers’ attitudes towards jaguars and pumas in Northern Costa Rica. Our sample was
Livestock predation
divided into ranchers with livestock predation issues who received institutional attention, ranchers with prePanthera onca
Puma concolor
dation
issues who did not receive any attention, and ranchers without livestock predation incidents. The
attention received was self-reported by the respondents. We applied a 10-item Likert scaled test used previously
to assess attitudes toward big felids in South Africa. We looked for spatial patterns of segregation of attitudes to
determine areas that need special attention. Ranchers who receive no institutional attention had the most
negative attitude score, –1.77 (IC 95%: –4.19 – 0.64). Ranchers with a positive attitude were geographically
closer to each other than to the other ranchers (S =0.32). Although preliminary, our findings suggest that
institutional attention can be positively related to attitudes held by ranchers toward big cats.
