Knowledge and Attitudes About Wildlife of Primary and Secondary

Knowledge and attitudes about wildlife of primary and secondary students in rural and urban-schools in Dominica Jeanelle Brisbane1, Susan Jacobson1 1Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL

ABSTRACT

This study explored the knowledge level and attitudes about wildlife of primary and secondary, rural and urban school students in the Commonwealth of Dominica. A 30-item survey was distributed to 20 schools, and completed by 458 students (71% response rate).

Parrots and hummingbirds were ranked the most preferred animals and snakes were the least.

Students favored management plans for birds, frogs, agouti, and turtles, but suggested no management strategies for snakes, rats, lizards, and bats. Percentages of correct answers were below 50% for 13 out of 16 knowledge questions. A lack of significant difference among the four groups for knowledge, attitude, and behavior questions demonstrates that these views are widespread in Dominica, and do not improve with education level. This suggests the need for more effective environmental education and outreach programs in

Dominica.

Keywords: students, wildlife, knowledge, attitude, Dominica

INTRODUCTION

Conflict associated with the creation of the first national park in the Commonwealth of Dominica in 1975 made the Forestry, Wildlife, and Parks Division realize the need to improve public outreach to promote wildlife management (Christian et al, 1994). This realization stemmed from the challenges faced by the Dominican government when trying to preserve such a large area of land, 6857 ha, under conservation. The difficulty stemmed from the public not being properly involved and aware of the benefits of placing this land under protection instead of under development. In addition to a lack of management capability and political support (Thorsell, 1991).

A recent analysis of World Heritage biodiversity hotspots, of which Dominica’s first park, Morne Trois Piton National Park, became a part in 1997, revealed Dominica’s park, along with 18 other global properties like the Galapagos Islands, to be at the highest risk of climate change (Perry, 2011). With forests and other biodiversity hot spots under threat globally, it is necessary to instill in residents a sense of pride and appreciation of the ecosystem services provided by Dominica’s remaining forest through education and outreach programs (Jacobson et al, 2015). With the encouragement of Dominican citizens and its government, conservation on the island can potentially flourish and management to protect the island’s flora and fauna from further decline or alteration can be integrated with development. This could increase efficiency of creating conservation areas and promoting sustainability.

As ecotourism in Dominica approaches agriculture as a top earning industry, this has created a greater push for more environmentally sustainable communities (Slinger-Friedman,

2009). While Dominica has been dubbed the Nature Isle of the Caribbean in the tourism

industry, little research has been done to investigate the environmental attitudes and behavior of local people towards their local wildlife, with only a few studies focusing on ecotourism and park establishment (Wright, 1985). However, it has been long agreed by the Forestry,

Wildlife, and Parks Division that there needs to be a strong push for more environmental education and public outreach (Christian, 1989). To do this, the current knowledge, attitudes, and behavior of Dominicans towards wildlife must first be determined to serve as a basis for targeted programs. Humans decide whether conservation action is taken, therefore, research on the attitudes and behaviors of residents towards wildlife is critical to help improve public education approaches and the chance of implementing conservation actions to protect wildlife.

This study aims to evaluate the knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and interactions that

Dominican youth have towards wildlife. It is the goal of this study to identify current knowledge and beliefs in order to make recommendations for environmental education programs on the island and increased outreach efforts. This is vital for the survival and improvement of conservation efforts as modern youth must be engaged, despite trends of children being disconnected from the natural world, resulting in less interest for natural areas due to what is popularly called Nature-Deficit Disorder (Charles, 2009). Engagement with nature is necessary for effective environmental stewardship to occur. Furthermore, studies have suggested that educating children has a cascading effect on their family and local communities (Vaughan, 2010). Potentially, educating youth about the environment, allows children to pass on the information to their parents and both groups in turn may educate their neighbors who inform other community members. Therefore, targeting children can help

raise environmental awareness. In addition, most attitudes towards wildlife are formed as children (Ballouard et al, 2012).

This study explores the difference between rural and urban students’ attitudes towards nature in Dominica. We predict that rural students will have more knowledge about wildlife due to more exposure to wildlife than urban students. We will also compare student knowledge between primary and secondary school groups to evaluate any changes in knowledge and attitude towards the local wildlife as one goes through the Dominican education system.

The study addresses four questions:

1. How knowledgeable and concerned are young Dominicans of the existence of

endangered, threatened, or invasive species on the island?

2. What management actions would they support to protect native species?

3. How does knowledge, concern, and management support differ between 6th graders

vs. high school students?

4. How does knowledge, concern, and management support differ between children in

rural vs. urban schools?

The results of this research will identify gaps in environmental awareness and can serve

as baseline data for future environmental education programs.

METHODS

Sampling Sites

Dominica has a population of about 70,000 people, with no cities (defined as greater than 75,000 inhabitants) (2011 Dominica Population & Housing Census). A list of towns and their sizes were gathered from this most recent population census report. Based on a pattern of size and commercial activity, we defined urbanized areas as a town that had a population size of more than 2,000 residents. Towns that were in the immediate vicinity of an urbanized area were considered urban as well. Rural areas included towns of less than 2,000 people not adjoining an urban area, and all villages. The schools in each area were then divided into primary school and secondary school. Thus, four focal groups were created: primary urban, primary rural, secondary urban, and secondary rural.

Sampling Strategy

Dominica is split into four schools districts: the Northern, Southern, Eastern, and

Western Districts. A list of schools in each district was obtained from the Ministry of

Education stating school populations for the school year 2014-2015. Two maps for primary and secondary schools each were created to ensure that selected schools were representative of most communities on the island. Primary school populations were divided by seven and secondary students divided by five, based on grades in each education level to determine estimated student populations in 6th grade and 5th form. Schools predicted to have less than ten students were excluded from the survey as it would have been inefficient to include these institutions. A list of remaining schools in each district divided into rural and urban environs was randomized through a random list generator. The number of schools selected from this list depended on how many were necessary to meet the desired 150 student sample to be 5

surveyed in each of the four focal groups. The list included 11 primary rural schools with

176 students, 5 primary urban schools with 186 students, 2 secondary rural schools (the only

2 on the island) with 148 students, and 2 secondary urban schools with 139 students in the appropriate grades (6th grade or 5th form). Once a list of institutions was compiled, approval was granted by the Chief Education Officer in the Ministry of Education for the project to proceed. The approval letter was then sent to each school seeking permission to conduct the survey there. Surveys comprising of hardcopy booklets and parental consent forms were distributed to schools throughout the island in September 2016 (University of Florida, IRB

Approval #IRB201601801). Schools were given about a week to send out and collect signed parental consent forms. The time and day of conducting the survey were left to the discretion of the principal and teacher. This was to allow surveys to be conducted during a free period so as to not interfere with regular coursework.

Survey Method

The surveys included 30 questions based on students’ knowledge, attitude, behavior, preference, and past interactions with wildlife. Knowledge questions were assessed by correct responses in addition to a binary knowledge index. Attitude questions were ranked on a 5-point scale, from strongly disagree to strongly agree, with 3 being a neutral ground and 0 given as a “don’t know” option. Three attitude questions referring to an action taken towards a given animal were ranked on a 6-point or 7-point scale. Students were allowed to choose multiple answers for each animal for these three questions. Behavioral questions were ranked from 1=never to 5=daily. Questions about future participation in an environmental club, class, or competition were assigned “yes”, “maybe”, and “no” options. Species preference

were ranked on a scale of 1-7 with 1 being the student’s most favored animal and 7 being the least favored.

Data Analysis

Raw data were compiled and stored in Excel. Data processing was done in R version

3.2.2. A Spearman’s Rank Correlation test was conducted to determine significant differences among the average rankings of the four focal groups. A Wilcoxon signed-ranked test was performed to determine differences among the focal groups’ attitude and knowledge indices.

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Survey Responses

Of 649 surveys distributed, 458 were received back and 425 completed surveys were used (Table 1). At several schools more surveys than consent forms were completed but due to anonymity of surveys, they were included in the results.

Knowledge and Attitudes

Students at both levels and in rural and urban settings had low knowledge levels of wildlife in Dominica. Correct scores ranged from only 1% to 58% on the 16 knowledge questions about Dominica’s rare and exotic wildlife species (Table 2). In general, students had a positive attitude towards turtles (67%) and birds (56%). Over half of the students either wanted to kill or run away from a rat (88%), bat (61%), or snake (59%). Students reported that they would leave alone a frog (56%) and lizard (53%). One fifth of students reported having seen a Mountain Chicken frog (19%), and 41% had held a snake before. Respondents believed invasive species had a negative effect on the environment (47%) while half were unsure if invasive species should be allowed into Dominica (56%).

Most environmental issues were seen as important to the students (60% +) except poaching (26%) and extending the hunting season (30%). The environmental activities most engaged in by students were the use of public transport (53%) and reuse of plastic material

(51%). Participating in a beach clean-up (68%) and going outside looking for snakes, lizards, 8

or frogs (68%) were seldom or never engaged in. About half the students wanted to participate in an environmental class (53%), environmental club, (56%) and/or an inter- school environmental competition (46%).

[Table 2 here]

Primary vs. Secondary and Rural vs Urban Comparisons

Primary/secondary and rural/urban groups varied in their knowledge of the factor causing the

Mountain Chicken frog decline and population status, and the definition of an invasive species (Table 3). Rural/urban strata differed in their knowledge of the factor affecting the

Mountain Chicken population (p=0.02 for primary groups and p=0.04 for secondary groups) with rural students scoring higher. Rural secondary students had a higher knowledge index pertaining to the number of Crapauds found left in the wild (p=0.04) than urban secondary students. Primary rural students ranked lower than primary urban students in percentage correct for the Crapaud population status (p=0.05). Total percentage correct scores out of

1,600 did not differ between primary rural (447) and primary urban (448) students.

Secondary rural students had a higher score (465) than secondary urban (385).

[Table 3 here]

Only two differences in attitudes existed across the four studied strata (Table 4).

Primary/secondary comparisons revealed differences in their attitude towards allowing invasive species into Dominica. Urban students in both primary (p=0.05) and secondary

(p=0.01) had a higher mean score than rural students and were less likely to allow invasive species into Dominica. Primary students in both rural (p=0.00) and urban (p=0.00) schools thought recycling was more important than secondary students.

[Table 4 here]

Species preference varied across all strata (primary vs secondary p-value=0.0028 and rural vs urban p=0.012) (Table 5). Overall, the Sisserou Parrot was ranked number 1 across all groups as the most favorite species followed by the hummingbird ranked number 2. The

Dominican clouded boa was the least liked species across all groups ranked number 7 followed by the wild boar ranked number 6. The three remaining species (Zandoli, Manicou,

Crapaud) varied in their rankings.

[Table 5 here]

DISCUSSION The public affects the success or failure of conservation programs and a knowledgeable public is key to effective management and policy (Jacobson et al, 2015).

Understanding the knowledge and attitudes of young residents is a vital part of developing effective environmental education programs. Programs to increase awareness and concern and to correct misconceptions must target existing knowledge levels and behaviors. This is especially true for youth education where attitude formation is ongoing. Youth may also spread knowledge in their community through their dissemination of information to parents and neighbors (Ballouard et al, 2012). However, without the knowledge and skills to do so, children can face potentially repeating the past deleterious actions.

Knowledge Levels

Less variation between the knowledge scores of rural vs urban and primary vs secondary students occurred than expected. In the areas where differences were significant, a consistent pattern of one stratum over the other was not found. For example, in primary

schools more urban students were aware of the definition of an invasive species, while more secondary rural students were aware of this definition. Nevertheless, the lack of noticeable differences among strata is of interest. The lack of difference may be primarily due to the low level of knowledge seen across most questions in all four focal groups. This suggests that knowledge of local wildlife does not increase with education level (from primary to secondary school) nor does it change between rural and urban settings. The one area, where rural students had more knowledge about wildlife (both primary and secondary) is in identifying the major cause of the Mountain Chicken decline. Furthermore, only 1 student of the 426 respondents was able to identify the three species from a list of seven that were only found in Dominica. Similarly, 5% or less across all groups could identify all the native species on a given list. However, over half of the respondents in each category were able to identify that there were few Mountain Chicken frogs left. This was also the case for the

Sisserou Parrot with the exception that 49% of primary rural students knew that Sisserou

Parrots were not in abundance. Apart from these two questions and the cause of the

Mountain Chicken decline, none of the other survey questions had a correct knowledge index of over 50% for any strata.

Attitude

The animals that received the most positive attitude scores overall and in each of the four groups were the turtle and the bird, with the primary reason being because they loved them. This may be a result of prior environmental campaigns on Dominica creating cultural pride and an idea of a harmless, intelligent animal. Most students believed that for birds and turtles, management efforts should be focused on educating the public on their importance and creating more parks to protect them. This was not the case for rats, bats, and snakes which students reported the most negative attitude towards because “they hated them”. This 11

attitude difference was seen before in a survey of pet preference in Dominica’s capital city,

Roseau (Alie et al., 2007). They did not select any management actions for snakes and bats because they thought these animals were evil. The same was the case for rats in addition to students not caring about the animal enough to put rats under management. Dominica has a culture where snakes are seen as evil and rats are disgusting which may explain why these students selected these responses. A limitation of the response choices was that the option of killing an animal and taking it home to eat was not offered on the survey. This action was eluded to on a side comment made by one student on their survey. Therefore, killing the animal can either be out of hate or for food purposes. Further investigation would need to be done to find the cause of these attitudes, including a historical and cultural examination.

Despite the majority negative opinion towards snakes, all four strata maintained an average neutral stance on the effect of snakes towards the environment and a slightly negative attitude towards the effect of snakes on human life. This question should have also been asked using a known animal where students have a high positive attitude like turtles and a neutral group like the Manicou for comparison. In addition, although there was a slightly negative attitude towards invasive species across the four focal groups, most students were unsure if invasive species should be allowed on the island. This reflects the low knowledge level relating to the definition of invasive species in each of the four groups (the highest being 39% in secondary rural students).

It appears that the Dominican youth believe that a growing human population does not pose a threat to the natural resource reservoirs and that developing these resources will sustain human life. When it came to the attitude towards human use of natural resources, the question that all four focal groups disagreed with the most was “there are too many humans on earth for it to support”. Furthermore, all four groups agreed the most with the idea that 12

there are plenty of resources on this earth if we learn how to develop them. Additional questions about what kind of developmental practices (e.g. sustainable development) would result in this continuing coexistence should be further explored.

Local Issues and Behavior

Conservation had the highest overall mean of importance for urban students (mean primary = 4.53, mean secondary = 4.34). Rural students reported recycling as the most important issue (mean primary = 4.40, mean secondary = 4.34). Extending the hunting season and poaching had a slightly negative response for both and were the least important issues in all four groups. This suggests that Dominica’s youth is aware of changes that need to be made for the conservation of the island’s wildlife.

Most students reported participating in recycling cans and bottles and reusing plastic quite often. The least participated in activities were beach cleanup and going outside to look for snakes, lizards, and frogs. Most students also reported not engaging in the feeding of wild animals which is good practice. However, this is may be because of a negative attitude towards animals. Further questions regarding the daily practices need to be asked to understand the distribution of importance reported on the listed issues.

Educational Implications

This survey has revealed the lack of knowledge of students regarding the local fauna in Dominica. Environmental agencies should develop more outreach events over a broader range that are more interactive and target youth. Students see a management need for a certain species such as birds, Agouti, and turtles. These species can be used as an umbrella species in that their conservation and habitat protection can protect towards the preservation of other species (Schlegel, 2010). Outreach efforts should also focus on the positive 13

interactions of these species with other species on the island that are less favored, like bats, rats, and snakes. Showing the connection between one species’ survival on the existence of others, their role in the ecosystem, and benefits for humans might change peoples’ perception of these animals, and in turn a better attitude towards their presence.

Fewer rural students reported seeing a Mountain Chicken frog than urban students.

This may be because these frogs are mostly on the western side of the island where the majority of urban areas are found. However, efforts to increase the interaction with and knowledge of Mountain Chicken frogs or other species on the island must include both urban and rural areas if a conservation program is to be successful. Loss of resident’s interactions with an animal may mean the loss of care for its conservation. It is imperative that as many people as possible support an environmental effort if it is to persist. We hope that this study will assist with an increase in education and outreach activities in Dominica that will instill a sense of pride in the island’s fauna and make more effective the conservation of nature.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank Lucia and Jerry Brisbane as well as Gabriella Laville for their support and dedication to carrying out this project. A special thank you to Dr Bill Pine for countless hours assisting with the analysis of the data. Furthermore, we appreciate the collaborative effort from the Ministry of Education and Division of Forestry, Wildlife, and National Parks in Dominica for allowing this study to be conducted.