Identifying Conflicts and Opportunities for Collaboration in the Management of a Wildlife Resource:A Mixed-Methods Approach

Context: The sustainable management of many common-pool ecological resources can be strengthened through collaboration among stakeholder groups. However, the benefits of collaborative management are often not realised because of conflicts of interest among stakeholders. Effective strategies for enhancing collaborative management require an understanding of the trade-offs that managers make between different management outcomes and an understanding of the socioeconomic and location-specific differences that drive these preferences. Approaches based on quantitative or qualitative methods alone often fail to reveal some of the underlying factors inhibiting collaboration. Aims: Our aim was to understand the relative importance that private-sector deer managers attach to changes in the following three outcomes of deer management: deer numbers, deer-related road-traffic accidents (RTAs) and deer impacts on conservation woodlands. Methods: We used a mixed-methods approach, combining choice-experiment methodology with qualitative analysis of focus-group discussions from 10 study regions throughout Britain. Key results: Our results showed that most of the private-sector stakeholders responsible for deer-management decisions at the local level would prefer to see a future with fewer deer-related RTAs but do not want to see a future with lower deer population levels. This is especially the case for those stakeholders managing for sporting purposes and those that rely on deer as a financial resource. Conclusions: The preferences of many private-sector stakeholders responsible for deer management are at odds with those of private landowners currently experiencing economic and conservation damage from deer, and with the aims of government and non-government bodies seeking to reduce grazing and browsing damage through lower deer densities. Similar barriers to collaborative management are likely to exist in any situations where ecological resources deliver an unequal distribution of benefits and costs among stakeholders. Implications: Overcoming barriers to collaboration requires enhanced understanding of how different collaborative mechanisms are viewed amongst the stakeholder community and how collaborative management can be promoted. More holistic approaches to deer management, which include greater public awareness, additional road-traffic speed restrictions and appropriate fencing, or perhaps include deer-population reduction as only one of a suite of mechanisms for delivering multiple benefits from the land, are likely to gain more support from private-sector stakeholders. Mixed-methods approaches can provide an important first step in terms of both quantifying preferences in relation to the management of ecological resources and enabling detailed insights into the motivations and behaviours underlying them.No Full Tex

The Changing Landscape for Stroke\ua0Prevention in AF: Findings From the GLORIA-AF Registry Phase 2

Background GLORIA-AF (Global Registry on Long-Term Oral Antithrombotic Treatment in Patients with Atrial Fibrillation) is a prospective, global registry program describing antithrombotic treatment patterns in patients with newly diagnosed nonvalvular atrial fibrillation at risk of stroke. Phase 2 began when dabigatran, the first non\u2013vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulant (NOAC), became available. Objectives This study sought to describe phase 2 baseline data and compare these with the pre-NOAC era collected during phase 1. Methods During phase 2, 15,641 consenting patients were enrolled (November 2011 to December 2014); 15,092 were eligible. This pre-specified cross-sectional analysis describes eligible patients\u2019 baseline characteristics. Atrial fibrillation disease characteristics, medical outcomes, and concomitant diseases and medications were collected. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results Of the total patients, 45.5% were female; median age was 71 (interquartile range: 64, 78) years. Patients were from Europe (47.1%), North America (22.5%), Asia (20.3%), Latin America (6.0%), and the Middle East/Africa (4.0%). Most had high stroke risk (CHA2DS2-VASc [Congestive heart failure, Hypertension, Age  6575 years, Diabetes mellitus, previous Stroke, Vascular disease, Age 65 to 74 years, Sex category] score  652; 86.1%); 13.9% had moderate risk (CHA2DS2-VASc = 1). Overall, 79.9% received oral anticoagulants, of whom 47.6% received NOAC and 32.3% vitamin K antagonists (VKA); 12.1% received antiplatelet agents; 7.8% received no antithrombotic treatment. For comparison, the proportion of phase 1 patients (of N = 1,063 all eligible) prescribed VKA was 32.8%, acetylsalicylic acid 41.7%, and no therapy 20.2%. In Europe in phase 2, treatment with NOAC was more common than VKA (52.3% and 37.8%, respectively); 6.0% of patients received antiplatelet treatment; and 3.8% received no antithrombotic treatment. In North America, 52.1%, 26.2%, and 14.0% of patients received NOAC, VKA, and antiplatelet drugs, respectively; 7.5% received no antithrombotic treatment. NOAC use was less common in Asia (27.7%), where 27.5% of patients received VKA, 25.0% antiplatelet drugs, and 19.8% no antithrombotic treatment. Conclusions The baseline data from GLORIA-AF phase 2 demonstrate that in newly diagnosed nonvalvular atrial fibrillation patients, NOAC have been highly adopted into practice, becoming more frequently prescribed than VKA in Europe and North America. Worldwide, however, a large proportion of patients remain undertreated, particularly in Asia and North America. (Global Registry on Long-Term Oral Antithrombotic Treatment in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation [GLORIA-AF]; NCT01468701

Book Review: 'I Want to Know about the Dogs'

The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (hereafter CSM) is a short book and an embellishment of an argument that also appeared in 2003 in an article in Ihde and Selinger’s Chasing Technoscience and in the Haraway Reader also published in 2003 (Haraway, 2003a, 2003b; see also Haraway 2003c, 2003d). It develops certain ideas that are a constant feature of Haraway’s work, which pays serious attention to ‘entities that are neither nature nor culture’ (Markussen et al., 2003: 57), and makes use of the format that was so influential when the ‘Cyborg Manifesto’ was published in 1985 (Haraway, 1991)

Stimulating a Canadian narrative for climate

This perspective documents current thinking around climate actions in Canada by synthesizing scholarly proposals made by Sustainable Canada Dialogues (SCD), an informal network of scholars from all 10 provinces, and by reviewing responses from civil society representatives to the scholars’ proposals. Motivated by Canada’s recent history of repeatedly missing its emissions reduction targets and failing to produce a coherent plan to address climate change, SCD mobilized more than 60 scholars to identify possible pathways towards a low-carbon economy and sustainable society and invited civil society to comment on the proposed solutions. This perspective illustrates a range of Canadian ideas coming from many sectors of society and a wealth of existing inspiring initiatives. Solutions discussed include climate change governance, low-carbon transition, energy production, and consumption. This process of knowledge synthesis/creation is novel and important because it provides a working model for making connections across academic fields as well as between academia and civil society. The process produces a holistic set of insights and recommendations for climate change actions and a unique model of engagement. The different voices reported here enrich the scope of possible solutions, showing that Canada is brimming with ideas, possibilities, and the will to act