Search results

This chapter analyses the politics of bird hunting in relation to the empowerment of environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) in the European Union (EU), with specific reference to Malta’s first years of EU accession.

In particular, the analysis focuses on the activism of Maltese and International ENGOs – with special focus on Birdlife Malta and Birdlife International – on this issue, which is characterized by extensive EU legislation and by constant lobbying.

This chapter argues that ENGOs, both Maltese and European, were influential on State power in Malta, especially by resorting to the EU, and also being given prominence by the media. Yet the hunting lobby was influential too, and its influence on Malta’s main political parties is an overdetermining factor, which remained in place even after EU accession.

This chapter concludes that despite Malta’s EU accession, national political factors remain highly influential in the Maltese hunting issue, and that one can expect more antagonism in the years to come.

This paper provides a thematic analysis of an IUCN Red-Listed bird, the houbara bustard, which Pakistan uses as a fungible resource to appease its wealthy Arab benefactors.

Thematic analysis of relevant media reports and government ministry and NGO websites comprise the study's data. Media reports were located using Dow Jones' Factiva database.

Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issues wealthy Arabs special permits for hunting the houbara bustard as a “soft” foreign diplomacy strategy aimed at propping up the country's fragile economy. Although illegal under international and Pakistan's own wildlife laws, resource dependence theory helps explain how various country-specific issues (e.g. dysfunctional political and judicial systems) enable Pakistan's unlawful exchange of hunting permits for Arab oil and short-term financing. Surrogate accountability and agencement are examined as two means for arresting the bird's trajectory toward extinction.

Media reports comprise the primary data. Pakistani government officials were approached for interviews, but failed to reply. Although unfortunate, the pervasive corruption and mistrust that characterise Pakistan's culture would have likely tainted the responses. For this reason, media reports were always the primary data sought.

The present study extends prior literature by exploring how country context can subvert the transferability of social and political approaches used in developed countries to address environmental accounting issues and challenges. As this study shows, a developing country's economic vulnerability, combined with its dysfunctional political systems, impotent judiciary and feckless regulatory mechanisms, can undermine legislation meant to protect the country's natural environment, in general, and a threatened bird's existence, in particular.

Most hypotheses proposed to explain human food sharing address motives, yet most tests of these hypotheses have measured only the patterns of food transfer. To choose between these hypotheses we need to measure people’s propensity to share. To do that, I played two games (the Ultimatum and Dictator Games) with Hadza hunter-gatherers. Despite their ubiquitous food sharing, the Hadza are less willing to share in these games than people in complex societies are. They were also less willing to share in smaller camps than larger camps. I evaluate the various food-sharing hypotheses in light of these results.

This chapter documents the steps taken in one teacher preparation program to foster culturally sustaining practices (Paris, 2012) in pre-service Alaska Native teachers, as well as in their non-Native peers. For pre-service teachers to develop the skills, understanding, and dispositions necessary to respectfully gather, honor, and use local knowledge in their future classrooms they must first recognize the value and significance of locally relevant curriculum; second, understand how to respectfully gather and document current “living” local knowledge; and third, become empowered with the skills and knowledge to purposefully integrate local knowledge into the curriculum. This chapter uses one semester-long assignment, and data gathered from work samples from that assignment, as the foundation of an exploration into how these three steps can be enacted in the teacher preparation process. The accompanying data show that living Indigenous knowledge exists in abundance in young Alaska Native pre-service teachers, and when appropriately supported, pre-service teachers can develop powerful curriculum that is rooted in local knowledge and also aligned with the academic goals of the curriculum.

Data are presented on the benefits and costs that accrue to big game hunters living in the whaling community of Lamalera, Indonesia. Results indicate that big game hunting provides males a strong selective advantage. Harpooners, and to a lesser degree hunters in general, reap substantial fitness benefits from their activities. Hunters, especially harpooners, have significantly more offspring than other men after controlling for age. Hazard analysis shows that harpooners marry significantly earlier and start reproducing at an earlier age. This is not case for other hunt group members or non-hunting participants – the technicians and the boat managers. These results are consistent with data from other hunting societies that show significant reproductive benefits for good hunters. Harpooners experience other costs and benefits. Harpooners receive significantly more meat even after controlling for the effort they expend hunting, while at the same time suffer an increased risk of mortality. The results are discussed in the context of the hunting hypothesis and the current debate within human behavioral ecology concerning the role of hunting as a human male reproductive strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and improve the current methodology of securing and collecting data sources for use in the Impact Analysis for Planning (IMPLAN) model to more accurately use, and be able to support, inputs and outputs from economic impact models, specifically those generated by IMPLAN.

Primary expenditure data were derived from an extensive mail survey conducted during the 2005-2006 Mississippi waterfowl-hunting season. Survey results were analyzed using the IMPLAN software model default data and comparing it with new, more localized state data that were collected in 2010. Industry sectors were sorted and ranked after analysis based on sector importance to the economy and IMPLAN default data were replaced by localized data.

Economic contributions generated from the survey-based default model were $158 million (2010 USD) supporting 1,981 full- and part-time jobs. Economic contributions using survey-based data replacement model were $153 million (2010 USD) supporting 1,517 full- and part-time jobs. Separate model runs of the survey-based data replacement model yielded vastly different results, making the case for changing as many sectors with larger impacts as possible.

The makeup and components of sectors used and described by the IMPLAN model were at times not clearly labeled which at times hindered the process of comparing and replacing data. It was evident that IMPLAN sectors were too highly aggregated.

This project will contribute to efforts within Mississippi aimed at protecting and promoting its natural resources for conservation and use for both the private and public sector.

This study is an attempt to increase the understanding of the hunting tourism customer. The purpose of the paper is to explore the characteristics, motivations, values and expectations of Finnish hunting tourists, and to try to distinguish between different types among them.

Twelve semi‐structured, narrative, face‐to‐face interviews were conducted. The study was conceived within an interpretive paradigm, in which a central aim is to understand the subjective world of the human experience. Constant comparison was used as a method of data analysis.

Several common features were distinguished among the interviewees. First, hunters' attitudes towards shooting and the importance of a bag have changed during the years. Second, a difference between an ordinary hunting experience and a hunting tourism experience was perceptible. Third, willingness to experience something new related to hunting was the most important hunting tourism motivation. The fourth common feature was the importance of the social component hunting tourism. Three different types of hunting tourists could be identified: responsible hunting tourists, adaptable hunting tourists and achievement‐oriented hunting tourists. The major distinguishing factors were the hunters' attitudes towards shooting, game farming and social relationships during the hunting trip.

The study is one of the few to investigate hunters as tourists.

To some persons, private gardens, public parks, and farms appear to offer a safe way to preserve all of the plants and animals the environment needs. To people who ignore the need for conservation, the idea of paving and pruning and artificially laying out our land from coast to coast seems welcome. Wiser persons perceive that the destruction so imposed on nature would ultimately endanger our existence. The wilderness, with its wealth of animals and plants, holds a treasure from which we already extract the chemicals and genes we need for agricultural breeding, for industrial products, and for healing drugs. What to the layman may look like a disorderly swamp, or a dark forest, or an uninteresting prairie, actually encompasses complicated communities of vegetation and animals of all classes, communities that are held together in a stable balance by their interdependent components. Ecologists are identifying the key principles at work in these ecosystems of wetlands and drylands, forests and prairies. In their search for understanding of how life on our planet functions, they have called attention to the overriding need to preserve and protect the biological diversity that characterizes ecosystems. They have found instances in which short‐sighted human tampering has played havoc with subtle ecological balances. Too frequently entire species have vanished under man's onslaught. Sometimes such a disappearance is an indication that an entire ecosystem is out of balance.

The need to enhance the exploitation of renewable energy resources marked the starting point in the development of wind farms, also in Regione Liguria. However, the Ligurian sites that are suitable from an anemometric point of view are very exposed and are also of outstanding natural value. In order to simplify procedures and to apply high environmental protection levels, some project requirements and requested mitigation and compensation actions were fixed. Some criteria were stated to identify the areas that are unsuitable to wind installations because of their landscape or wildlife characteristics. By using the GIS of the Regione Liguria, a dedicated information system describing the unsuitable areas was produced; the system is made by a synoptic layer that merges all the areas where at least one of the penalising factors is fulfilled, in addition to single layers that keep their own information content. The map is available on the Internet (www.regione.liguria.it), and it represents an essential reference for any upcoming measures in the field of wind energy exploitation.

The purpose of the paper is to show that the Arabian Peninsula, and the United Arab Emirates in particular, has not been spared by the trends of biodiversity loss observed on the world scale. The authors aim to present a rapid review of the challenges facing the biodiversity in the UAE and the solutions that this young country proposes to counteract the erosion of its biodiversity.

The authors gathered and compiled published and unpublished information from governmental and non‐governmental sources.

Despite being regarded as a vast desertic and unfertile area with one of the lowest human populations in the world, the UAE hosts a unique and remarkably adapted fauna and flora. Adding to natural causes (drought), the main threats facing biodiversity identified were: coastal development and urbanisation, as well as over‐exploitation of natural resources (fishing, hunting, grazing and water extraction) that are linked with the tremendous population increase and changes in lifestyle. Traditional systems of resource management in the UAE have been abandoned. Over the last few decades, the UAE has lost most of its big fauna and is witnessing the remaining Arabian leopard, Mountain Gazelle, Arabian Tahr, Arabian Sailfish, groupers and shark populations at the brink of extinction.

The paper proposes the inclusion of environmental issues in the development planning (with proper environment impact assessments), the involvement of local communities in the decision making and the improvement of federal and international trans‐boundaries collaborations. Highlights that an urgent step would be the implementation of integrated costal management zoning to stop the current extent of coastal development that contributes through physical alteration of habitats to the disappearance of key resources and habitats.