By Yufei Mao
Florida’s native plants and animals are extremely important to most Floridians, but a recent statewide survey shows that residents don’t pay as much attention to fish and wildlife management practices.
Protecting native species from non-native, invasive species was respondents’ top concern when it came to wildlife, with 83 percent indicating that it was highly or extremely important as part of a public opinion poll conducted by the UF/IFAS Center for Public Issues Education. The existence of natural areas for enjoying and experiencing nature was respondents’ second choice at 82 percent.
Floridians were the least concerned with having the opportunity to hunt and fish recreationally. Only 42 percent of respondents believed that hunting was highly or extremely important, and 64 percent felt the same about fishing.
Respondents surprised researchers by ranking fish and wildlife population management near the bottom, at 75 percent and 76 percent, respectively.
“Any time you deal with natural resources, the public thinks of nature as being something that’s left alone. Management is inherently not leaving it alone,” said Quisto Settle, PIE Center post-doctoral associate. “They believe that if you just leave nature alone, it would fix itself.”
The online survey of 499 respondents indicated a potential gap between the public’s awareness and knowledge of and fish and wildlife management practices, according to PIE Center Director Tracy Irani, which might present an opportunity for wildlife organizations to improve their outreach and education efforts.
“This might be a knowledge gap that people might not necessarily understand what population management is or how it’s related to species protection,” she said. “With a lot of public education efforts, we want to do it all. We want to provide information on all aspects of what we’re trying to inform about, but another approach is to really target specific information just on where people have lack of awareness or misperceptions.”
The conservation of ecologically important habitats in Florida also ranked highly among respondents, with 81 percent of respondents indicating this was highly or extremely important. Another 78 percent of people believed it was highly or extremely important that wildlife exists in Florida, and 77 percent felt it was important to have opportunities to view wildlife.
Two previous surveys about water quality and quantity and immigration exposed more knowledge gaps that the endangered species survey, Irani said. Although researchers can’t say for certain why respondents to this survey seemed to be more knowledgeable, she speculated that the public has high level of concern and interest in the issue but do not understand the nuances.
“We know that the more technical, the more scientific issues of natural resource management includes a lot of terminology and a lot of programs that the general public is perhaps less knowledgeable about,” she said. “Those areas are where education efforts can really pay off, by targeting those gaps specifically.”
