Interview Surveys for Saola: General Guidelines

Interview surveys for Saola: General Guidelines

Nicholas Wilkinson1

Photos by: Serda Ozbenian, Nicholas Wilkinson, Samuel Turvey, Vo Thanh Hung. Saola artwork from Aur village, A Vuong commune, Tay Giang, Quang Nam

1 Dept. of Geography, University of Cambridge, UK. [email protected]

Acknowledgements:

This guide was produced with funding from the UK Government through the Darwin Initiative project on endemic Annamite Ungulates (www.http://darwin.defra.gov.uk/project/17008/). The project was a collaboration between the Department of Geography of the University of Cambridge, UK, with the WWF Greater Mekong Programme and Vinh University in Vietnam. The Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE) at the University of Kent (UK) was another partner in the project and provided important indirect input to this guide.

Additional support for work that went towards the development of this guide came from the Ocean Park Foundation of Hong Kong through the Zoological Society of London’s project “Identifying priority areas for conservation of saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) using local ecological knowledge”

In writing this guide I have also built on earlier experience on interview surveys for Saola which were supported by WWF-US, through the Species Action Fund (WWF-SAF); by Conservation International’s Center for Applied Biodiversity Science and by the American Museum of Natural History’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation (AMNH-CBC), with funding from the Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund (DWCF) and the Sea World-Busch Gardens (SWBG) Conservation Fund.

I would also like to thank the Forest Protection Departments of Thua Thien Hue and Quang Nam Province, and the management boards of Bach Ma, Pu Mat and Vu Quang National Parks, and of the two Pu Huong Nature Reserves for their help in these surveys

For general advice on interview survey technique I would like to thank Professor Nigel Leader- Williams of Cambridge University, Dr Rajindra Puri and Dr Helen Newing of Kent University, Dr Cao Tien Trung of Vinh University and Dr Samuel Turvey of the Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London. I would also like to thank the members of the IUCN-SSC Saola Working Group and, especially, J. Will Duckworth for comments on an earlier draft of this guide.

Contents The Mysterious Saola...... 5 Our sources of information about the Saola...... 6 What do we need to know about Saola and why? ...... 6 Interviews for Saola Conservation: the series of manuals...... 6 What (and who) is this guide for? ...... 7 Standardization ...... 7 Encouragement ...... 7 Education ...... 7 What use are interview data? ...... 7 First, a warning:...... 7 Is it scientific to use interview data? ...... 8 Some reading ...... 9 The three main rules ...... 10 1: Avoid believing ...... 10 2: Record the problems ...... 10 3: Collect lots of records...... 11 Three kinds of data-level problems: ...... 11 1) Non-Independence: ...... 11 2) Systematic Bias ...... 12 3) Interviewer problems ...... 12 Thinking about data-level problems: ...... 13 3 kinds of mis-information...... 14 10 sources of misinformation...... 14 2 kinds of knowledge ...... 15 3 pieces of information which make up a record...... 15 3 basic methods, ...... 16 Method 1: Semi-structured interview ...... 16 Method 2: Ungulate Last sightings Survey ...... 16 Method 3: Reading past reports ...... 17 How to conduct interview surveys – some practical guidelines...... 18

Three Guidelines for designing interview surveys ...... 18 1) Think about where to go...... 18 2) Do community maps...... 18 3) Report what you do, not just what you find...... 18 Conducting Interviews: ...... 18 Guidelines for interview technique ...... 20 1) Introduce yourself and your aims...... 20 2) Promise confidentiality (as far as you can)...... 21 3) Get the key information as soon as possible...... 21 4) Do your homework – and use your knowledge...... 22 5) Don’t fill in the form during the interview; it is not a questionnaire...... 22 6) Avoid ‘Leading questions’ ...... 23 7) Try and get first-hand records...... 24 8) People are going to lie to you. Accept it...... 24 8) There are a lot of problems with group interviews...... 25 9) Alcohol breaks boundaries, ...... 25 10) Don’t be polite on the form ...... 25 11) Don’t always be satisfied with the first answer, or with attempts not to answer...... 26 12) Be aware of the context of the interview, and who else is present...... 26 13) Ask around...... 26 14: Ask around about the same records...... 27 15 Beware of inconsistent names, spellings, and differences from standard national word usage ...... 28 References ...... 29

The Mysterious Saola.

The Saola, Pseudoryx nghetinhensis was the first large land mammal to be discovered by science in over 50 years and we still know hardly anything about it for certain. Found only in the north-central part of the Truong Son (Annamite) mountains, the species was probably always rare but the very high levels of hunting in the Truong Son forests have made it much rarer. It is now in the most severe danger of disappearing forever; the International Union for the Conservation of Nature lists it as Critically Endangered – the most severe category of threat. Many local people who have seen the species claim that it is not a captive Saola in Lao PDR in 1998. Like all Saola held in captivity only rare, but elusive. People have told researchers so far, she did not survive long. Photo: W. Robichaud that the animal avoids humans by hiding or quietly slipping away and that it keeps away from camps and snarelines and places where people have been. We don’t know if this information is correct; we hope so, because the Saola have no other possible way of defending themselves from hunters. But it seems clear that, given the extent and intensity of hunting, this sort of defence can only buy the species a little time Global range of the Saola

So far, attempts to develop a workable field survey method for Saola have given us a mere handful of sightings and camera trap records. We are always hoping for a breakthrough and recently we’ve had some very promising signs. On the other hand, we’ve been trying for 20 years already and we do not seem to have very much time left.

Our sources of information about the Saola.

In the future we may have a field method, but so far we’ve used 4 methods for finding out about Saola: 1. Recording putative Saola tracks, feeding sign and dung in the forest 2. Extrapolating from other, related species. 3. Extrapolating from what we know about habitat and threat. 4. Asking local people about Saola. Number 1 sounds like the best one but it isn’t. If you want to know why I think this, read Appendix H. Number 2 is OK, but it’s limited. It can give us some idea about the Saola’s ecology, but not about its status, which is what we most need to know. Number 3 is potentially very useful; we probably have the best chance of finding Saola in places which haven’t been quite so severely hunted. However, of the four, Asking local people is probably the most useful method we have at the moment. The purpose of this guide is to recommend some methods for doing this.

What do we need to know about Saola and why? The IUCN Saola Working Group has emphasized the importance of knowing where Saola still occur. We need this information so we can prioritize conservation action, such as patrols. We may want to go through an intermediate step of prioritizing field surveys, before we make our conclusions. Both patrols and field surveys are expensive and we really cannot do them everywhere. We have to prioritize and for this we need interview data.

Interviews for Saola Conservation: the series of manuals. This is one of a series of four manuals produced by the ‘Saola Darwin’ project.

1. Interview surveys for Saola: General Guidelines (this guide) covers general issues with the use of interview data to find out about Saola status and distribution. It gives practical advice for interview surveys. 2. Saola record database: Users Guide is a detailed technical guide to using the database produced by the project for the storing of all Saola records. 3. Community mapping for Saola conservation: Handbook covers techniques of community mapping, which is essential to collecting useful data about animals from interviews. 4. Ungulate last sightings survey: Handbook is a guide to conducting a standardized interview survey which, we believe is the best way to conduct large-scale interview surveys about Saola and other ungulates in the Annamites.

Manuals 2 and 4 refer to this guide frequently. This manual refers to the community mapping handbook.

What (and who) is this guide for?

Standardization We expect that interview data from local people are going to have a role in Saola conservation for the foreseeable future. It is therefore important that people working in different areas are collecting and thinking about interview data in similar ways. Otherwise, we will not be able to compare the information from different places. So this is meant to be a guide to best practice. If you are planning to collect interview data on Saola conservation, please read this guide. If you agree with the methods we describe here, please use them. If you don’t agree with them, please tell us! This is not necessarily the final version of this guide.

Encouragement Researchers, particularly, biologists, may feel that using interview data is unscientific. This is not correct; being a good scientist is not a question of what information you use, but of how you use it. Perhaps the most important part of this is reporting accurately how you reached your conclusions. The worst situation is where a researcher feels embarrassed about drawing his/her conclusions from interview data and so pretends that the information comes from the field survey instead. That really is unscientific.

Education We believe that collecting interview data for Saola conservation is appropriate work for students and other young researchers from Vietnam and Lao. It does not require expensive equipment but it does require a lot of time, and also language skills. Experienced researchers probably would collect better datasets but often don’t have the time to do so. So this guide is supposed to guide students to collect interview data, although it’s important to note that you can’t become a good interviewer without practice.

What use are interview data?

First, a warning: An interview record of Saola is never as good as a direct field record of Saola. That should be obvious; do you ever really believe what someone else tells you as fully as you believe what you’ve seen with your own eyes?2 There is only one advantage of interview data: you can collect hundreds or even thousands of interview records with the same amount of time and money it would take you to collect one field record. And hundreds of interview records are better than one field record, provided they are collected carefully and systematically. This guide aims to give some basic guidance on how to do that, and provide some standard forms for doing so.

2 However please note that many, probably most, interview records are currently more reliable than any records of Saola sign (footprints, dung, feeding sign or other marks) even if these records are made by people who are considered to be experts. This is only the case, however, where there is a strong reason to be sure that the interviewee actually saw a Saola, not tracks or dung. There is currently no evidence at all that anybody; local hunters or university scientists, can reliably separate Saola tracks from those of other large ungulates in the region and there is clear evidence that at least some people who claim to be able identify to the tracks actually cannot do so, at least not reliably. See Appendix A for more details.

Is it scientific to use interview data? Whether something is ‘scientific’ or not, is a matter of opinion. What is indisputable is that international, peer-reviewed journals have published articles about the status and distribution of animal species based on information from local people. Examples come from all over the world, including : Anadon, Gimenez, et al (2009), Hellier, Newton, & Gaona, (1999), Mallory, Gilchrist, et al 2003), Meijaard et al., (2011), Starr et al, (2011), Michalski & Peres, (2005), Steinmetz, Chutipong, & Seuaturien (2006), Turvey, et al., (2010a, 2010b, 2012, in press). See the

References at the end for more details of these studies.

Information from interviews does have serious weaknesses, which are discussed throughout this guide. However it also has important strengths; interview data:

• Can provide a lot of data, across large geographic areas, with a realistic budget. • Can get the degree of “survey effort” needed to detect extremely rare or hard-to-find species, even though the ‘surveys’ by local people are not formal. • Can give information on the past, including species which are no longer found in the area. Vietnamese researchers who wish to study large or rare forest mammals face a difficult dilemma. Hunting for the wildlife trade has made these animals so rare that even large, internationally-funded surveys, using expensive methods like camera traps are challenged to get sufficient data. Instead, researchers usually rely on interview data from local people but, because these data are not seen as scientific, they encounter a lot of criticism. This tends to encourage researchers not to report their interview methodology. Instead they may rely on their reputation, or on token field surveys, to lend an air of authority to the conclusions which they actually made from interviews. Or they may just decide to study something common instead. It also means that, because people don't want to admit to relying on interview data, they miss opportunities to improve their interview work. This is unfortunate because the first step in resolving a difficulty is to acknowledge it.

In fact several branches of research have investigated the problems associated with interview data. While these problems can't be 'solved' they can be acknowledged and addressed. Once you have collected the best information you can, you can ask what your confidence in the information is and see whether it is helpful in making a conservation decision. Also, if you report how you collected that information, you can (hopefully) give other people more confidence in the information you collect as well.

Some reading There is quite a lot of work published which is relevant to using information from local people to inform ecology and conservation work. Unfortunately it is mostly in books which are not easily available in Vietnam and Lao.

 Newing, Eagle, Puri, & Watson, (2010), a textbook solely devoted to the use of social science methods in conservation, is currently the only work of its kind.  Bernard, (2006) gives an anthropologists perspective on the accuracy of information given by local people. The same author has also published several papers on this subject.  Sudman, Bradburn, & Schwarz, (1996) look at similar problems from the perspective of ‘cognitive’ research; they are interested in the working of the human mind and how it might lead to inaccuracies in remembered data.

A lot of papers have been published on ‘traditional ecological knowledge’ and ‘local ecological knowledge’ but the majority of these do not address questions of accuracy and often focus on philosophical, political and ‘epistemological’ questions rather than biological ones.

However, apart from reading, it can be most useful to talk to experienced biologists working in south-east Asia and with other researchers who have worked with local people in your area, particularly if they have been researching questions related to the forest.

The three main rules

1: Avoid believing It is not your job to decide whether you believe in a record or not. No interview record is ever 100% reliable and only a small minority are obviously wrong. Instead of a binary ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ there should be a continuum from records which you trust more, to records which you doubt more. It should be your goal, as a scientist, to stay in between a definite yes and a definite no.

But ‘yes’ and ‘no’ seem to be like magnets in our minds; our opinion is drawn to one or the other. When we look at a record we may first see a reason to doubt it. After that, our mind will have begun its judgment; looking for more reasons to doubt and ignoring reasons why we might trust the information. Or it may be the other way round, we start to trust the record and then we only see other reasons to trust it, not reasons to doubt. This process is called confirmation bias; the process of selecting information which confirms what you already believe.

So your job, as a scientist, is not to believe anything. This is very difficult, perhaps impossible to do, but it is the ideal that you should strive for.

2: Record the problems All interview records are imperfect and everybody knows this. You do not collect good interview data by pretending your records are perfect; you do it by being aware of the problems with each record and noting them down.

This is why the Saola record datasheet, and the database, contain trust and doubt boxes in which you should write down the reasons to trust, and the reasons to doubt the record. The Ungulate Last Sightings Datasheet asks you to assess ‘the interviewee’s knowledge about forest animals’ and to ‘Write notes about whether you think the information given by the interviewee is accurate’. Writing in these boxes will provide useful information to others who want to use your data, but should also be an aid to help you to think critically about the quality of each record.

If you write down nothing in these boxes, that does not mean that there was nothing wrong with the record; there is always something wrong with the record. If you don’t write anything in these boxes,

10 it means there was something wrong with the interviewer; the interviewer either wasn’t taking any notice of the problems, or he/she doesn’t think anybody else needs to know about them. Either way, his/her record is likely to be judged of the lowest quality by anyone else.

3: Collect lots of records. So if you cannot believe any record, what use are they? The answer is that you cannot believe any datum but you can, hopefully, believe what the data will tell you.

‘Data’ in English is a plural word; the singular is ‘datum’. When you have more than one datum, you have data. A datum, in our context, is a Saola record. So we are not going to base any conservation decisions on the fact that one person, in one village, told us he saw a Saola. Two, three, four or five people still doesn’t make much difference. However once we have 10 records it is worth taking some note of. Thirty records might suggest a believable pattern and a hundred records could be of serious use.

When you get enough data, the problems with the individual records tend to disappear and a general pattern emerges. However there are also problems which affect more than just one record. These data-level problems are more dangerous than the problems with individual records, and you have to take care to avoid them as much as possible and to report them when they occur.

Three kinds of data-level problems: These are the most serious kinds of problem that can affect your data because they affect many records, or even the entire dataset. Your job is firstly to avoid them as much as possible but they cannot ever be completely avoided. Therefore your job is also to take note when you think they are occurring. This is one of the most important things to include in any report of your survey work, whether a thesis, a paper, or just an informal report. You should be thinking about these problems every day when you are in the field and make notes on the datasheets in individual interviews when you think they come up.

1) Non-Independence: This is where you don’t really have as many records as you think you do.

If one person in a village tells you they saw a Saola last year, then it isn’t worth much. If three people tell you they saw a Saola last year then that is worth a lot more.

But what if those three people were all sitting together in the same room when they told you? Are those really three separate records of the date (i.e. last year)?

…And then what if one of the three people – Mr A – answered first, saying “I saw a Saola last year – and Mr B and Mr C, also saw Saola in that year, didn’t you, my friends?”

…And what if Mr A is the headman of the village and Mr B and Mr C are both rather quiet and shy and seem to agree with everything he says?

Is that three separate records of the date (last year), or is it only one (Mr A’s)?

All statistical inference is based on the assumption of independence of data. You need to do your best to make sure that the records you collect are independent of each other. This is why it is better not to rely only on group interviews. If you do have to use them, don’t ask all your questions through the headman or some other dominant individual. It is also why it is better to visit more than one village.

However sometimes, in fact most of the time, you can’t really achieve perfect independence of data. When you arrive in a village, your first contact will probably be with the headman or some other important person, and the headman may directly introduce you to your interviewees. He is capable, if he wishes, of going round to them beforehand and telling them all to lie to you for some reason of his own. That is an extreme example and probably rare, but less extreme examples of this are probably very common.

This really does matter. If you have non-independence in your dataset and you don’t know it, or you pretend it isn’t there, your conclusions from that data can be completely wrong. Not just a little bit off the mark – completely wrong.

What can you do? You can keep an eye out, and you can note things down when you suspect a problem. Then we can interpret the data accordingly.

2) Systematic Bias This is where there is some ‘force’ which is pushing the information in some direction away from the truth, not just for one record, but for all of them.

Here is one example of systematic bias: in 1998, the FPD ran a publicity campaign against hunting Saola and other endangered species in a certain district. Therefore, many or all of the people you interview in that district may want to pretend that their own Saola captures were before 1998, even if they were really more recent.

That is only one example. The key point is that you should particularly keep your eyes and ears open for any factor which might cause, not just one person, but many people, to misremember or lie in a certain way.

3) Interviewer problems This is where the interviewer/s on one survey are making a consistent error in all the records that they collect on that survey.

What I am going to say now is specifically for students:

This is important. It is not a test, or an exercise. Sometimes, in school or even in university practicals, you might have found that your data collection did not go as planned so you invented or manipulated the data you needed so you could discuss things appropriately to be marked.

But in a school or university practical session, decisions affecting the survival of species, the lives of hundreds of poor people, the spending of thousands of dollars and many years of hard work do not potentially depend on your results.

Do not make up your data. Any of it. Ever. A teacher might tell you ‘do not make up your answers because I will know if you have done that.’ In this situation that is also true; people may well be able to tell if you have made up data. But that is not the worst thing; the worst thing is that maybe people will believe you.

We are not asking you to collect data because we already know the answer and want you to show us that you know it too. We are asking you to collect data because we do not know the answer. And we think the real answer is important.

There is also a reason why we ask you to collect lots of data. It is completely wrong to fill in missing questions yourself if a particular interviewee did not answer them. You cannot use the information from another interviewee instead. If you do that, we have the problems of non-independence described above.

For the same reason, don’t try and cover up possible problems of independence and bias. These make a very big difference to conclusions we draw from the data. Just report the problems so that we can interpret the data accurately. We know that perfect interview datasets do not exist, and none of us will get any benefit from pretending that they do.

So, I assume from now on that you are honest, and don’t mention these uncomfortable topics again. There can still be problems with the dataset which arise from a repeated mistake made by a particular interviewer. See the short section on interviewer effects pError! Bookmark not defined.. Obviously training is the best solution. Be particularly careful about the locally-used names of animals. Do they really mean what you think they do?

Thinking about data-level problems: In the report of any interview survey you do, you should consider these data-level problems and how they might affect your results. Although it hasn’t been tested in the field yet, we have produced a standard data form to help you record these problems (Appendix A) and some more detailed suggestions of the kind of factors which might cause non-independence, systematic bias and interviewer effects (Appendix B)

3 kinds of mis-information. As we said above (What use are interview data?, p7), no interview record can ever be completely trusted. When conducting interviews, and when looking at interview data, it is crucial to remember the reasons which may lead to any datum being incorrect. One might divide these into three types:

1) Imperfect knowledge or memory : Do they know and remember enough to answer the question accurately?

2) Deception: Are they, perhaps, deliberately lying to you?

These two kinds of misinformation are easy to understand (although they are also easy to forget about). In the first case, the interviewee wants to give you the right information but isn’t able to do so. In the second case, they want to give you the wrong information for reasons of their own.

However there is a third category of problem which may be called:

3) Distortions: Unconscious ‘forces’ in the mind of the interviewee or the interviewer which may push the answer in a certain direction without either of them being aware of it.

10 sources of misinformation. Here is a slightly more complex taxonomy of mis-information:

1. Knowledge level: Is it likely that the interviewees do/did know the answer? 2. Memorability: Is it likely that they remember? 3. Comprehension: Does the interviewee understand the questions as the interviewer intends, and does the interviewer understand the answers as the interviewee intends? 4. Honesty: Might the interviewees think that, by lying to the interviewer, they might gain a material advantage or avoid a risk? 5. Social desirability: Might the interviewee be distorting or inventing information, in order to present him/herself or his/her community in a better light; without possible material advantage? Might cultural norms discourage interviewees from sharing information? 6. Cognitive processes: How might the interviewee be thinking as he/she tries to answer the interviewer’s question? 7. Response effects: How might the way that the interviewer/s ask questions affect the (questions) answers? 8. Response effects: How might the interviewees respond to this particular (interviewer) interviewer/team because of the interviewer’s status, affiliation, attitude or manner? 9. Interviewer effects: How likely are the interviewers to understand the answers that the interviewee gives to their questions? 10. Audience effect: Who else, apart from the interviewer/s and interviewee was present at the interview and how may their presence have contributed to any of the effects above?

For a more detailed look at some of the ways that these different issues might affect your results, see Appendix B.

2 kinds of knowledge There are two kinds of information that local people can give you about the status and distribution of Saola: records and general belief.

A record is a time when someone (or a group of people) have seen a Saola, or have seen some kind of evidence which they think means a Saola was present (e.g. footprints, dung, etc.)

A general belief is a statement like ‘Saola are found in stream X’ or ‘There are no Saola here any more,’ or even ‘I have never heard of Saola, except on TV’.

This guide is about records and discusses general beliefs only in the context of distinguishing them from records. We have developed a method for collecting villagers’ general beliefs about the distribution and density of Saola and other ungulates. This ‘beaning method’ is described in our community mapping handbook. Steinmetz et al. (2006) describe a method for collecting villagers’ general beliefs about increase or decrease of animal populations over time.

These two different kinds of knowledge may correspond to two basically different types of human memory.’ Episodic memory’ is a memory of individual events, (e.g. records of Saola); ‘Semantic memory’ is a memory of perceived facts (e.g. general belief about Saola). This distinction between two kinds of memory was proposed by Tulving, (1972)and has been backed up by some subsequent research (Sudman et al., (1996) p198; Beaman, Vaske, & Miller, 2005)

In general, people use episodic memory for rarer events. For a rare species, like Saola, it is likely that people will be able to remember the individual occasions when they saw it. This is what I have found in the places where I have worked in Vietnam (mostly in Thua Thien Hue and Quang Nam but also in Nghe An and Ha Tinh). Schaller & Rabinowitz, (1995) found the same thing in the north of the Saola's range in Lao. This is fortunate because episodic memory is probably more reliable than semantic memory as a rule.

With commoner species, such as serow, people are more likely to use semantic memory when asked about their status. The Ungulate last sightings survey method tries to get round this problem for these species by asking “When was the last time you saw this species?”

3 pieces of information which make up a record. So we are looking at collecting Saola records.

Each record consists of 3 separate pieces of information, which interest us. These are:

Identity: What was it? (i.e. did it really exist and was it really a Saola?)

Location: Where was it?

Date: When was it?

It is important to separate out these three pieces of information in order to think about the reliability of a record. For example, if a local person describes the Saola he saw at Khe Voi in 2010,

15 you might have a strong belief that it really was a Saola, and have no reason not to believe it was at Khe Voi, but you might have a strong reason to doubt it really was in 2010.

So to answer the question ‘can we believe this record of a Saola at Khe Voi in 2010?’ the first thing to do is to break the record down into Identity, Location and Date.

Can we believe it was a Saola?

can we believe it was at Khe Voi?

and can we believe it was in 2010?

3 basic methods,

Method 1: Semi-structured interview This is the catch-all method; the method you would use if you want to get information about Saola from local people but you are not intending to do any formal analysis of the dataset. That doesn’t mean that this method is simple – in fact it is the most complicated one because it has so many variations.

You meet someone – it doesn’t matter how and it doesn’t matter who– and you find out they’ve seen a Saola, or have caught a Saola, or they’ve seen Saola footprints or they know someone who has. If you are interested in Saola, you should be asking them a series of questions, and you should record your results on the Saola record form Appendix C

If you really are seriously interested in Saola, this form represents the minimum information you ought to collect about a Saola record. And that includes writing in the trust and doubt boxes.

Method 2: Ungulate Last sightings Survey This method is intended to produce large datasets of interview data, to be directly analysed. The aim is to compare status and trends of Saola and other ungulates between different landscapes and protected areas. It is supposed to be used to produce large datasets of over 50, and preferably hundreds of interviews from a landscape/PA. It is a research method in its own right, independent of any plans for field surveys.

This is an oral questionnaire method – which means that you have a printed form and you ask every interviewee more or less the same questions. The interviewee will know that you are reading the questions off a form – although you shouldn’t read them exactly word for word because then you would sound like a robot.

The form, called the Ungulate sightings interview form is in Appendix D. Note that this is NOT intended to be a written questionnaire and we strongly recommend against this method. You have to meet your interviewees and read the questions out to them; they don’t write on the form themselves.

There is nothing wrong with using both the Ungulate sightings interview form, and the Saola records form on the same survey, and in fact we recommend this, especially for recent records of Saola. The

16 data on other species, and the intention of always getting the last sighting date, produce comparable large datasets. The Saola record form gathers more details on the precious records of Saola.

Method 3: Reading past reports For all areas where Saola populations exist, there has been at least some previous interview work. Some has been published in peer-reviewed journals, some in internal reports of governmental and non-governmental organizations. Some may still be sitting unpublished in somebody’s hard drive or desk drawer.

This previous information is potentially very valuable for planning future studies but it should be reduced to individual records. If you just use the conclusions of the different reports you have serious problems of non-independence (see page 11). For example, three different survey teams interview the same hunter who tells them about the same Saola sighting in stream Y. So stream Y gets remembered as a good location for Saola because all 3 reports concluded this, but really only one Saola has ever been seen there.

So we recommend reading through the reports and entering records from them onto the Saola record form Appendix C. Even better, you can just enter them directly into the Saola record database on which the form is based (see Saola Record Database User’s Guide)

How to conduct interview surveys – some practical guidelines.

Three Guidelines for designing interview surveys

1) Think about where to go. Which villages are you going to visit around the forest area you’re interested in? How will you decide? Don’t just visit a village because all the previous interview surveys to that area have visited that village. That is a reason not to go there, or at least a reason not to go only there. And, while you should listen to the recommendations of protected area staff, district rangers or others, you should also be careful of those recommendations for the same reason. These people have probably made the same suggestions to previous survey teams. Furthermore, they are likely to recommend villages because they know the people in those villages and believe the people know the forest. While those are important considerations, they are not the only reasons to visit a village; another important thing to consider is which bit of forest the people from that village know.

2) Do community maps. Different bits of forest are used by different villages. In Vietnam, people often assume that commune boundaries mark the forest areas used by the people from that commune. This assumption is likely to be completely wrong. In Lao there are no communes but, again, beware of official administrative boundaries; they do not necessarily reflect where people really go. If you do community maps (see Community mapping handbook) you can plan an interview survey which covers the whole forest block you are interested in. Otherwise, you are very likely to leave out some important areas of forest.

Village timelines (see p22) and other background information about the villages are also helpful – especially if the village has moved in the last 30 years.

3) Report what you do, not just what you find. Your data might show us that only one man in village Y reported seeing a Saola – but is that because Saola are rare in that area or is it because you only interviewed one man? The same applies with villages. You get no Saola records in the north of the reserve, but perhaps that is because you didn’t interview any of the villages which hunt there.

In addition to the record datasheets, you should produce a survey report showing which villages you visited, and how many people you interviewed in each village.

Conducting Interviews: Interview data are imperfect (see what use are interview data, p 7) but some are better than others. Some of the factors which affect the quality of an interview record are within your control, while others are not. Therefore you have two duties as an interviewer:

1) To improve your own technique and skill so that you can avoid some of the problems (See

2) Guidelines for interview technique, p20). 3) To develop your awareness of the problems which remain and to report them; see The three main rules, p 10 and the section in the Saola Record Database users guide on ‘Trust and Doubt Boxes’.

Guidelines for interview technique Advising students how to interview is difficult for three reasons. Firstly, it is something that you have to learn through practice; reading can help but it isn’t enough. Secondly, I am no expert in it myself; while I hope it is useful to share my experience of this particular situation, please don’t hesitate to seek further guidance. Thirdly, there aren’t any absolute rules; only guidelines. All of the principles below can be taken too far and so, for each one, there is an opposite, balancing principle.

Firstly, please read and remember the general principles described in the first section above:

Try to collect records, not just general beliefs (see page 15).

Remember the three main rules (p10): 1) Avoid believing, 2) Record the problems, 3) Collect lots of records Take special care of the data-level problems (p11): 1) Non-independence, 2) systematic bias, 3) interviewer problems And also beware of the three kinds of misinformation (p13): 1) Knowledge/memory problems, 2) Deliberate deception 3) Distortions (these will be discussed further in the sections on ‘trust and doubt boxes). It may also help to think about the 10 sources of misinformation (p 14) And, for each record, try to collect and check all 3 pieces of information (p15): 1) Identity, 2) Location, 3) Date

Beyond that, here are some more specific guidelines.

1) Introduce yourself and your aims. People want to know who you are and why you are asking all these questions. Otherwise why should they answer you? If you’re a student from a local university studying for your thesis, then you are lucky because this is something people can generally understand, at least in Vietnam. If you’re a foreigner it can be more difficult; people may assume that a white guy wouldn’t be involved except for great prestige or money, and they’ll want to be sure you’re not a spy. Make sure your permissions are in order and that the village headman or some other local official is there to confirm you’re genuine. A group meeting at the beginning will help.

But on the other hand: Be careful your introduction doesn’t provide people with too many extra incentives to lie to you. From a purely research perspective, the ideal situation is that people in the village you visit don’t know of any connections with FPD, protected areas or with anybody interested in wildlife protection. From an ethical perspective, this is not necessarily appropriate, so you need to find a balance.

If you are planning a field survey after your interviews and need to hire guides, it is also better if your interviewees don’t know this. This is because, if they want to be hired they have an incentive to exaggerate their knowledge and if they don’t want to be hired they have an incentive to cover it up. It is also better if they don’t know you are specifically interested only in Saola. It is better to give them the idea you are equally interested in many species (perhaps this is the truth). Bear in mind that what people know about you depends not only on what you tell them directly, but also on what

20 goes on your official permission letter, which may be prepared by somebody else a long time before you go to the field.

There are ethical, practical and legal reasons why you can’t follow this ‘ideal’ situation. As usual, do your best to minimize the problems and then take note of the ones that remain (rule 2: record the problems, p10).

2) Promise confidentiality (as far as you can). You should be able to reassure people that you are not going to be passing on their names to the authorities if they have caught a Saola. How far you can do this depends on the circumstances of your survey. Obviously it doesn’t work if you are the authorities – e.g. if you are a member of the protected area’s staff, or if such a person is accompanying you. You may be able to say, for example, that you come from the scientific division and will not pass on information to the law enforcement division.

But on the other hand: You might want to avoid sensitive questions entirely. For example, you might just ask people if they’ve seen a Saola. You don’t need to ask them if they have caught it.

3) Get the key information as soon as possible. You don’t have all day to conduct an interview and your interviewees certainly don’t. What’s more you don’t know when your interviewee might be suddenly cut short. If an interviewee tells you about 2 Saola sightings, one in 1975, and one in 2011 – ask about the 2011 one first. If you start with the 1975 one and double-check all the details, ask about the animal’s age and sex, measure the horns on the wall, describe the location, etc. you might find that, instead of giving you the same details about the 2011 sighting, your interviewee brings out a jug of rice wine and tries to change the subject or (even worse) leaves for the fields.

Of course, this means you need to have a sense of what the most important information is. Here is a very general rule: ask for all Saola sightings first, and, starting with the most recent:

1) ask when it was, 2) ask where it was 3) check you know roughly where that place is and ask if you don’t, 4) ask for a description of the animal, what it was doing, what the place where it was seen was like, etc. 5) get the same details for the other sightings and then 6) go back and ask further questions to try and double-check details.

Details like age, sex and weight of the individual Saola aren’t essential information but often come up in the course of the interview. Information about Saola in general (what they look like, where they live, etc) also tends to come up in the course of the interview but you can ask for it directly if you want to understand how well the hunter knows the species. In general, I would do this last. There are hundreds of possible exceptions to this so don’t be too rigid!

But on the other hand: See 1) Introduce yourself and your aims., p20. You often need to start the interview gently, as a natural conversation. What’s more you don’t want to seem too interested in Saola, in case you tempt them to make up Saola sightings which never happened, or which were actually made by someone else. So it is often better to begin by asking some more general

21 questions about animals; “what kind of animals are in the forest?” “What are the rarest animals?” before moving on to Saola.

4) Do your homework – and use your knowledge. About animals: Unless you have some knowledge of the subject yourself, it will not be possible to get good information. One thing you obviously need to know about is what Saola look like and how they are different from other species in the forest such as Serow and Muntjac. You should know about this before you set out. See Appendix E

About local geography: It is just as important to have an understanding of the local geography; in other words, you should do some kind of community map (see Community mapping handbook). If you are doing a proper interview survey, then you should make such a map when you arrive in a village, perhaps based on an existing map from a nearby village. If interviews are not the main focus of your work, at least make sure you know the names of the main streams and hills. And that means the ones in the area the villagers actually use, not the one that they’re officially expected to use (see p18 and Community mapping handbook).

About local history: Less essential than the map, but still very useful, is a village timeline. This is a list of important events that have happened in the village (e.g. building of roads and communal houses, the year they got mobile phone reception, the years of droughts and floods and other natural phenomena).

Beyond that, it greatly helps to have spent time in the forest, and to understand hunting and other patterns of forest use. It helps to know something about the culture of the ethnic group you are working with – in particular, what are their traditional patterns of cultivation and settlement – do their villages move, or did they once?

But on the other hand: Don’t show off. You want them to tell you things, not the other way around. If you seem too knowledgeable, people may be afraid to answer because they don’t want to be shown up. If someone says ‘Saola horns have branches,’ don’t say ‘no, they don’t’, say something like ‘oh, they have branches?’ and try and understand why they said that. Maybe they really don’t know much but perhaps they’re actually talking about a different animal, or perhaps they just don’t actually know what the word ‘branches’ means in the national language.

5) Don’t fill in the form during the interview; it is not a questionnaire. The Saola Record Form is not intended to be used in the interview. There are three reasons for this:

1. It looks too ‘official’ and may make interviewees nervous 2. It encourages the interviewer to be too formulaic – asking all the questions in turn like a robot and not following up, checking, or making notes. 3. You will sometimes need to write things down on the form which you don’t want the interviewee to read, e.g. “Interviewee was very drunk and seemed to have a poor knowledge of other animal species.”

But on the other hand: Don’t overestimate your own memory. Do take notes in a notebook, check them when you leave the interview and do fill in the form as soon as possible afterwards – find a time of day when people aren’t available for interviews and do this work then. Forgetting information is embarrassing and it is very tempting to write down what you ‘think the interviewee

22 probably must have said’. Don’t do this (see Interviewer problems, p 12). We know that it isn’t always easy to find the time to write everything down in the field, if you are not sure if the interviewee said 2008 or 2010, give a date range (2008-2010). If you have no idea what he said except you’re sure it wasn’t before the war – write that. Or perhaps you can go back and ask him again.

6) Avoid ‘Leading questions’ A ‘leading question’ is one that invites a particular answer because of the way the question is asked. “You caught a saola in a snare last year, didn’t you?” is obviously a leading question and you shouldn’t talk like that (unless you’re ‘baiting’ see below). But some leading questions are much more subtle and harder to avoid. The most persistent one I’ve noticed, when asking in Vietnamese, refers to time. “Have you seen a Saola?” “ Yes” “A long time ago?” “Yes, long ago.”

That was a leading question. “A long time ago?” invites the answer “Yes.” Even if you go on to try and find out more specifically when it was, you’ve already ‘primed’ your interviewee to give an answer which was too long ago. He might then think something like this: ‘It was 1991. No, wait, I said it was long ago; 1991 isn’t that long ago. Wasn’t it actually longer ago than that? Yes, it was probably in the 80s. OK I’ll say that.’

So what if you ask “In what year?” You might get the answer: “1982”

If you got that answer, you might understandably wonder if the interviewee can really remember the exact year when it was 30 years ago. Perhaps he can, but perhaps you have pushed him to pretend that he can remember with the form of your question. “In what year?” is a leading question too.

So what should you ask? Ideally just: “When was it?”

Actually every question with a yes/no answer is a potentially leading question. Even if you ask something like “Have you ever seen a Saola?”

You get told ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ but what does that really mean?

“Yes,” (I really have seen a Saola) OR “Yes,” (because I don’t want to seem like I don’t know anything)

OR “Yes,” (I don’t really know what a Saola is but I’ve probably seen one at some point) OR “Yes,” (Well actually no, but you look very friendly and I’d like to keep talking to you) OR “Yes,” (I wasn’t actually listening to what you were saying) OR “No.” (Because if I say that you will probably go away and stop bothering me.) So you can avoid asking that question too. You can start by talking about Saola and then follow straight on with “So what was the last time you saw one?” But that’s a leading question too because you’re priming them to pretend they’ve seen one, even if they haven’t.

‘He’s asking me when I’ve seen a Saola, he must assume I’ve seen one because I was just telling him what they look like. Now if I tell him I’ve never actually seen one, I’ll look like a fool. I will say I have seen one – it’s kind of true because I saw the dead one that my uncle brought back to the village when I was nine.’

Moral: You can’t completely avoid leading questions. You just have to try and minimize them. The most important thing is to make sure you aren’t asking the same leading questions in every interview. That will create an interviewer problem leading to systematic bias in your dataset (see Three kinds of data-level problems: p11)

But, on the other hand: There is one kind of situation where a leading question is actually a good idea. This is when you want to make it seem like you already know something which you in fact only suspect. This is called ‘baiting’. So, for example, you may think an interviewee will not want to tell you that he has caught Saola, you might ask “So where have you caught Saola?” Then it seems you already know the sensitive information (he has caught Saola) and he has nothing to lose by telling you the non-sensitive information (the name of the place). This technique can be dangerous though, it might lose you people’s trust and you should be careful about using it.

7) Try and get first-hand records. A first-hand record is one where the interviewee saw or caught the Saola him/herself. If you get a second-hand record – e.g. ‘Mr X caught a Saola in 2005’, then try and find Mr X and ask him directly. Note that some records are partly first-hand and partly second-hand. Your interviewee might remember seeing a Saola that Mr X caught and brought back to the village. In this case the identity and the date are first-hand but the location is not because the interviewee only knows where Mr X said that he caught the animal.

But on the other hand: Second hand records are still useful; the most important thing is that you report that they are second-hand. The Saola record database requires you to do this with the question ‘Who saw/caught the Saola/sign in the forest?’ Reporting that records are second hand is not only important for assessing their reliability; it can also be important for working out if two separate records are the same or different.

8) People are going to lie to you. Accept it. In fact people have quite understandable reasons for lying.

 They don’t know you,  they don’t necessarily trust you,  they may think that they might get in trouble if they told you they caught a Saola,  they may believe that there will be benefits to, or problems for the community if it is believed that Saola are present in the area.

And these are just the obvious reasons for lying, there are lots of less obvious ones:

 not wanting to look a fool,  wanting to continue a conversation,  wanting to end a conversation,  etc ,etc.

The point is that these things really do happen, and they will happen to you. Nothing is to be gained by pretending that nobody will ever lie to you.

But on the other hand: Not everyone will lie to you. You may meet people – perhaps many people – who are friendly and want to help, and who also understand that they can best help by telling you the truth, rather than by telling you what they think you want to hear. You don’t want to alienate these people by seeming too suspicious.

8) There are a lot of problems with group interviews. When you interview people in a group, you invite very serious problems of Non-independence (see p11). Getting corroboration of records, locations and dates, (see p27) becomes impossible. What’s more, you may find the interview dominated by a few people and these may not be the people who know the most. Good hunters are not necessarily good talkers; in fact they tend to be rather silent people. And people of high status in the village are often those with government posts who go to the forest less than average. They may also be elderly people who haven’t been there in a long time. Thirdly, you have to think about how these people were invited to the interview and who invited them and why.

But, on the other hand: Group interviews save a lot of time. They’re also really useful for collecting background information, especially community maps. It can work very well to have a small group interview with about 10 people to do the map and village timeline, ask the local names of animals and find out if anyone in the village has seen a Saola. Then use individual interviews to follow up on the details of Saola sightings.

9) Alcohol breaks boundaries, And is a part of the traditional culture of many groups.

But on the other hand: It causes overconfidence and memory loss in both interviewers and interviewees. The interviewee might only have one guest (yourself) in the day with whom to drink, but you may have to visit several interviewees’ houses. You can’t drink in nobody’s house but you can’t drink in everybody’s house either. And if you need to go back and sleep, do so.

10) Don’t be polite on the form I must accept that what I am going to say goes somewhat against Vietnamese culture. But if the interviewee is obviously very drunk, don’t just say ‘he was very friendly and open.’ Don’t say ‘he was

25 a bit tired’ either, you need to say he was drunk. If he was, nervous, silent and gruff don’t just say ‘he wasn’t drunk’.

But on the other hand: Do be polite in the interview. And be careful where you keep your datasheets! Perhaps it is better to fill in a few things after you leave the village – not everything though!

11) Don’t always be satisfied with the first answer, or with attempts not to answer. If you ask someone when it was that he saw a Saola and he says ‘I don’t know’, you do not have to leave the field blank on the datasheet. You might then ask something like ‘was it before the war?’ If you ask where it was and he says the name of a very large stream catchment, you can ask which branch of that stream catchment it was in. That sort of thing shows the interviewee that you are serious and you know what you are talking about.

And if someone gives you information which you find it hard to believe, you can, and generally should, carefully ‘probe’ to investigate further. You can try and ask the same question in a different way, perhaps after changing the subject for a bit. Or you can ask another question which might reveal more details. It’s surprising how often interviewees can say completely different things only five minutes apart. If an interviewee does contradict himself – e.g. he says first that he caught the Saola in Khe Ta Vac, then that he caught it in Khe A Tin – you can only write one of those in the ‘Record location’ field on the form, but the trust and doubt boxes are there to record the other story (see Saola Record Database guide)

Maybe you don’t have time to do this (see 3) Get the key information as soon as possible. p21) if so, you can note down that you didn’t have time and couldn’t ask.

But, on the other hand: Be aware that they might really not know or remember the answer to a question; or they might really not want to tell you. You don’t want to push them so that they have to make something up.

Ask questions that can be easily understood in the frame of reference of your interviewees.

12) Be aware of the context of the interview, and who else is present. Think how you met this person, and make sure you note whether other people were present in the room who might have influenced his answers. For example, an FPD ranger being present might have discouraged him from talking about captures. But other villagers can also influence things. Sometimes, though you might aim for an individual interview, other people might contribute some of the information. You should make a note of this.

But on the other hand: Don’t try too much to control the situation of the interview; you have to fit in with the life of the village.

13) Ask around.

Don’t rely too much on the information from one person and beware of having one person (e.g. the headman) introduce you to all your other interviewees. It may be impossible to avoid this situation, but avoid it if you can. It is very easy to end up interviewing only people who have Saola horns in

26 their houses. You should interview these people, but don’t interview only them. Also try and find people who are good hunters or know the forest well, even if they don’t own any Saola horns.

But on the other hand: The headman and the people he introduces you too are generally the easiest people to meet in the village and you might get more useful information by visiting many villages and interviewing only these people, than by staying too long in one village. Consider a dual strategy in which you spend a longer time in a few focal villages and use this experience to design more rapid surveys of other villages.

14: Ask around about the same records. One of the best ways of increasing the confidence in a record is to get independent reports of the same record from other people in the village. This is called ‘corroboration’ or, if there are three or more people, ‘triangulation’.

Getting independent reports of the same record is often easy with captures especially if, as is traditional in many places, the meat of the animal is shared with the whole village. It can be possible with other kinds of record too; if Mr X tells you that he saw a Saola when he went to the forest with Mr Y, perhaps you can interview Mr Y as well. You can get independent corroboration of the identity, location and/or the date. Corroboration of the date is often the most useful and also the easiest to get.

In order to get this information, however, you need to keep track of the records you collect in one village. It is best to review them at the end of each day. Otherwise you might get home and find that Mr X and Mr Y both reported catching a Saola in Khe Voi in 2005 but you have no idea whether it is one Saola or two. While you’re still in the village it would be easy to ask Mr Y ‘is this the same Saola that Mr X told us about?’

Be careful, however, that the different reports really are independent. You can’t get independent corroboration through a group interview, and it doesn’t work either if Mr Y was present at Mr X’s interview and heard Mr X’s answers. You have to ask people separately.

This is easy enough if you can be sure that the different people are really talking about the same record. Sometimes it is not clear if the records are the same or different. The Saola Record Database Users Guide contains detailed guidance for these situations (see Saola Record Database Users Guide: Saola Records and Independence and Triangulation).

But on the other hand: While it’s good to get corroboration of individual records it is usually even better to collect more records. Don’t go too far out of your way to get corroboration. If you are interviewing other people anyway, it is good to also ask them about the records you already have. Mr Y may be able to confirm Mr X’s record but he may also have new records of his own to add.

However, you should try hard to get corroboration of records if:

1) They are the most recent records 2) They are the only records from a particular place 3) All your records from a particular village come from one person, or one group interview.

15 Beware of inconsistent names, spellings, and differences from standard national word usage Places, and animal species, may commonly have more than one name in the local language. This might be because different parts of the place have different names (e.g. tributaries of a stream, ridges of a mountain) it might be because different sexes, age groups or colour varieties of a species have different names. But there might just be more than one name for the place or the species as, for instance, there is more than one word for ‘tiger’ in Vietnamese.

You may have to get used to the sound of the words, and not be attached to the way they are written down. There may be no official or consistent spelling of a place name in a minority language and different people can write down words from minority languages in very different ways. For example, here are some stream names in the Katu language from the area of the Bach Ma National Park extension. In each case the same name has been written down in two different ways by 2 different people:

Spelling 1 Spelling 2 A Roong A Rong Yui Vui Cha Mo LDâr Mo Ra Loong Hra Lang A Varrnh A Verr Chinh Xa Xoong Xa

A much more difficult problem is when people use words which you know, but do not mean what you expect. One very simple example is that Katu people in central Vietnam often report seeing 'chồn mực' (Binturong, Arctitis binturong) when they are actually referring to Giant Black Squirrel (sóc đèn, Ratufa bicolor). They know perfectly well what the animal is; but they don't have the scientifically correct term for it in the official Vietnamese language.

References Beaman, J., Vaske, J. J., & Miller, C. A. (2005). Cognitive Processes in Hunters’ Recall of Participation and Harvest Estimates. The Journal of Wildlife Management, 69(3), 967-975. Bernard, H. R. (2006). Research methods in anthropology. Qualitative and quantitative approaches (4th ed.). Oxford, UK: Altamira Press. Daniel Anadon, J., Gimenez, A., Ballestar, R., & Perez, I. (2009). Evaluation of Local Ecological Knowledge as a Method for Collecting Extensive Data on Animal Abundance. CONSERVATION BIOLOGY, 23(3), 617-625. Hellier, A., Newton, A., & Gaona, S. (1999). Use of indigenous knowledge for rapidly assessing trends in biodiversity: a case study from Chiapas, Mexico. Biodiversity & Conservation, 8(7), 869- 889. Mallory, M. L., Gilchrist, H. G., Fontaine, A. J., & Akearok, J. A. (2003). Local Ecological Knowledge of Ivory Gull Declines in Arctic Canada. Arctic, 56(3), 293-298. Meijaard, E., Mengersen, K., Buchori, D., Nurcahyo, A., Ancrenaz, M., Wich, S., Atmoko, S. S. ., et al. (2011). Why Don’t We Ask? A Complementary Method for Assessing the Status of Great Apes. PloS one, 6(3), Michalski, F., & Peres, C. A. (2005). Anthropogenic determinants of primate and carnivore local extinctions in a fragmented forest landscape of southern Amazonia. Biological Conservation, 124(3), 383-396. Newing, H., Eagle, C., Puri, R., & Watson, C. W. (Eds.). (2010). Conducting Research in Conservation: Social Science Methods and Practice. Routledge. Schaller, G. B., & Rabinowitz, A. (1995). The saola or spindlehorn bovid Pseudoryx nghetinhensis in Laos. Oryx, 29(2), 107-114. Starr, C. (2011). Field surveys of the Vulnerable pygmy slow loris Nycticebus pygmaeus using local knowledge in Mondulkiri Province, Cambodia. Oryx, 45(01), 135. Steinmetz, R., Chutipong, W., & Seuaturien, N. (2006). Collaborating to conserve large mammals in Southeast Asia. Conservation Biology, 20(5), 1391-1401. Sudman, S., Bradburn, N. M., & Schwarz, N. (1996). Thinking about answers: The application of cognitive processes to survey methodology. Jossey-Bass San Francisco. Tulving, E. (1972). Episodic and semantic memory. In E. Tulving & W. Donaldson (Eds.), Organization of memory (pp. 381-403). New York: Academic Press. Turvey, S. T., Barrett, L. A., Hart, T., Collen, B., Yujiang, H., Lei, Z., Xinqiao, Z., et al. (2010). Spatial and temporal extinction dynamics in a freshwater cetacean. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Turvey, S. T., Fernández-Secades, C., Nuñez-Miño, J. M., Hart, T., Martinez, P., Brocca, J. L., & Young, R. P. (in press). How useful is local ecological knowledge as a conservation tool for small mammals in a Caribbean multicultural landscape? Conservation Biology. Turvey, S. T., Risley, C. L., Barrett, L. A., Hao Yuijiang, & Wang Ding. (2012). River dolphins can act as population trend indicators in degraded freshwater systems. PLOS ONE, In Press. Turvey, Samuel T, Barrett, L. A., Yujiang, H., Lei, Z., Xinqiao, Z., Xianyan, W., Yadong, H., et al. (2010). Rapidly Shifting Baselines in Yangtze Fishing Communities and Local Memory of Extinct Species. Conservation Biology, 24(3), 778-787.

Appendix A: Form for Village Interview Surveys

This is a new idea and has not yet been tested in the field but we think it could greatly help with interpretation of interview data for records of Saola or other animals.

The idea is to fill in standard forms to assess the sources of systematic bias affecting many or all of the interviews on a survey. This would make it much easier to compare data gathered from different areas. Sources of error affecting only one or two interviews, should go on the datasheets for those particular interviews. This form is for sources of error which might affect many of your interviews in a village or on a survey.

Having this form would save time in the field writing because you would not have to write the same thing down on every Saola Record Form or Ungulate Sightings Questionnaire. You still have to write the same thing many times in the computer databases, but there you can copy and paste.

There are separate forms for Identity, Location and Date and you should fill in one set of three on each survey. We recommend a minimum of one set of three per interview survey and a maximum of one per village.

See Appendix B for some help with filling in this form.

Identity & general issues: Issues to think about for interview surveys of Saola records Sampling How did the interviewers find the interviewees? Think about: Selection of interviewees; Access; Time for survey ; Brokers and guides. Also think about bias towards/against Finding people who have really seen Saola as well as bias towards/against finding people who are good interviewees.

Knowledge level Did the interviewees ever know the answer? Think about: Can they recognize the species. Descriptions of the species in general and descriptions of individual records.

Memorability Do the interviewees remember? Think about, are saola records rare? recent? interesting to these people? Saola publicity campaigns or interest in Saola shown by outsiders visiting the area.

Comprehension Does the interviewee understand the questions as the interviewer intends, and does the interviewer understand the answers as the interviewee intends? Think about: Language; Species names; if people are Talking about other people’s records or their own.

Honesty Might the interviewees think that, by lying to the interviewer, they might gain a material advantage or avoid a risk? Think about both: evidence or suggestions that people are lying; motivations why people might lie. Think about both: reasons people might invent Saola records; reasons people might cover up real records. Think about: Fear of talking about illegal activity. Perceived benefits to themselves/their village from Saola presence.

Identity & general issues: Page 2 Social desirability Might the interviewee be distorting or inventing information, in order to present him/herself or his/her community in a better light; without possible material advantage? Might cultural norms discourage interviewees from sharing information? Think about: Prowess and pride; Modesty and secretiveness; Specific cultural norms.

Cognitive processes How might the interviewee be thinking as he/she tries to answer the interviewer’s question? Think about: Rules of inference; Overconfidence; Identifying tracks and sign based on habitat

Response effects (questions) How might the way that the interviewer/s ask questions affect the answers? Think about: Leading questions and ‘yes effect’; Threatening or sensitive questions; Order effect.

Response effects (interviewer) How might the interviewees respond to this particular interviewer/team because of the interviewer’s status, affiliation, attitude or manner? Think about: Status and deference; Affiliation; Attitude and manner; Inappropriate helpfulness from interviewees.

Interviewer effects How likely are the interviewers to understand the answers that the interviewee gives to their questions? Experience; Misconceptions; Critical treatment of information; Expectations and confirmation bias; Data-thinking; Motivations.

Audience effect Who else, apart from the interviewer/s and interviewee was present at the interview and how may their presence have contributed to any of the effects above? See Response effects (Interviewer), Honesty and Social Desirability above.

Location: Issues to think about for interview surveys of Saola records Sampling How did the interviewers find the interviewees? Think about: Selection of villages relative to geographic area; Coverage of forest area by local population; Sampling of interviewees relative to geographic area

Knowledge level Did the interviewees ever know the answer? Think about: Knowledge of place names. Did they definitely see the animal in the forest themselves?

Memorability Do the interviewees remember? Think about, knowledge of landscape; expected or unexpected places, descriptions of places

Honesty Might the interviewees think that, by lying to the interviewer, they might gain a material advantage or avoid a risk? Think about both: evidence or suggestions that people are lying; motivations why people might lie. Think about: Fear of talking about illegal activity. Visiting nearer places to save effort.

Location: Page 2 Social desirability Might the interviewee be distorting or inventing information, in order to present him/herself or his/her community in a better light; without possible material advantage? Might cultural norms discourage interviewees from sharing information? Think about: Prowess and pride; Modesty and secretiveness; Specific cultural norms.

Cognitive processes How might the interviewee be thinking as he/she tries to answer the interviewer’s question? Think about: Rules of inference; Overconfidence

Date: Issues to think about for interview surveys of Saola records Sampling How did the interviewers find the interviewees? Think about: Selection of interviewees relative to period of forest use; coverage ot time periods relative to local population; village movements

Knowledge level Did the interviewees ever know the answer? Think about: Knowledge of current calendar year number (now and in past). Knowledge of time markers

Memorability Do the interviewees remember? Think about, memorability of calendar year numbers; of years passed since record; of time markers. Thematic/causal linking of time markers to record

Honesty Might the interviewees think that, by lying to the interviewer, they might gain a material advantage or avoid a risk? Think about both: evidence or suggestions that people are lying; motivations why people might lie. Think about: Fear of talking about illegal activity. Perceived benefits to themselves/their village from Saola presence.

Date: Page 2 Social desirability Might the interviewee be distorting or inventing information, in order to present him/herself or his/her community in a better light; without possible material advantage? Might cultural norms discourage interviewees from sharing information? Think about: Prowess and pride; Modesty and secretiveness; Specific cultural norms.

Cognitive processes How might the interviewee be thinking as he/she tries to answer the interviewer’s question? Think about: ‘Telescoping’; Rules of inference; ‘Anchoring’; Overconfidence.

Appendix B: Village Interview Surveys Review form: Guidance

In this appendix, we first present some issues to think about for surveys on Saola. These are organized according to a taxonomy of sources of bias and error, which we’ve developed and which might be revised in future. The aim of the taxonomy is to get researchers to think about the many different possible sources of error.

The list of issues to think about is definitely NOT intended to be comprehensive. It’s intended as an aid to thinking only. There might be many other reasons which we don’t cover here.

This section has two purposes

1. To assist with filling in the interview survey form (appendix A) after an interview survey. 2. To help researchers and database managers fill in the trust and doubt boxes in the Saola Record database (see database guidance)

In neither case are you expected to cover everything which is written below, just to think about it.

For 1, we suggest that you read through this guidance before filling in each section on the form. Think whether any of the issues listed in each section might be important for this survey. Can you think of any other related reasons. It isn’t really important whether you write the issues in the correct sections; the sections are there as an aid to thought.

For 2, we don’t suggest reading all this every time you fill in a trust and doubt box but, if you are filling in many, read this at the beginning and come back to it now and again – making additions if appropriate.

The list of issues to think about is for Saola surveys. For other species issues of identity will be more complex and also more important.

Issues to think about for interview surveys of Saola records: Identity & general issues.

Sampling How did the interviewers find the interviewees? NB: This isn’t relevant to individual records, only to whole interview surveys Selection of interviewees: Did the interviewers try to find people who are likely to have seen Saola? Or people who were knowledgeable about the forest in general? Or did they try and meet people at random? Or some combination of the above strategies? Access: How easy was it to find the people you were looking for? Was there any sector of the population that it was difficult to find, or difficult to interview –e.g. because they were out in the fields much of the day, or in the forest in that month of the year? Time: How long did the interviewer/s have in a village in order to find people they wanted to interview? Brokers and guides: Were the interviewers introduced to the interviewees by anyone – e.g. a local official – and might that person have had any particular motivation in selecting the people he/she introduced you to? Finding people who have really seen Saola: How might this process be biased towards, or away from, the people who really have seen Saola? Finding people who are good interviewees: How might this process be biased towards, or away from, people who might give reliable information in interviews (see all the issues discussed below). Knowledge level Did the interviewees ever know the answer? Can they recognize the species if they see or capture it? Is there any evidence they are familiar with the species? Can they describe the species accurately? Do they describe the particular individual animal they saw? Did they see it well? Did they really see it at all, or are they in fact talking about sign, or a sighting by someone else? Have they seen many in their life? Do they refer mostly to types of evidence with a high confidence (captures and sightings) or to those with low confidence (sign)? NB: For Saola, a distinctive species, these problems are likely to be less than with some species. Memorability Do the interviewees remember? If people in an area do not remember Saola sightings or captures, then there will be a systematic bias in that area against reporting them. People are more likely to remember things which are rare, which are recent, and which are interesting to them. In areas where Saola are relatively common, or where most sightings were more than 10 years ago, sightings are likely to be under-reported. People who are more interested in animals (e.g. specialized hunters) are more likely to remember sightings. People are more likely to remember sightings after publicity campaigns about Saola in their area, or after interest in Saola shown by outsiders. Comprehension Does the interviewee understand the questions as the interviewer intends, and does the interviewer understand the answers as the interviewee intends? Language: what language are the interviews being conducted in and how well do the interviewees understand that language? Species names: Do the interviewers use the national name (Saola) or a local name, or both, to discuss the species? If the national name, are you sure that local people mean the same animal as you do with this name? If local names, are you sure this name really refers to Saola? See ‘knowledge level’ above. Do people in this area have one consistent name for the species? NB: With Saola this is generally the case, although apparently not for ethnic Kinh people living around Vu Quang National Park. Talking about other people’s records: Do they understand you are talking about times when they personally (not someone else) has seen the animal (not footprints or other sign) in the forest (not caught and brought back to the village)? Honesty Might the interviewees think that, by lying to the interviewer, they might gain a material advantage or avoid a risk? There are two possible kinds of lying about identity: 1) People tell you they haven’t seen Saola when they have; 2) People tell you they have seen Saola when they haven’t. Fear of talking about illegal activity: Do you think people are aware that Saola are a protected species? What are the legal restrictions on hunting and forest use in the area and do you think people are aware of them? NB: Don’t ask either of these things directly! Or anyway not until after your interviews – see Order effect below. Reasons to invent record: Do you think people might want to pretend that they have seen Saola when they haven’t? Might they perceive some benefit to themselves or their village in the future? e.g. that you might hire then as a guide; that projects might work there in future or just that they and their village would not be implicated in having hunted out the Saola if Saola are still there (see social desirability). Evidence of dishonesty: Have you any direct evidence that people have been lying to you about other matters? What impression does the interviewee give? Do they seem open and honest, or nervous or reticent? Social desirability Might the interviewee be distorting or inventing information, in order to present him/herself or his/her community in a better light; without possible material advantage? Might cultural norms discourage interviewees from sharing information? Prowess and pride: It is possible that a proud hunter would not like to admit he had never seen a Saola and so would invent a sighting. Also possible that someone who had some Saola horns but had not hunted the animal himself, might pretend that he had. Modesty and secretiveness: Alternatively an individual, or a community, might tend towards modesty about hunting or forest use, or they might be secretive and unwilling to talk much with outsiders about their lives in general, or the forest in particular. Is it possible that you did not meet the experienced forest users because they let other people do the talking? Specific cultural norms: e.g. in ethnic groups where hunters are supposed to share meat with the community, a hunter might not want to mention an animal he had, in fact, sold to outsiders. Spiritual beliefs might also encourage secrecy. Cognitive processes How might the interviewee be thinking as he/she tries to answer the interviewer’s question? Rules of inference: Is it possible that, rather than remembering that they have seen a Saola, people are inferring that they must have seen a Saola; or that a particular animal they saw must have been a Saola? For example if they have reason to believe that Saola are present in the area, and think they must have seen all the animals which are present, then they may assume they have seen Saola at some point. Overconfidence: Are people likely to be overconfident in their identification; stating that they have seen saola when the evidence is not strong. NB: This is particularly likely with tracks and other sign. Hunters often use rules of inference based on habitat in track identification Response effects How might the way that the interviewer/s ask questions affect the (questions) answers? Leading questions and ‘yes effect’: Did the interviewer ask any potentially leading questions about sightings? ‘have you seen a Saola?’ can be a leading question because of the ‘yes effect’. 'Where did you catch that Saola?' (indicating horns on wall) is a leading question because the animal might have been caught by someone else. Did they ask any potentially leading questions in the process of getting a description of the animal? Threatening or sensitive questions? E.g questions about illegal hunting or other illegal activities. Questions about protected status or rarity of Saola. Order effect: Did the interviewer ask any potentially sensitive questions before asking about Saola sightings? Did the interviewer say anything that might encourage the interviewee to invent Saola sightings (see honesty above)?

Response effects How might the interviewees respond to this particular (interviewer) interviewer/team because of the interviewer’s status, affiliation, attitude or manner? Status and deference: How would interviewees perceive the interviewer’s social status, might they see him/her/them as important person/s and hence be more likely to agree with leading questions or to tell them what they think they want to hear? Affiliation: Is/are the interviewer/s likely to be associated by the interviewees with law enforcement (rightly or wrongly) because of who the interviewer/s work for? Do they represent an organization which the interviewees know? Are the interviewees likely to trust that organization? Attitude and manner: Is/are the interviewer/s in any way threatening? Do they appear knowledgeable about the forest and its animals? (this can be a good thing or a bad thing) Inappropriate helpfulness: Does the interviewer come across as someone who needs help? Might the interviewees give false or distorted information because they are trying to help the interviewer in his/her work? E.g. “pretend there are Saola here because then this poor student will have something to say in his/her thesis.” Interviewer effects How likely are the interviewers to understand the answers that the interviewee gives to their questions? Experience: Does/do the interviewer/s have much experience of interviewing: in general; about animals; in this area or with this ethnic group? Do they have much knowledge of mammal species? Misconceptions: Might the interviewer/s have any misconceptions about the area,which would influence their interpretation of the results – e.g. might they have been using an incorrect local name for saola on some or all of the interviews. Critical treatment of information: Might the interviewer/s be over-confident in the validity of interview data, perhaps because of a too-high regard for the knowledge of (all) local people about (all) animals or because of an under-appreciation of any of the factors above. Expectations and confirmation bias: Do the interviewers have any existing beliefs about whether Saola are present in the area, which might cause them to be under-critical or over-critical of records which contradict those beliefs? Data-thinking: Are the interviewer/s people who understand the idea of collecting data, as opposed to information? Alternatively, might they something on a record form because they think it’s true, not because that particular interviewee actually said it? Motivations: Do the interviewees have any vested interest in showing that Saola are/are not present in the area, which might consciously or subconsciously affect their interpretation of interviewees’ reports? Audience effect Who else, apart from the interviewer/s and interviewee was present at the interview and how may their presence have contributed to any of the effects above? See Response effects (Interviewer), Honesty and Social Desirability above.

Location: Issues to think about for interview surveys of Saola records

Sampling How did the interviewers find the interviewees? NB: This isn’t relevant to individual records, but to whole interview surveys Selection of villages relative to geographic area: Is a community map of village-use zones available for the area. If so, did the interviewer/s visit enough villages to cover the whole area of interest? Are there any parts of the area of interest for which no relevant people were interviewed? Coverage of forest area by local population: Are there any parts of the landscape where local people don’t go, or go very little? E.g. remote or inaccessible areas, spiritually taboo areas? Are there any areas where local people go a lot; and are there Saola records from these areas? Do any data exist on this? (e.g. ‘beaning’ data - see community mapping handbook) Sampling of interviewees relative to geographic area: See the section on sampling in the general issues above. For any of these reasons, or any other reason, might the interviewer surveys been biased against, or towards, people who visit particular kinds of areas? – e.g. people who visit remote areas, people who do not enter taboo areas. Knowledge level Did the interviewees ever know the answer? Some people, particularly younger people or people not native to the area, do not know all the names of the streams. However, in this case, they are probably more likely to give an imprecise than an inaccurate answer unless leading questions are asked (see below). With second-hand reports, however, there is a strong chance that people do not know the real location and will make incorrect assumptions. Memorability Do the interviewees remember? Knowledge of landscape: Do interviewees have a detailed, fine-resolution, knowledge of the forest and place names? Do places in the forest have consistent names within the local community? If so, people are more likely to remember places of captures. Unexpected places: In general people would be more likely to remember a place which is unusual, either because Saola are not normally found there, or because they do not normally go there. On the other hand, records reported from the main use area of the village or from places which are widely believed to have Saola are more likely to be mis-remembered. Descriptions of places: If the interviewers ask for, and the interviewees give detailed description of what the animal was doing when they saw it, what type of forest it was in, etc, it is more likely they remember he place accurately. NB: If the animal was caught in a snare, it is unlikely that the location is in error as the hunter has taken care to set the snare and will have devoted at least several months of effort to the location. If the animal was shot or merely sighted, it is more possible that this is in error. Comprehension Does the interviewee understand the questions as the interviewer intends, and does the interviewer understand the answers as the interviewee intends? Language: what language are the interviews being conducted in and how well do the interviewees understand that language? Place names: The interviewer might use place names which the interviewee does not know. This is especially likely if the names are taken from published maps, but can also happen with community maps. The interviewee might use place names which the interviewer misinterprets because they are similar to, or exactly the same as, the name of another place. This is very common. Maps: The interviewee might not understand maps they are shown by the interviewer. This is more likely if published maps are used but still quite likely with community maps, especially if this interviewee was not involved in making the map. The interviewee may not be able to read text on the map. Conversely, if the interviewee draws a map (sketch map) the interviewer is very likely to misinterpret it. Inappropriate questions: The interviewer and interviewee might talk about the landscape in different ways; words for landscape features can mean different things to interviewer and interviewee. Measures of walking time and distance translate very badly and should mostly be avoided. Honesty Might the interviewees think that, by lying to the interviewer, they might gain a material advantage or avoid a risk? Fear of talking about illegal activity: If there is a protected area nearby, people may not want to tell you that they caught an animal inside it. Also they may not want to admit that they caught an animal in the traditional hunting ground of another village. Or there can be a general perception that hunting near to the village is more permissible, perhaps because of its role in crop protection. People in Vietnam may feel that it is permissible to admit to hunting animals in Lao, but not in Vietnam. Visiting nearer places to save effort. If you are visiting the site yourself, an interviewee hired as a guide might take you to a nearer place to avoid the walk to the real sighting location. It is also possible that an interviewee might do this because they think you might hire them as a guide in future. The reverse is also possible; they would give a distant location so that you would have to hire them for longer in order to get there. Evidence of dishonesty: Have you any direct evidence that people have been lying to you about other matters? What impression does the interviewee give? Do they seem open and honest, or nervous or reticent? Social desirability Might the interviewee be distorting or inventing information, in order to present him/herself or his/her community in a better light; without possible material advantage? Might cultural norms discourage interviewees from sharing information? Prowess and pride: Is it possible that a proud hunter might pretend that he caught a Saola in a more remote or inaccessible location than he actually did? Modesty and secretiveness: Conversely, is it possible that people might pretend they caught or saw Saola in well-known or well-used locations because they do not like to provide unusual or new information to strangers, or do not like to admit to visiting remote areas? Specific cultural norms: e.g. do people not want to admit going, or hunting, outside of their traditional village area, official village area (Lao), community forest, or commune? Cognitive processes How might the interviewee be thinking as he/she tries to answer the interviewer’s question? Rules of inference: Is it possible that, rather than remembering where they saw the animal, people are inferring that they must have seen it in a certain location because that is where they normally go, or because that is where Saola are believed to be found, or for some other reason? Overconfidence: People are likely to be overconfident in their assertion that the animal was seen in a particular area. Response effects How might the way that the interviewer/s ask questions affect the (questions) answers? Leading questions and ‘yes effect’: Did the interviewer ask any potentially leading questions about sightings? ‘have you seen a Saola?’ can be a leading question because of the ‘yes effect’. 'Where did you catch that Saola?' (indicating horns on wall) is a leading question because the animal might have been caught by someone else. Did they ask any potentially leading questions in the process of getting a description of the animal? Threatening or sensitive questions? E.g questions about illegal hunting or other illegal activities. Questions about protected status or rarity of Saola. Order effect: Did the interviewer ask any potentially sensitive questions before asking about Saola sightings? Did the interviewer say anything that might encourage the interviewee to invent Saola sightings (see honesty above)? Response effects How might the interviewees respond to this particular (interviewer) interviewer/team because of the interviewer’s status, affiliation, attitude or manner? See general issues above. Status and deference may apply, Affiliation of the interviewer with some geographically situated body (e.g. a protected area or a provincial body) may bias interviewees towards, or against reporting records inside that area. A similar bias is likely if the interviewer/s have already given some indication which areas they are interested in, or they have been discussing particular areas with interviewees, or in an earlier village meeting. The interviewer might also reveal a geographical bias to the community through the survey title on their official permission letter, or through their thesis title if they are a student. This might lead to inappropriate helpfulness (see general issues section) as well as assumptions about affiliation. Interviewer effects How likely are the interviewers to understand the answers that the interviewee gives to their questions? Experience: Does/do the interviewer/s have much knowledge of community mapping in general and with this ethnic group and communities? Have they been to the forest in the area? Do they have a good working knowledge of the map and of locally-used place-names? Do they tend to use the place names used by local people, or only those on published maps? Misconceptions: Might the interviewer/s have any misconceptions about which areas local people use? It is very common for interviewers to assume that the real use area of a community is smaller than it really is, or that local people keep within administrative boundaries (e.g. commune boundaries) when this is not the case. Consequently they may assume people are talking about nearby locations, when they actually mean more distant ones. Critical treatment of information: Might the interviewer/s be over-confident in the validity of interview data, perhaps because of a too-high regard for the knowledge of (all) local people about (all) place names or an under-appreciation of any of the factors above. Expectations and confirmation bias: Do the interviewers have any existing beliefs about the distribution of Saola in the area, which might cause them to be under-critical or over-critical of records which contradict their beliefs? Audience effect Who else, apart from the interviewer/s and interviewee was present at the interview and how may their presence have contributed to any of the effects above? See Response effects (Interviewer), Honesty and Social Desirability above.

Date: Issues to think about for interview surveys of Saola records Sampling How did the interviewers find the interviewees? NB: This isn’t relevant to individual records, but to whole interview surveys Selection of people relative to period of forest use: See Sampling in the Identity and General Issues section above. For any of these reasons, might the interviewers have been more likely to meet people who went to the forest or went hunting long ago? Or who did not go hunting in the area long ago, but only recently? For example would they have been more likely to meet older people, or younger people? Would they have been more likely to meet people who do not use the forest any more (because those who still use the forest were in the forest at the time of the interviews)? Coverage of time periods relative to local population: Is there any reason to think that many people in the community are visiting the forest – or particular areas of the forest, more or less than in the past? NB: Even if the total amount of hunting is increasing, many people may still be hunting less, if there are more specialist and/or outsider hunters in the area than in the past. Village movements: Have villages moved in the last 20 years? What is known about the location of villages in each time period? NB: The population of a modern village might have been divided between several villages in the past. Knowledge level Do the interviewees know the answer? Did the interviewees know the calendar year at the time that they saw/caught the animal? This is more likely with people who are not closely connected to the national society. People who are well connected now might not have been in the past, so might not have been aware of the calendar year in 1980, even if they are aware of it in 2010. If people give the time from the present (e.g. ‘5 years ago’) this is less of a problem – though there are other problems (see below). If important events are used as time markers, are all the interviewees really likely to know when that event occurred? (see also Comprehension, below). Memorability How likely are they to remember an event? Even if the calendar year number is known at the time of the sighting/capture, it can be very easily forgotten. If they give time back from the present, the question is whether they can accurately remember the length of time since the sighting. In general people are not good at remembering this (see cognitive effects below) but may remember better if it was an eventful period. Using memorable events as time markers are often the best way (but see ‘anchoring’ under ‘cognitive effects’ below) but some events are more memorable than others. Not all things are memorable to everybody in the village. Time markers are likely to work best if they are thematically and/or causally linked to the sighting/capture. So markers which relate to the forest in general, or to hunting in particular are especially good. Comprehension Does the interviewee understand the questions as the interviewer intends, and does the interviewer understand the answers as the interviewee intends? Language: what language are the interviews being conducted in and how well do the interviewees understand that language? Different ways of talking about time: It is quite possible that an interviewee may talk about time in a way that the interviewer does not really understand. It is apparently common for people to use the phrase ‘last year’ to mean ‘recently’. Time markers also present opportunities for misunderstanding. For example ‘the year the national park was established’ might not mean the date of the original government decision, but the date when the community was informed, or it might mean the date when national park activities began to affect local people in that village. Honesty Might the interviewees think that, by lying to the interviewer, they might gain a material advantage or avoid a risk? There is a strong likelihood that interviewees will claim captures were further in the past than they were either because of a perception that hunting became illegal at a certain date, or a more general impression that they are less likely to be prosecuted for offences farther in the past. Comprehension Do the interviewees understand the questions that the interviewer asks? It is quite possible that an interviewee may talk about time in a way that the interviewer does not really understand. It is apparently common for people to use the phrase ‘last year’ to mean ‘recently’. Time markers also present opportunities for misunderstanding. For example ‘the year the national park was established’ might not mean the date of the original government decision, but the date when the community was informed; or the date when national park activities began to affect people in that village. Social desirability Might the interviewee be distorting or inventing information, in order to present him/herself or his/her community in a better light; without possible material advantage? Might cultural norms discourage interviewees from sharing information? It might be socially desirable to have seen the animal recently, perhaps to demonstrate forest knowledge. Alternatively it might be desirable to have last seen the animal long ago, perhaps to demonstrate that one no longer needs to visit the forest often. Cognitive processes How might the interviewee be thinking as he/she tries to answer the interviewer’s question? ‘Telescoping’ is a well-known effect with recall; people tend to remember events as more recent than they truly were. Rules of inference are commonly used with event recall; for example ‘they are rare so I imagine I see one every 5 years, therefore I probably saw one 5 years ago.’ People are likely to show overconfidence in calendar year numbers. ‘Anchoring’ is a cognitive phenomenon likely to occur if you use time markers, or if you discuss more than one event with the same interviewee (see ‘order effect’ below). The interviewee thinks something like ‘the date the road was built; it was about 3 years before that.’ People typically do not adjust enough. So, in this case, it is likely that it was actually more than 3 years before the road was built. Response effects How might the way that the interviewer/s ask questions affect the (questions) answers? Leading questions: Be particularly careful. In Vietnamese it is typical to ask about timing of events with questions like: “this year?” or “long ago?” These are leading questions; simply “when was it?” is more appropriate. Order effect: Did the interviewer ask any other questions about the timing of any events before asking about the timing of the record/s. Such questions might be about other records of Saola or other species, or general questions about village or personal history and time markers –see ‘anchoring’ under ‘cognitive effects’ above. If questions are asked about the timing of protection measures (e.g. protected area establishment, gun confiscation) this may also have an effect on later questions about timing of sightings (see ‘honesty’ above. Response effects How might the interviewees respond to this particular (interviewer) interviewer/team because of the interviewer’s status, affiliation, attitude or manner? See 'honesty' above and also ‘response effects (interviewer)’ for ‘Identity and general’ above Interviewer effects How likely are the interviewers to understand the answers that the interviewee gives to their questions? Experience: See under general issues and identity above. As date is often the most difficult thing to ask about, experience is particularly important. Misconceptions: Might the interviewer have any misconceptions about the time period over which people in the area used to go/started going to the forest, or the age at which individuals might start or stop going, which might have led them to misinterpret answers? Critical treatment of information: Are the interviewers perhaps over-confident about local people’s ability to remember dates accurately; do they record how the date was reported by the interviewee, or do they just give a calendar year number? Expectations and confirmation bias: Do the interviewers have any prior beliefs about whether Saola have been extirpated, and when this might be, or about whether they still survive in the area. Do they interviewers have any motivation to believe that Saola have been extirpated/still survive, which might subconsciously influence them? Audience effect Who else, apart from the interviewer/s and interviewee was present at the interview and how may their presence have contributed to any of the effects above? See Response effects (Interviewer), Honesty and Social Desirability above.

Appendix H: Is it possible to identify Saola sign?

Footprints, dung and feeding sign are very hard to identify with certainty, even for species which are well known, and the tracks of ungulates are particularly difficult. If a survey team reports seeing a Saola track, it is likely that they haven't identified it themselves, but have relied on their local guide to identify it for them. My own impression from working with people of the Katu ethnic group in Thua Thien Hue and Quang Nam is that people I have employed as guides cannot be relied on to make an accurate identification for three reasons:

1. they vary greatly in their expertise, 2. they are generally willing to make a tentative identification even when they are not sure but they do not report their own uncertainty (for example I and a guide were once following tracks of an animal which he claimed was a sambar for about 20 minutes; then we found a footprint where the dew-claws were visible and he changed his mind 'oh, actually it's a big pig – their tracks can look like sambar' it turned out that he identified tracks based on size alone) 3. they often base their identification on features of the habitat rather than on features of the sign itself (e.g 'these muntjac tracks must belong to the small muntjac species because we're in primary forest and that's where that species lives') 4. they are often under pressure from researchers to 'produce' a saola track (I once heard my guides arguing at length in the Katu language about the identification of a particular track. They went through every possible identification before confidently telling me it was made by a Saola)

Even if an acknowledged expert accompanies the survey team and makes the identification, there is little more reason to trust their judgement. Davison, Birks, Brookes, Braithwaite, & Messenger, (2002) showed using genetic testing that three acknowledged experts in Britain were unable to distinguish the dung of the pine marten (Martes martes) from that of the red fox (Vulpes vulpes). These two species of small carnivore were described by Linnaeus in 1758 and are extremely well known. The three experts involved in the study were routinely employed to survey these species and confidently identified many samples of pine marten dung. However many of these samples were actually fox dung. The level of misidentification increased to 97% in places where pine marten were rare. This shows clearly that the confidence of acknowledged experts in their own identification is not a good indication of its accuracy. The problem can also apply to local experts. Hibert, Fritz, Poilecot, Abdou, & Dulieu (2008) found that a group of game scouts and local hunters in the West Niger National Park in West Africa, incorrectly identified 30% of ungulate dung samples collected from the park.

In 2004 a workshop was held in Pu Mat National Park (Hardcastle, Cox, Nguyen Thi Dao, & Johns, 2004) to which specialists from Hanoi University, the Forestry University, Vinh University, Hue University, the Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources, the Forestry Inventory and Planning Institute, and other forestry and environmental scientists were invited. A poster showing track traces was shown at the workshop, all of which were from a Serow except one genuine Saola print. No-one was able to identify the Saola print (U. Streicher, unpublished data)

Reference:

Davison, A., Birks, J. D. S., Brookes, R. C., Braithwaite, T. C., & Messenger, J. E. (2002). On the origin of faeces: morphological versus molecular methods for surveying rare carnivores from their scats. Journal of Zoology, 257(02), 141-143. SAOLA RECORD

DATASHEET

Please use one of these sheets for one Saola record. A record is when an individual Saola, or Saola sign, was seen in a parti cular place at a particular time by a particular person or group of people. A new sighting means a new sheet, even if you think it was of the same individual animal. Is this a Field or Interview record? (please tick one box only): In the field □ Interview □ Record code...... (please give the record a code according to the guidelines) Who recorded the information about this Saola (in the forest/village) Researcher 1 name:...... Department/organization...... Researcher 2 name:...... Department/organization......

INDEPENDENCE AND TRIANGULATION Are there other records from this survey which may be the same as this record? i.e. 2 or more interviewees went to the forest together and saw a Saola/sign of Saola in the same place at the same time. Please explain and give the record code or the name or code of the other interviewee.……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Is it possible that previous researchers also collected information about this record? yes □ no □ Please explain………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………….. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

FOR INTERVIEW RECORDS. WHEN AND WHERE WAS THE INTERVIEW? Village...... Commune(VN)…...... District...... Province...... Country...... Co-ordinates...... E...... N; system………………… if possilble please use UTM WG S84 Interviewee; Name or code...... ; Date of interview: day...... month...... year...... Type of interview: Group □; Individual □; informal/free □; other□ Did the interviewee see the Saola/sign in the forest: yes□; no □; not clear□ (please tick one box only) If not, who did see it?......

EVIDENCE OF SAOLA What kind of evidence of Saola did the researcher/interviewee see in the forest? (tick one or more boxes) Saola was caught□; Seen□; Camera trap record□; Dung found□; Footprints□; Signs of eating leaves □; Signs of Saola breaking plants □; Other sign□; Believed to be present□ Did the researcher see remains of this Saola (skull/horns or other parts)? Yes □ No□ Were any of the following collected? Genetic sample (dung or specimen) □; Photograph□.; Plaster cast of footprint□ We might not believe this information is really about a Saola for the following reasons:

We can believe this information is really about a Saola for the following reasons:

(To determine the accuracy of information; please write information in BOTH the boxes above if you can)

NOTES: e.g. Describe the place: forest type, streams, rivers, waterfalls. What was the animal doing?

WHERE WAS THIS SAOLA/SAOLA SIGN SEEN/CAUGHT? Village...... Commune(VN)…...... District...... Province...... Country...... Name of the place in the forest...... Co-ordinates...... E...... N system………………… if possilble pleas e use U TM WGS84 This saola was recorded within the following distance of these co-ordinates: 100m□; 1km□; 2km□;3km□;4km□;5km□;10km□;>10km□ How was the location recorded? With a GPS□; Visited by researcher but no GPS □; Interviewee pointed to a visible landscape feature □; Interviewee indicated place on georeferenced map □; Interviewee gave place name and place has been visited by researchers □; Interviewee gave place name and place appears on georeferenced maps □; Interviewee gave a place name which is known from description/sketch map □; Interviewee described location □; Other □; unknown □ We might not believe this record location is correct because:

We might believe this record location is correct because:

(To determine the accuracy of information; please write information in BOTH the boxes above if you can) Did other interviewees on this survey confirm the location of this Saola record? Who? (Please give record code or interviewee code/name……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

WHEN WAS THIS SAOLA/SAOLA SIGN SEEN/CAUGHT? Day ……Month…... Year…………. (fill in only the information you have) With interview records you might not have precise information, you do not need to fill in the day or the month. Or you can give the approximate time: Between year………….and year…………….; between month…………….and month……………..season……………………………… How was the time of this record recorded? (With field surveys, an exact time should be available, but with interviews, one must rely on the interviewee ’s memory) Recorded at the time (field records only) □; memory-year name given □; memory-how long ago □; memory- reference to events □; memory-village history □; memory-personal history □; memory (details not recorded) □. Notes on events: ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. We might not believe this record time is correct because:

We might believe this record time is correct because:

(To determine the accuracy of information; please write information in BOTH the boxes above if you can) Did other interviewees on this survey confirm the date of this Saola record? Who? (Please give record code or interviewee code/name……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

INFORMATION ABOUT THIS INDIVIDUAL SAOLA (IF AVAILABLE) Sex: Male□ Female□; How do you know this? ...... Age: Not yet adult □; Adult□ How do you know this?......

Weight...... (hunters sometimes give the weight of individuals they have caught).

Datasheets for interviews about ungulate species in the Annamite Mountains (1 person being interviewed → 1 datasheet) Province…………………...….District………..…….…………Commune………………………Village………………….…… Date……./……./……... Interviewee code…….. Age………… Sex …………….Ethnic group.…………….. All interview researchers:...... Department/Organization…………………………………………………………………………………………….. How do you know this person?(knowing that he knew about animals/the forest□ about sao la□ met randomly□ Did you know that he had seen Saola before you met him? yes □ no□ 1) We are collecting information about forest animals for a research project. To help us understand better about the information we would like to ask you a few questions about wild animals and your knowledge and your use of the forest. We will follow two principles in the process of project implementation. First we will not disclose any information about interviewees which would allow anyone to identify them; for this reason we will not write your name on this datasheet and well not give any information to anyone which would allow them to identify you. Second we want to know that you are willing to partipate in this interview. If you do not want to answer any particular question we will not force you to answer. Do you agree to participate in this interview? Yes □ / no □ 2) Animals you have seen:  Please fill in all questions. Do not leave any box empty on this sheet. If they have never seen this species write ‘not seen’ on the datasheet. If you did not ask that question, please write ‘NA’ (not asked). If you asked byt they did not answer, please write ‘DNA’ (Did not answer). If they answered that they did not know or could not remember, please write ‘DN’ (Didn’t know) on the datasheet.  Write the time in the way which the interviewee gives it (e.g. ‘in 2007’, ‘last year’, ‘before the war’, ‘when I was 23’ etc. Species According to the interviewee Interviewee Has seen Last time he/she saw it (in the flesh) Notes on THIS RECORD definitely it? (e.g. footprints, other Local name 2-3 identification marks knows this (in the = was people who saw it, etc). species? flesh, in the Was when? Was where? Notes on the SPECIES (write in the same way the caught? forest) write below. interviewee says it) name of place co-ordinates radius /km Sambar yes yes yes no no no ? Serow yes yes yes no no no ? Saola yes yes yes no no no ? Muntjac 1 yes yes yes no no no ? Muntjac 2 yes yes yes no no no ? Muntjac 3 yes yes yes no no no ? Mousedeer yes yes yes no no no ? 1

Village………………….…… Date……./……./……... Interviewee code…….. Species According to the interviewee Interviewee Has seen Last time he/she saw it (in the flesh) Notes on THIS RECORD definitely it? (e.g. footprints, other knows this (in the people who saw it, etc). = was species? flesh, in the Was when? Was where? Notes on the SPECIES (write in the same way the caught? Local name 2-3 identification marks forest ) name of place co-ordinates radius write below. interviewee says it) /km Rhinoceros yes yes yes no no no ? Elephant yes yes yes no no no ? Gaur yes yes yes no no no ? Wild pig 1 yes yes yes commoner no no no type ? Wild pig 2 yes yes yes rarer type no no no ? Other kinds yes yes yes of ungulate no no no ?

3) If this interviewee says they know 2 types of wild pig: How do they describe the difference between the 2 types. Does he/she think that one type is the male and the other the female of a single species, or does he/she really think they are two separate species. Do the two kinds like in one place or are they found in different places and habitats?

4) Notes on interesting species e.g. rhinoceros, Saola, types of muntjac or pig which might be new species, elephant, gaur. If he/she saw these species was it only one time? If not, how many times? Information about places where it was seen, what wa s it doing…

2 Village………………….…… Date……./……./……... Interviewee code……..

5. In your opinion, what kinds of mammals have been completely lost (no more seen or caught) since you first started going to th e forest (describe the species and the time since when no more were seen)

6. In your opinion, other than those species, which species are the rarest in the forest?

7. In your opinion, other than those species, which species have become rarer (seen less often) in the last 10 years (describe)

8. In your opinion why have those species declined or been lost?

9. In your opinion, is there any species which has not declined (there are the same number or more of them as 10 years ago)? Which species?

10. In your opinion, has wild pig declined, increased or state the same compared to the number 10 years ago? declined□ increased □ the same□

11. . In your opinion, has red muntjac/common muntjac declined, increased or state the same compared to the number 10 years ago? declined□ increased □ the same□

12. What was the last time you saw hunters from another area in the forest? (people from other provinces coming…)

13. Does the interviewee keep any bones of animals in his/her house? If so, you could look for specimens of Saola or the rarer wi ld pig.

14. After the interview finished How is the interviewee’s knowledge about forest animals? Very good □, Good □, Average □, Below average □, Knows little □,

15. Please write notes about whether you think the information given by the interviewee is accurate? (for example, did he/she change what he/she had said how was their attitude? Had he/she drunk something? If you don’t write anything int his box the information from this interview will be given the lo west score.

3 APPENDIX E: UNGULATES OF THE ANNAMITE REGION: KEY IDENTIFICATION POINTS FOR INTERVIEW SURVEYS

Pig species (Lợn/Heo) As with muntjacs, pigs can be difficult to ask about. It is best to ask first about pigs and then to ask how many types there are. As far as science is concerned there is only one type of pig in the area, which may be called Sus scrofa or Sus moupinensis depending on the taxonomy used. However local people of different ethnic groups do frequently report two distinct types of pig. The situation is confused by the following points.

1) People can have different names for different sex/age categories of pigs. Adult male pigs tend to be solitary and are much larger than the females and young males who travel in groups. Very young pigs are striped. You can ask directly to check this. If someone says there are two (or more) kinds of pig ask if there are there males and females of both types.

2) Some people consider the hog-badger (Arctonyx collaris), a Carnivore with a long, flexible, pig-like nose, to be a kind of pig. Try asking ‘what are the feet like?’ A hog badger’s feet are clawed, like a bear’s. It also has a short bushy tail. Hog badgers are smaller than real adult pigs and never travel in groups.

3) Pigs are domesticated and domestic pigs can escape and run wild and can interbreed with wild pigs to produce odd-looking forms.

4) Pigs don’t have any obvious, easily-describable features like horns or colour patterns. Different species of pig tend to look quite similar to untrained observers.

Main features:

 Length of snout

 Colour (as always, check with a visible, known object)

 Size of animal (relative to other pigs)

 White or pale markings on face or elsewhere.

 Travels in groups or is solitary.

 Fattiness of meat.

 Fangs (describe)

 Rarity

 Habitat.

 Seasonality of movement – are they found in different parts of the forest at different times of year.

Sambar (Nai)

Main features.

 Horns are branched (antlers) with 3 or more points on fully developed horns [but note that horns are shed every year and they grow their branches slowly so a young horn may have 2 or even just one branch]  Males have horns females do not [does not separate from muntjacs]  Much larger than muntjacs, about as tall as a cow.

Other features

Often in groups. Colour is nondescript, fairly dark dull brown. Tail is black above and white or yellow underneath. Patch of bare, or nearly bare skin on front of the neck. Not spotted. Horns are shed. Generally rare but formerly common – if an interviewee says sambar are common, he may be talking about muntjacs.

Likely to be confused with

Muntjacs – particularly Large-Antlered Muntjac.

Muntjac species (Mang/Hoẵng) Muntjacs are the most difficult of these species to ask about.

Science currently recognises 3 species of muntjac in the Annamites. However the true number is uncertain. There may be more than one species of small dark muntjac.

Our experience so far suggests that most local people will group these muntjacs together as different kinds of the same thing, the same as scientists do. However they don’t necessarily have consistent names for them. A dark muntjac which lives in the deep forest might be called ‘dark muntjac’ by some people in the village and ‘deep forest muntjac’ by others.

The best way to ask about muntjacs is to first ask about muntjacs in general and then ask how many kinds there are and then ask people to describe those different kinds. But be careful; people do not necessarily recognise the same kinds as we do. In addition, other species – especially mousedeer but also, perhaps, hog deer – can be classified as muntjacs by local people. It isn’t always obvious when this is happening especially if these species (mousedeer and hog deer) are now rare or extinct locally and people cannot remember them well enough to describe them accurately.

For this reason, the datasheet simply asks for ‘Mang 1, Mang 2, Mang 3, Mang 4’. You should list all the kinds of muntjac which the interviewee recognises and describe them as he/she describes them.

But you still need to know the features which are useful for distinguishing species.

Main features

 Colour. As always when asking about colour, ask people to refer to something else, preferably a visible object. Muntjacs are likely to be reddish, dark greyish/blackish/brownish or nondescript grey- brown.  Size of animal. Relative to other muntjac species.  Which sexes have antlers? Males, females or both, or neither.  Habitat. Old forest/young forest. Near the village and farms or far from villages. Other features.

 Fangs. Are fangs present? Are they present in females? [this is actually a very useful feature but most people probably won’t remember]  Antler size. Relative to other muntjac species and to sambar.  Branched horns (antlers) [Muntjacs have 1 or 2 points on their antlers but hog-deer have 3].

Muntjac species are likely to be confused with: 1) each other, 2) mousedeer, 3) hog deer, 4) sambar.

Hog deer NB: This species is probably extinct in the area and, unlike rhinoceros, we don’t think it is likely that interviews could reveal its presence. For this reason it is not on the datasheet. However it is possible that some interviewees will remember and describe this species so you should be aware of it.

Main features.

 Mature antlers have 3 points, in the male but are smaller than sambar antlers.

 Intermediate in size between muntjacs and sambar.

Other features. Found in grassy areas near rivers. May have white spots, but not necessarily, Shape of body, as well as size, seems intermediate between muntjacs and sambar. Often, but not necessarily, found in groups.

Likely to be confused with: Muntjacs and Sambar. If anyone does remember hog deer they are very likely to classify it as a kind of muntjac or as a kind of sambar.

Mousedeer/Chevrotain (Cheo cheo) Main features.

 Very small size, similar to rabbit or cat or large rat.

 Footprints are like those of muntjacs but much smaller (perhaps 1 or 2 cm – you can draw a footprint on paper if it helps)

 No horns/antlers.

Likely to be confused with: Muntjac species.

NB: 2 species of mousedeer may occur in the area. However we think it unlikely that interview surveys can distinguish them. If an interviewee does tell you there are two species of mousedeer you can ask about the colour of the animals’ backs and about the habitat they are found in.

Serow (Sơn Dưong) Main features

 Horns short (about 20cm) and strongly curved backwards.  Males and females have horns.  Dark colour – almost black.

Other features.

Found in steep slopes and rocky places. Fairly large size (bigger than muntjacs but smaller than sambar). Not found in groups. Horns are not shed. Shaggy hair. Mane on the neck, like a horse. Remains relatively common in some places.

Likely to be confused with:

Saola

Saola (Sao La) Main features

 Horns long (about 50 cm) quite straight and parallel but with a slight backward curve.  Clear white markings on face.  White markings on ankles and on tail, but not on body.

Other features.

Dark colour (but warmer, browner, than serow). Large flap of skin on each side of face (which conceals a gland). Generally very rare now and found in deep forest.

Likely to be confused with:

Serow

Gaur (Bò tót) Main features:

 Large size – at least as large as domestic cattle.

 Lower half of the leg is white.

 Horns thick and curving inward.

Other features: Dark colour. In form very similar to cow or buffalo. Generally rare. Often come out onto grassy or open places in forest. Often in groups.

NB: There are other species of wild cattle in Southeast Asia: Banteng, Kouprey and Wild Water Buffalo. We don’t expect any of these to occur in recent memory in the area for this survey. But if someone does claim there is more than one type of wild cattle, ask about the colour of the buttocks, the general colour of the females and the shape of the horns.

Rhinoceros (Tê Giác) Main features.

Although rhinoceros are very distinctive, they have been extinct in most of the landscape for such a long time, and there are many myths and stories about them. Make sure that people are talking about a real animal that they remember seeing and that they have not confused it with something else. Because rhinoceros are so rare, and because their footprints are distinctive – it is worth recording information about footprints but make it very clear that this is what you are doing.

 Large size (larger than cow or gaur but smaller than elephant)

 Horns on the nose (not on top of the head)

 Grey and wrinkled skin like elephant

 Very large footprints with clear toes (you can ask them to draw the footprint)

 Likes to wallow in muddy pools, like pigs.

NB: There are two species of rhinoceros in the area but it’s unlikely that the interviewee will tell them apart unless he has seen the animal well and recently. If he has done this, get all the information you can!

Elephant (Voi) Main features. Actually you don’t have to get people to describe elephants. This is probably the only animal for which misidentification is unlikely.