Environmental and pest management attitudes of Hauraki Gulf island communities.

Abstract

Islands are important conservation areas, due to having high levels of endemism and the vulnerability of those endemic species to introduced pest species. Considerable conservation investments have focused on uninhabited islands, such as pest eradication followed by ongoing biosecurity monitoring. Because of successes achieved on uninhabited islands the progression of pest eradication to inhabited islands is increasingly being considered, serving to increase the scale of biodiversity gains and decrease the risk of pest reinvasion to nearby pest free islands. With progression to inhabited islands comes the need for better social engagement approaches than has occurred to date. Experience has suggested unplanned and unstructured social approaches towards implementation of pest eradications on inhabited islands may increase barriers to achieving community support, with often lengthy community dialogue and unclear pathways to conflict resolution. Focusing on four inhabited islands within the Hauraki Gulf; Rakino, Kawau, Great Barrier and Waiheke, and a stratified sample from the Auckland mainland region as a form of control group, this study comprised three aspects: to survey each community’s attitudes towards the environment and pest management; to develop and utilise a social profile framework of social characteristics associated with pest eradication on inhabited islands; to develop and psychometrically test an attitudes assessment scale designed to measure broad contexts of attitudes towards pest management. All four Hauraki Gulf island communities had pro-attitudes towards both the environment and pest management, however elevated uncertainty was associated with attitudes towards pest management. Rakino Island (from which rats have already been eradicated) respondents had a consistently greater tendency towards pro-attitudes than all other areas of the study. The social profile framework successfully identified different characteristics within each community to which social considerations should be made. While expected influences from characteristics such as population, livelihoods, and visitor reliance were highlighted as areas to be considered, a differing effect among the islands of governance and pest management strategy, alongside social cohesion and historical pest management discourse, was also evident. A scale designed to assess attitudes towards pest management (a proposed PJNEP Scale) was found to be a reliable uni-dimensional measurement of affinity to pest management. The development of a pest focused scale will be beneficial, as a scale that measures environmental attitudes (NEP Scale) failed to transition well to assessing specific attitudes towards pest management, and only gender and environmental citizenship validity measures proved to be strong predictors of pro-pest management attitudes. Overall the most encouraging aspects from this study are the strong foundations of pro-attitudes alongside highlighted social influences within each community that provide future engagement opportunities. Development of the PJNEP Scale provided an important research tool that enabled a more detailed understanding of pest management attitudes.