Could urban people be new stakeholders in wildlife management in Japan?

Human-wildlife conflict has become a big problem in Japan. In rural areas, especially near mountains, farmers are forced to protect crops from wildlife. Declining rural areas is one of the most important causes of such... [ view full abstract ]

Human-wildlife conflict has become a big problem in Japan. In rural areas, especially near mountains, farmers are forced to protect crops from wildlife. Declining rural areas is one of the most important causes of such conflict, as it creates a vicious circle of increasing crop damage.

Recently, urban people’s interactions with rural areas have increased owing to their admiration for nature and rural lifestyles. With regard to human-wildlife conflict, the past few years have seen an increase in the number of nonprofit organizations and other new stakeholders from urban areas that are determined to help rural people reduce damage to crops. However urban people are said to hold strong beliefs regarding animal protection, which could cause conflicts with the rural people who bear the brunt of damage caused by wildlife. Moreover there is no research on the perceptions between urban and rural people towards wildlife in Japan. Do urban people want to involve rural areas to reduce human-wildlife conflict?

We conducted a web-based survey in December 2016 to ask people for their views on wildlife. To begin with, we asked participants to mention the different kinds of wildlife they have seen over the last few years. The spices of wildlife the participants saw included sika deer, wild boars, Japanese macaques and brown and black bears. We then asked them to write about their good and bad opinions on wildlife.

We received 1,401 responses. Out of these, 866 participants（61.8%）said that they had not seen any wildlife, while the others had seen at least one species. We compared the views of these two groups as urban and rural people’s perceptions of wildlife. We used content analysis to compare views. Urban people expressed bad opinions which were probably influenced brought by the news. Comparatively, rural people had specific, good opinions on wildlife. This showed us that urban people had prejudiced perceptions about wildlife. We should come up with better ideas on how to involve urban people in wildlife management so that they can receive correct information and thereby gain new admiration and respects for wildlife.