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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Do Zoos And Aquariums Promote Attitude Change In Visitors? A Critical Evaluation Of The American Zoo And Aquarium Study, Lori Marino, Scott O. Lilienfeld, Randy Malamud, Nathan Nobis, Ron Broglio Apr 2015

Do Zoos And Aquariums Promote Attitude Change In Visitors? A Critical Evaluation Of The American Zoo And Aquarium Study, Lori Marino, Scott O. Lilienfeld, Randy Malamud, Nathan Nobis, Ron Broglio

Lori Marino, PhD

Modern-day zoos and aquariums market themselves as places of education and conservation. A recent study conducted by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA) (Falk et al., 2007) is being widely heralded as the first direct evidence that visits to zoos and aquariums produce long-term positive effects on people’s attitudes toward other animals. In this paper, we address whether this conclusion is warranted by analyzing the study’s methodological soundness. We conclude that Falk et al. (2007) contains at least six major threats to methodological validity that undermine the authors’ conclusions. There remains no compelling evidence for the claim that zoos …


Do Zoos And Aquariums Promote Attitude Change In Visitors? A Critical Evaluation Of The American Zoo And Aquarium Study, Lori Marino, Scott O. Lilienfeld, Randy Malamud, Nathan Nobis, Ron Broglio Mar 2015

Do Zoos And Aquariums Promote Attitude Change In Visitors? A Critical Evaluation Of The American Zoo And Aquarium Study, Lori Marino, Scott O. Lilienfeld, Randy Malamud, Nathan Nobis, Ron Broglio

Nathan M. Nobis, PhD

Modern-day zoos and aquariums market themselves as places of education and conservation. A recent study conducted by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA) (Falk et al., 2007) is being widely heralded as the first direct evidence that visits to zoos and aquariums produce long-term positive effects on people’s attitudes toward other animals. In this paper, we address whether this conclusion is warranted by analyzing the study’s methodological soundness. We conclude that Falk et al. (2007) contains at least six major threats to methodological validity that undermine the authors’ conclusions. There remains no compelling evidence for the claim that zoos …


Using Storm-Watersheds And A Multi-Criteria Decision Model For Biodiversity Conservation In An Urban Environment, Christina M. Chiappetta Jan 2015

Using Storm-Watersheds And A Multi-Criteria Decision Model For Biodiversity Conservation In An Urban Environment, Christina M. Chiappetta

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Many planning and land use decisions in New York State are controlled at the local (town or municipal) level, not an optimal scale for planning and implementing resource conservation management. Watershed boundaries provide a more ecologically meaningful scale for conservation, because they capture a full range of natural ecosystem processes that span political boundaries. However, defining an urban watershed is complicated by stormwater infrastructure, so standard topographic watershed boundaries may be inadequate for urban resource conservation even when applied at the watershed scale. Storm-watersheds distort both municipal and watershed boundaries, because the flows are redirected in ways that are often …


A Gis Assessment Of Ecoregion Representation In Chile's Existing And Proposed Integrated Network Of Protected Areas, Jessica Schutz Jan 2015

A Gis Assessment Of Ecoregion Representation In Chile's Existing And Proposed Integrated Network Of Protected Areas, Jessica Schutz

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Chile's state designated protected areas are reported to show representation bias and to be unable to meet conservation goals. Private protected areas are considered an important tool to resolve these issues, which has led to support for increasing the role of private protected areas in Chile and creating an integrated public-private protected area network. But the validity of the capacity of private protected areas to fix Chile's state protected area network bias, and the advantage of creating an integrated protected area network, have not been assessed. This study uses the most recent data on Chile's state, private, and international protected …


An Assessment Of South China Tiger Reintroduction Potential In Hupingshan And Houhe National Nature Reserves, China, Yiyuan Qin, Philip J. Nyhus, Courtney L. Larson, Charles J.W. Carroll, Jeff Muntifering, Thomas D. Dahmer, Lu Jun, Ronald L. Tilson Dec 2014

An Assessment Of South China Tiger Reintroduction Potential In Hupingshan And Houhe National Nature Reserves, China, Yiyuan Qin, Philip J. Nyhus, Courtney L. Larson, Charles J.W. Carroll, Jeff Muntifering, Thomas D. Dahmer, Lu Jun, Ronald L. Tilson

Philip J. Nyhus

Human-caused biodiversity loss is a global problem, large carnivores are particularly threatened, and the tiger (Panthera tigris) is among the world’s most endangered large carnivores. The South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis) is the most critically endangered tiger subspecies and is considered functionally extinct in the wild. The government of China has expressed its intent to reintroduce a small population of South China tigers into a portion of their historic range as part of a larger goal to recover wild tiger populations in China. This would be the world’s first major tiger reintroduction program. A free-ranging population of 15–20 tigers …