Elizabeth Oneita Davis

San Diego Zoo · Institute for Conservation Research

Conservationists measuring noncompliance with measures limiting the exploitation of natural resources often ask sensitive questions. However, respondents may distort their answers due to the risk of sanctions, taboos or social norms. Specialized Questioning Techniques (SQTs) can encourage honest answering through protecting re-spondent's privacy by...

The Vietnamese Government committed to closing all bear farms in the country by 2022. Some researchers have expressed concerns that ending the commercial farming of bears, while demand for bear bile persists, could lead to increased hunting pressure on wild bear populations. In this article, we used mixed methods of questionnaires, Discrete Choice...

The hunting and consumption of wildlife is a global practice with practices that are socially nested, mediated, and shared across social categories, including gender. Research into wildlife trade increasingly recognizes the importance of understanding and investigating social drivers and processes of hunting and consumption. However, studies of soc...

Individuals across Cambodia depend on the use of natural products in Traditional Khmer Medicine (TKM), a traditional medicine system in Cambodia that has been practiced for hundreds of years. Cambodia is rich in fauna and flora species, many of which have been, and continue to be, traded domestically for traditional medicine use. Combined with othe...

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated efforts to engage critically with forest-adjacent, rural, communities who rely on wildlife. We interviewed 109 hunters of wildlife across Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos regarding the effect the COVID-19 pandemic has had on them, as well as within their communities. We found that "negative economic impacts" was a p...

Unsustainable harvesting of orchid species is a critical, global threat to orchid diversity and abundance, fueled by domestic and global demand. However, drivers of demand continue to be under‐explored, despite opportunities for proactive engagement and/or behavior change strategies with and/or directed at orchid collectors. In this study, we surve...

Biodiversity is in crisis in Vietnam due to persistent issues including food insecurity and demand for wildlife. Some existing conservation practices, such as preservationist forest protection models, have been shown to be ineffective, and forest-adjacent communities continue to be excluded from conservation decision-making, despite these communiti...

Wildlife populations continue to decline across the Eastern Mekong Biodiversity Hotspot of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Pervasive and unsustainable hunting has been identified as a significant driver of this conservation challenge. Previous research has argued that hunting persists in the region due to the income hunters derive from selling wildlif...

Individuals’ tolerance toward wildlife can be based on a combination of tangible benefits and costs (e.g. economic gains and losses) as well as intangible benefits and costs (e.g. shared values and risk perceptions). Asian Elephants (Elephas maximus) potentially present both types of benefits and costs for rural communities. We examined which facto...

Unsustainable harvesting of orchid species is a critical, global threat to orchid diversity and abundance, fueled by domestic and global demand. However, drivers of demand continue to be under-explored, despite opportunities for proactive engagement and/or behavior change strategies with and/or directed at orchid collectors. In this study we survey...

The combination of increasing trade across an ever more globalized world and the ubiquity of social media access has led to unprecedented levels of wildlife exploitation. In this study, we opportunistically surveyed Instagram and Telegram from 2019 to 2020, two of Iran's most prominent social media platforms, for advertisements of illegally-capture...

Individuals across Cambodia depend on the use of natural products in Traditional Khmer Medicine (TKM), a traditional medicine system in Cambodia that has been practiced for hundreds of years. Cambodia is rich in fauna and flora species, many of which have been, and continue to be, traded domestically for traditional medicine use. Combined with othe...

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated efforts to engage critically with forest-adjacent, rural, communities who rely on wildlife. In this study, we interviewed 109 hunters of wildlife across Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos regarding the effect the COVID-19 pandemic has had on them individually, as well as more generally within their communities. We fou...

The illegal wildlife trade is the major cause for global loss of diversity. In Southeast Asia regions and particularly in Vietnam, the consumption of wildlife products is mostly driven by the demand for food and traditional medicinal products. However, consumers’ motivations are poorly understood. In this study, we use mixed social science approach...

The trade in and consumption of wildlife is indisputably a threat to both human health and global biodiversity (Can et al., 2019 and ‘t Sas-Rolfes et al., 2019). Consumer-focused demand reduction is one proposed family of strategies designed to mitigate trade and consumption through the application of robust wildlife consumer research, which is the...

Biodiversity conservation depends on influencing human behaviors, but when activities are illegal or otherwise sensitive, e.g. because the behavior in question is taboo to a particular society, actors can be hesitant to admit engagement with illicit behaviors. We applied Specialized Questioning Techniques (SQT) to estimate and compare the behaviora...

The Vietnamese Government committed to closing all bear farms in the country by 2022. Some researchers have expressed concerns that ending the commercial farming of bears while demand for bear bile persists could lead to increased hunting pressure on wild bear populations. In this article, we use mixed methods of questionnaires, discrete choice exp...

The aim of our study was to test the efficacy of the nominative technique for estimating the prevalence of wildlife part use within a small sample. We used the domestic consumption of bear Ursus thibetanus and Helarctos ma-layanus parts in Lao People's Democratic Republic (Laos) as a case study and performed 179 semi-structured interviews in Luang...

1. Unsustainable wildlife use is one of the leading threats to earth's biodiversity. Historically, efforts to address this issue have been focused on increasing enforcement and anti-poaching measures. 2. However, recognition that such supply-reduction measures may be inefficient has spurred a movement towards consumer research and behaviour change...

Myanmar is an area of high diversity with prolific illegal wildlife trade, including trade in bear products for medicine. We focused on Rakhine State, Myanmar, which retains sun bear (Helarctos malayanus) populations despite poaching. To better understand why poaching continues to occur and whether poaching is motivated by regional demand for bear...

We agree with Vanhove et al. that wildlife conservation and emerging infectious disease screening are two sides of the same coin. Wildlife and humans can be vulnerable to spillover events by the same pathogen. For example, respiratory diseases (1) and Ebola virus (2) outbreaks have occurred simultaneously in great apes and humans. Pathogens also af...

Scientists are increasingly using volunteer efforts of citizen scientists to classify images captured by motion‐activated trail cameras. The rising popularity of citizen science reflects its potential to engage the public in conservation science and accelerate processing of the large volume of images generated by trail cameras. While image classifi...

Conservationists measuring noncompliance with rules about the exploitation of natural resources often need to ask sensitive questions. However, respondents can introduce bias through distorting their answers to direct questions, due to social norms and/or the risk of legal sanctions. Specialized Questioning Techniques (SQTs) are often a more suitab...

Scientists are increasingly using volunteer efforts of citizen scientists to classify images captured by motion-activated trail cameras. The rising popularity of citizen science reflects its potential to engage the public in conservation science and accelerate processing of the large volume of images generated by trail cameras. While image classifi...

1.Unsustainable wildlife use is one of the leading threats to earth’s biodiversity. Historically, efforts to address this issue have been focused on increasing enforcement and anti-poaching measures. 2.However, recognition that such supply-reduction measures may be inefficient has spurred a movement towards consumer research and behavior change. He...

Biodiversity conservation depends on influencing human behaviors, but when activities are illegal or otherwise sensitive, actors can be hesitant to admit engagement with illicit behaviors. We applied Specialized Questioning Techniques (SQT) to estimate and compare behavioral prevalence of giraffe meat consumption between direct questioning and two...

To test the efficacy of nominative technique within a small sample, we performed a total of 179 semi-structured interviews in Luang Prabang, northern Laos, in August 2017 and April 2019, using the domestic consumption of bears in northern Lao People’s Democratic Republic (hereafter Laos) as our case study. We also assessed whether the specialised q...

A decentralized model could address global health risks associated with wildlife exploitation

Background: The consumption of bear gallbladders and bear bile in Southeast Asia is a persistent threat to bear populations. As part of a larger effort to understand the characteristics of bear part consumption in Cambodia, we uncovered a consumer base of women seeking treatment for post-partum and uterine ailments. Methods: To better understand...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0211544.].

Unsustainable wildlife trade is a well-publicized area of international concern in Laos. Historically rich in both ethnic and biological diversity, Laos has emerged in recent years as a nexus for cross-border trade in floral and faunal wildlife, including endangered and threatened species. However, there has been little sustained research into the...

Tigers are indisputably in danger of extinction due to habitat loss and demand for their parts. Tigers are extirpated in the wild from every country bar one in mainland East and Southeast Asia. Although consumption of tiger products is known to be established in China, less is known about demand for tiger products in Southeast Asia. In this study,...

Investigations into the cultural significance of that most familiar and charismatic group of animals, bears. Bears are iconic animals, playing a variety of roles in human culture. The essays collected here provide a rich selection of views on the human/bear relationships. They explore how bears are an influence in contemporary art, and how they are...

Two species of bear are endemic to East and Southeast Asia, the Asiatic black bear or ‘moon’ bear (Ursus thibetanus), and the sun bear (Helarctos malayanus). The moon bear primarily occurs at more northerly latitudes, while the sun bear occurs at more southerly latitudes, although there is overlap in their ranges throughout Southeast Asia (Garsheli...

The Unmatched Count Technique (UCT), or list experiment, is an indirect questioning technique which allows answers to remain confidential and respondents to be protected. Because questions are asked in an indirect way, it is used to inquire about illegal activities or behaviours people might not want to openly admit to. The method provides an estim...

Human‐carnivore coexistence is a multi‐faceted issue that requires an understanding of the diverse attitudes and perspectives of the communities living with large carnivores. To inform initiatives that encourage behaviors in line with conservation goals, we focused on assessing the two components of attitudes (i.e., feelings and beliefs), as well a...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0211544.].

The trade in bear parts for medicine and for status is a conservation challenge throughout Asia. The Asiatic black bear (Ursus thibetanus) and the sun bear (Helarctos malayanus) are endemic to this region, and populations are estimated to have declined throughout their ranges due to widespread illegal killing of bears and trade in parts, combined w...

Cambodian dataset. All relevant data collected for this study. (XLSX)

Cambodia questionnaire. The questionnaire used to gather the data. (DOCX)

Zoos and aquariums can play an important role in raising awareness of biodiversity and conservation. By collaborating with field-based organizations, zoos and aquariums can more effectively implement conservation interventions to secure populations of species in natural ecosystems and habitats over the long term. Here, we present the collaborative...