Past experiences drive citizen perception of wild boar in urban areas

Publication date: Available online 15 April 2019Source: Mammalian BiologyAuthor(s): Carles Conejero, Raquel Castillo-Contreras, Carlos González-Crespo, Emmanuel Serrano, Gregorio Mentaberre, Santiago Lavín, Jorge Ramón López-OlveraAbstractWild boar (Sus scrofa) populations in urban environments have increased during the last decades. This has led to a new scenario where humans share the space with this recent colonising species inside urban areas. Citizen perception on wild boar presence must be taken into account to assure the most suitable design, application and acceptance of management measures. In order to advance in the knowledge and comprehension of urban wild boar perception by citizens, we conducted 181 surveys to women and men representing all age classes. Our questions were focused on assessing citizen features, experiences and attitudes regarding wild boar presence in the urban area of La Floresta (Sant Cugat del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain). We used a recursive partitioning approach through regression trees to explore the relationship between a Wild Boar Perception Score (WBPS) and citizen profile, past and current experiences involving wild boars, contact with wild boars and acceptance of management measures.Our results show that the WBPS is mainly driven by previous incidents suffered by the respondent, independently of citizen profile, current experiences, level of contact and acceptance of management measures.The respondents answered that measures should be...
Source: Mammalian Biology - Category: Biology Source Type: research