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Communicating for Conservation: Circumventing Conflict with Communities over Domestic Dog Ownership in North Morocco

Waters, Siân; Watson, Tamlin; Bell, Sandra; Setchell, Joanna M.

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Authors

Siân Waters

Tamlin Watson



Abstract

Conservationists consider open and direct communication as best practice even when their data conflict with local beliefs. However, ensuring the effective delivery of a controversial message without overtly challenging community identity is difficult. Such a scenario needs high levels of meaningful contact and trust-building dialogue between conservationists and communities as well as innovative means of communicating controversial information. Indirect communication is one such strategy, allowing people to draw their own conclusions about controversial information. We present an example of successful indirect communication of such information in the context of a long-term Barbary macaque community conservation project in Morocco. Dogs in the area kill macaques and domestic livestock in the forest, and local shepherds believed these dogs to be feral. However, our observations identified these dogs as being owned, free-roaming village dogs rather than feral dogs. To impart this controversial information, we developed a dog health programme to communicate our findings and improve the health of domestic dogs to safeguard human and animal health. We administered rabies vaccinations to dogs in three villages and provided their owners with brightly coloured dog collars. After observing collared dogs hunting in the forest, the shepherds realised the dogs had owners. Community participation was high and we vaccinated 242 dogs achieving 60–81% vaccination coverage. An additional benefit of the activity was to successfully convey the message that the conservation team is committed to local people’s welfare as well as to Barbary macaque conservation.

Citation

Waters, S., Watson, T., Bell, S., & Setchell, J. M. (2018). Communicating for Conservation: Circumventing Conflict with Communities over Domestic Dog Ownership in North Morocco. European Journal of Wildlife Research, 64(6), Article 69. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-018-1230-x

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Oct 31, 2018
Online Publication Date Nov 10, 2018
Publication Date Dec 1, 2018
Deposit Date Nov 6, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal European Journal of Wildlife Research
Print ISSN 1612-4642
Electronic ISSN 1439-0574
Publisher Springer
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 64
Issue 6
Article Number 69
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-018-1230-x

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Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.





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