Tom Webb has learned lessons from hedgehogs

Scientists are increasingly encouraged to communicate their research to wider audiences, and especially to produce policy-relevant research. We have examined how this may be done to minimise conflict in a controversial area of applied ecology and conservation biology.

Sometimes, environmental management recommendations, even if formulated with the best of intentions and based on the very best available science, are simply unacceptable to sections of the public. This can severely impede management efforts, and can result in costly and time-consuming environmental conflicts which leave a legacy of mistrust between scientists and important sections of the public.

Conflict in the Western Isles

We set out to consider how the acceptability of scientific recommendations might influence the effectiveness of management by considering an example in which the science was clear, but the conflict bitter: the case of the hedgehogs of the Western Isles.

Hedgehogs were introduced to the Hebridean island of South Uist from the Scottish mainland in 1974 in an attempt to control garden pests. They soon spread to neighbouring islands and began to eat more than slugs: their taste for birds’ eggs led to significant declines in internationally important populations of several species of ground-nesting birds.

Scottish Natural Heritage, the government body tasked with reversing these declines, considered various options, but the scientific advice appeared unambiguous: culling hedgehogs was the most cost-effective, ecologically sound way to deal with the problem.

Unfortunately, this advice was also the surest way to generate a storm of protests from animal welfare organisations and hedgehog lovers worldwide, who were alerted to the issue by significant and often sensational coverage in the press.

The resulting conflict delayed efforts to protect the birds (a consequence that nobody involved wanted). Mistrust and bad feeling spread between groups of interested parties who all, in fact, shared a common value: that some aspects of ‘nature’ (whether populations of birds or individual hedgehogs) have an intrinsic, non-monetary worth.

Babel babble

To explore the development of this conflict, we gathered around 500 documents produced in response to the hedgehog cull by bird conservationists, hedgehog activists, and the media, and analysed them using content analysis – a technique for quantitative analysis of trends in language usage. Our results showed clearly that the pro-bird and pro-hedgehog lobbies spent most of the time speaking different languages(1).

The pro-hedgehog lobby wrote emotive and informal pieces about animal welfare issues (an angle mirrored by most media coverage), whereas the pro-bird lobby wrote more scientific texts concerning wildlife conservation.

By highlighting these differences in a quantitatively rigorous way, this kind of analysis can encourage a dialogue in which all stakeholders are at least addressing the same issues. In the hedgehog conflict, for instance, all protagonists would probably share considerable common ground if a discussion was limited to bird conservation. Starting from such a point of agreement might lead to a less heated discussion of management options.

Research to management

Academic journals in applied ecology and conservation biology now routinely require authors to formulate specific management recommendations, reasoning that translating research into practice ought to be as important as scientific excellence in determining the success of a project. Whereas academic ecologists may see production of these recommendations as the final stage in the research programme, in management terms it is really just the beginning.

Two outstanding questions are first, whether the recommendations will be implemented; and second, if they are, how they will be received. Efforts to develop more effective interfaces between scientists and policy makers seek to address the first question. But the second question receives
 
Our analysis encourages applied ecologists to give more thought to how they might present potentially controversial management recommendations to a hostile or sceptical public. Of course, scientists should not shy away from telling uncomfortable truths; neither is the ‘messiness’ of the social dimension an excuse for scientists to avoid engaging in political debates.

Effective environmental management requires more than simply implementing scientific advice, and managers deal with this messiness all the time. To present management recommendations without social context therefore does not represent the most effective or practical advice, and increases the chance that a damaging conflict will develop.

This work was funded under the UKPopNet project Framework for sustainable livelihoods, biodiversity change & conflict resolution, with additional support from the Leverhulme Trust.

Reference

1. T J Webb and D Raffaelli (2008), Conversations in conservation: revealing and dealing with language differences in environmental conflicts. Journal of Applied Ecology 45: 1198-1204

Dr Tom Webb is now a Royal Society Research Fellow in the Department of Animal & Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield