Vultures constitute an important functional group in many ecosystems, providing crucial ecosystem services both in natural and humanized environments. These scavengers are facing massive declines worldwide, but in several African countries virtually nothing is known on populations' status and threats, hampering the development of adequate conservation strategies. In Guinea-Bissau, globally important populations of Hooded Necrosyrtes monachus and African white-backed vultures Gyps africanus were recently reported. Using the country as a study area, we aim to characterize human-vulture interactions in West Africa applying a multidisciplinary approach. We assessed the status and distribution of vulture populations using data from 1711 km of roadside transects, examined predictors of their distribution, and produced a nationwide population estimate for the Hooded Vulture, using an innovative method based on the relationship between the size of human population in settlements and vulture numbers. We conducted 47 stakeholder interviews to assess perceived roles played by vultures, and to investigate potential anthropogenic threats. Hooded vultures were strongly associated with high human population densities, whereas no relation was found between African white-backed and Rüppell's vultures and any of the tested predictors, which included cattle density, precipitation and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, among others. We estimate a national population of 43347 Hooded vultures, the largest population reported in the species range. Respondents were generally aware of the services provided by vultures, especially waste and carcass removal, including in urban areas. Hunting for witchcraft and traditional medicine was the most frequently recognised threat, while poisoning was ranked as having the highest impact. We hypothesise that poisoning-related mortality may be affecting African white-backed and Rüppell's vultures' distribution and explain their scarcity in apparently highly suitable habitats. Our results suggest a mutualistic rather than a commensalistic relationship between vultures and humans, with important implications for designing and implementing conservation strategies.

Unsustainable wildlife trade affects biodiversity and the livelihoods of communities dependent upon those resources. Wildlife farming has been proposed to promote sustainable trade, but characterizing markets and understanding consumer behavior remain neglected but essential steps in the design and evaluation of such operations. We used sea turtle trade in the Cayman Islands, where turtles have been farm raised for human consumption for almost 50 years, as a case study to explore consumer preferences toward wild-sourced (illegal) and farmed (legal) products and potential conservation implications. Combining methods innovatively (including indirect questioning and choice experiments), we conducted a nationwide trade assessment through in-person interviews from September to December 2014. Households were randomly selected using disproportionate stratified sampling, and responses were weighted based on district population size. We approached 597 individuals, of which 37 (6.2%) refused to participate. Although 30% of households had consumed turtle in the previous 12 months, the purchase and consumption of wild products was rare (e.g. 64-742 resident households consumed wild turtle meat [i.e. 0.3-3.5% of households] but represented a large threat to wild turtles in the area due to their reduced populations). Differences among groups of consumers were marked, as identified through choice experiments, and price and source of product played important roles in their decisions. Despite the long-term practice of farming turtles, 13.5% of consumers showed a strong preference for wild products, which demonstrates the limitations of wildlife farming as a single tool for sustainable wildlife trade. By using a combination of indirect questioning, choice experiments, and sales data to investigate demand for wildlife products, we obtained insights about consumer behavior that can be used to develop conservation-demand-focused initiatives. Lack of data from long-term social-ecological assessments hinders the evaluation of and learning from wildlife farming. This information is key to understanding under which conditions different interventions (e.g. bans, wildlife farming, social marketing) are likely to succeed.

Conservation regulations aimed at restricting resource use are commonly used to manage and protect natural resources but their implementation depends on the compliance of resource users. The design of effective regulations should be informed by an understanding of the factors that affect compliance, considering contextual socio-economic information. Changes have been implemented in the national legislation protecting marine turtles in the Cape Verde archipelago, where historical and recent records indicate heavy human predation pressure on nesting and foraging marine turtles. We present an assessment of levels of illegal harvesting and consumption of marine turtle products on two of the islands, Boa Vista and Santiago, and an analysis of their potential drivers. Key stakeholders were interviewed to investigate the perceived impact of the main interventions employed in Cape Verde to reduce illegal harvesting, trade and consumption of marine turtles. Despite an apparent decrease in harvesting and consumption, our results suggest there has been a shift from subsistence harvesting to trade in Boa Vista. The existence of laws to protect marine turtles was perceived as a deterrent to harvesting, and awareness campaigns and a lack of availability were perceived as reasons for the decrease in consumption in Boa Vista and Santiago, respectively. Aiming to inform ongoing discussions, we recommend a multi-targeted approach focusing on both suppliers and consumers to magnify conservation effectiveness. Regular impact evaluation focusing on harvest and consumption is needed to improve the design of regulations and inform policy decision making.

Read the Feature Paper: Community-based wildlife management failing to link conservation and financial viability; other Commentaries on this paper: Wildlife conservation without financial viability? the potential for payments for dispersal areas' services in Namibia and the Response from the authors: Continuous financial support will be needed Animal Conservation.

Management decisions for natural resources are not made in a vacuum; the environmental and ecological conditions as well as the socioeconomic and political contexts affect goals, the choice of interventions, their feasibility, and which outcomes are obtained. Although uncertainty is recognized as a feature of natural resource management, little attention has been given to the uncertainty generated by institutional settings, historical contingency, and individual people’s influence. These implementation uncertainties, related to the translation of policy into practice, make it difficult to predict the outcomes of management interventions within social–ecological systems. Using the conservation of species hunted for bushmeat in the Serengeti as a case study, we investigated the challenges and potential barriers to successful implementation of natural resource management policies. We used a mixed-methods approach, combining semistructured interviews with scenario building, social network, and institutional analysis exercises. Using a management strategy evaluation (MSE) conceptual framework, we obtained insights into the constraints and opportunities for fulfilling stakeholder aspirations for the social–ecological system, analyzed the multiple roles played by different institutions in the system, and described the interactions between different actor types. We found that the respondents had generally similar views about the current and future status of the Serengeti but disagreed about how to address issues of conservation concern and were more uncertain about the actual outcomes of management interventions. Improving conservation implementation (rather than research, monitoring, or status assessment) was perceived as the key priority to be addressed. Institutional barriers were perceived as an important challenge given that the decision-making and implementation processes were broadly distributed across a number of institutions. Conservation social networks were centered on very few individuals, suggesting their importance in bridging across conservation arenas but also potentially affecting the resilience of governance structures. Our study gives an improved understanding of the underlying causes of discrepancies between conservation plans and outcomes for this case study, as well as providing a novel framework for the analysis of implementation uncertainties more broadly. A next step would be to use this framework as a basis for collaboratively developed models that integrate research findings with specific management questions. By bringing tools and findings from social psychology, natural resource management, and bioeconomics together into a unified operational framework, researchers may be better able to understand the barriers to successful resource management and engage with stakeholders to overcome them.

Assessing anthropogenic effects on biological diversity, identifying drivers of human behavior, and motivating behavioral change are at the core of effective conservation. Yet knowledge of people's behaviors is often limited because the true extent of natural resource exploitation is difficult to ascertain, particularly if it is illegal. To obtain estimates of rule-breaking behavior, a technique has been developed with which to ask sensitive questions. We used this technique, unmatched-count technique (UCT), to provide estimates of bushmeat poaching, to determine motivation and seasonal and spatial distribution of poaching, and to characterize poaching households in the Serengeti. We also assessed the potential for survey biases on the basis of respondent perceptions of understanding, anonymity, and discomfort. Eighteen percent of households admitted to being involved in hunting. Illegal bushmeat hunting was more likely in households with seasonal or full-time employment, lower household size, and longer household residence in the village. The majority of respondents found the UCT questions easy to understand and were comfortable answering them. Our results suggest poaching remains widespread in the Serengeti and current alternative sources of income may not be sufficiently attractive to compete with the opportunities provided by hunting. We demonstrate that the UCT is well suited to investigating noncompliance in conservation because it reduces evasive responses, resulting in more accurate estimates, and is technically simple to apply. We suggest that the UCT could be more widely used, with the trade-off being the increased complexity of data analyses and requirement for large sample sizes. Una Aproximación Novedosa para Evaluar la Prevalencia y Factores de la Cacería Ilegal en el Serengueti.

1. Planning for conservation success requires identifying effective and efficient monitoring strategies but multiple types of uncertainty affect the accuracy and precision of wildlife abundance estimates. Observation uncertainty, a consequence of sampling effort and design as well as the process of observation, is still understudied, with little attention given to the multiple potential sources of error involved. To establish error minimization priorities and maximize monitoring efficiency, the direction and magnitude of multiple sources of uncertainty must be considered. 2. Using monitoring of two contrasting ungulate species in the Serengeti ecosystem as a case study, we developed a 'virtual ecologist' framework within which we carried out simulated tests of different monitoring strategies for different types of species. We investigated which components of monitoring should be prioritized to increase survey accuracy and precision and explored the robustness of population estimates under different budgetary scenarios. 3. The relative importance of each process affecting precision and accuracy varied according to the survey technique and biological characteristics of the species. While survey precision was mainly affected by population characteristics and sampling effort, the accuracy of the survey was greatly affected by observer effects, such as juvenile and herd detectability. 4.Synthesis and applications. Monitoring efficiency is of the utmost importance for conservation, especially in the context of limited budgets and other priorities. We provide insights into the likely effect of different types of observation and process error on population estimates for savanna ungulates, and more generally present a framework for evaluating monitoring programmes in a virtual environment. In highly aggregated species, the main focus should be on survey precision; sampling effort should be defined according to wildlife spatial distribution. For random or slightly aggregated species, accuracy is the key factor; this is most sensitive to observer effects which should be minimized by training and calibration by observer.

On 1 and 2 June 2010, an international meeting was held at the University of Paris Sud XI, France, organized within the framework of the EU FP7 consortium project HUNT, to bring together fisheries and conservation scientists to discuss a unified framework for the future of management strategies for harvested species.