Raptor conservation experts’ viewpoints about raptors’ contribution to people: a “broken phone game”?

Abstract

Abstract Conservation of predators and scavengers should take advantage of the application of interdisciplinary approaches that connect both ecosystem processes/services and conflicts/disservices. Despite this, there is an overall lack of interdisciplinary research on ecosystem processes/services and conflicts/disservices provided by aerial predators and scavengers like raptors. Our specific goals here are: i) to assess the experts’ viewpoints on ecosystem processes/services and conflicts/disservices provided by raptors to people and ii) to know the main intervention strategies that experts consider effective for managing raptor populations. Through an online survey we obtained 87 surveys for four raptor groups: hawks and eagles (40%), vultures (29%), owls (16%), and falcons (15%). Experts agreed that many ecosystem processes/services and only a few conflicts/disservices are provided by raptors to society. Experts indicated that four ecosystem processes/services were provided by all raptor groups (i.e., vultures, falcons, hawks and eagles, and owls), and another one was provided by all the predator groups (i.e., all but vultures). In contrast, no conflict/disservice was considered to be produced by all groups of raptors. According to experts, hawks and eagles were involved in only three conflicts/disservices, vultures and owls in one, and falcons in none. Experts agreed that five strategies are effective for raptor management. Raptor conservation experts’ viewpoints were mismatched with evidence from raptor literature and, as we expected, this mismatch was higher when considering conflicts/disservices produced than ecosystem processes/services provided by raptors to people. To successfully promote policies and practices for raptors conservation, experts need to base their viewpoints on raptor literature.