Abstract 70 – Targeting ‘Social Carrying Capacity’ with Risk Preference Elicitation During Predator Recovery

Chandler Hubbard, Ian Fletcher, Todd Cherry, Jacob Hochard, David Finnoff

Large predators worldwide are returning to landscapes where they have been extirpated for
centuries. In communities intolerant of recovery, the ``Social Carrying Capacity" is often more
restrictive that its biological analogue and diverse human preferences complicate traditional
conservation approaches. Yet, wildlife managers often lack formal preference elicitation
training and the social carrying capacity concept tends to be used as an academic metaphor,
rather than a pragmatic management tool. We evaluate individual risk preferences in a
nationwide context where federal agencies have published management guidelines for
responding to property-damaging and human-threatening grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis).
Respondents ($n=2,433$) reveal a desire for more management tolerance following both
violent and non-violent encounters than is currently afforded. Unfamiliarity with federal
guidelines leads respondents to believe that grizzly bear encounters are managed more
consistently with their own desires than occurs in reality. We offer a nationwide prediction of
risk management preferences across all contiguous United States zip codes using social,
geographic, landscape and demographic indicators. The general approach holds promise for
identifying new predator reintroduction and recovery sites, modernizing place-based guidance
for predator management and predicting the intensity of human-wildlife conflict and its
associated management costs from natural predator dispersal.