Nearest-neighbor contingency table analysis of spatial segregation for several species

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.