Rural and Urban Students' Perceptions of and Attitudes toward Brown Bears in Turkey

• Main Author: Ambarlı, Hüseyin
• Other Authors: DÜ, Orman Fakültesi, Yaban Hayatı Ekolojisi ve Yönetimi Bölümü
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd 2016
• Subjects: Asia; brown bear; fear; human-wildlife conflict; wild boar; wolf; Ursus arctos
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12684/4449; https://doi.org/10.1080/08927936.2016.1181384

Ambarli, Huseyin/0000-0003-4336-9417 WOS: 000384940900010 Many studies have examined adults' perceptions of and attitudes toward large carnivores to assess human-wildlife conflict and inform conservation strategies, but there have been few studies concerning children. I studied secondary school students' perceptions of and attitudes toward brown bears (Ursus arctos) and other large mammals in Turkey via a questionnaire survey. The questionnaire, consisting of 18 questions, was completed by 215 rural and 98 urban secondary school students. Both sets of students liked bears; they were also afraid of them and unsure about living with them in the future. While there were no gender differences in attitudes and perceptions, there were marked differences between urban and rural students. Urban students had less contact with nature, gained more of their knowledge about bears from documentaries, and had less positive attitudes toward bears. They were also more likely to be afraid of species not present in Turkey, for example, anaconda, while rural students were most afraid of wild boars. Factor analysis identified three important themes: familiarity with bears, conservation of bears, and experiencing conflict with bears, which explained 49.8% of the variance in attitudes toward bears. The most important factor for the development of negative attitudes toward bears was personal experience of human-bear conflict, suggesting that measures to reduce human-bear conflict in rural areas may help to sustain students' positive attitudes toward the conservation of bears. EU Youth Program of National Agency of Turkey [3.1-2005-072]; TUBITAKTurkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Arastirma Kurumu (TUBITAK) [2219] I thank the students and science teachers of Sarigol Secondary Schools and METU Secondary School and EKOCEV Youth Project team. This study was supported by EU Youth Program of National Agency of Turkey under Grant [3.1-2005-072], and TUBITAK 2219 Postdoctoral Grant while finalizing the manuscript. I am grateful to Dr. Didem Ambarli for her valuable help with preparing and applying the questionnaire. I express my special gratitude to Karen Noyce and two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions on an earlier version of this manuscript. I also thank Dr. Renee Worringer and Erasmus K. H. J. zu Ermgassen for proofreading the paper.