Attitudes toward large carnivores among sheep farmers experiencing different degrees of depredation

Abstract

Attitudes toward large carnivores were surveyed in two regional populations of sheep farmers in Norway, using Kellert's (1991) attitude typology. The annual sheep loss rate to carnivores in the two regions were 4.5% and 0.05%, respectively. The two populations of farmers expressed identical and lowvalues on the ecologistic, moralistic, and naturalistic sub‐scales. Both groups scored moderately high on the negativistic and utilitarian subscales, but farmers from the region with the highest rate of depredation had significantly higher scores on these two subscales than farmers from the region with a low depredation rate. The farmers’ personal anticipated consequence for future sheep farming if depredation continues revealed strong predictive potentials toward both negative and positive attitudes. When controlling for the anticipated consequence of sheep loss, farmers from the region with the highest depredation rate expressed less negative and more positive attitudes toward large carnivores than their colleagues from the region with a low rate of depredation.

Keywords:

• attitudes
• carnivores
• sheep farmers
• wildlife managers