Understanding Animal Behavior Can Be Crucial to Conservation Managers

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INTRODUCTION
Understanding animal behavior can provide information to wildlife and conservation managers in an attempt the manage biodiversity. Conservation behavior is a relatively new interdisciplinary field using animal behavior to help solve wildlife conservation issues. Using theoretical and methodological information from various fields in biology, ecology and animal behavior, biologists attempt to enrich and preserve biodiversity. This new discipline's usefulness in promoting real life conservation issues is often subject to debate, with some scientists arguing that the importance of animal behavior in conservation practice is overemphasized.
Understanding conservation behavior is generally used to solve conservation issues of a single species. Biologists, who understand animal behavior as it applies to conservation, use a variety of approaches which may provide insight to effectively manage a single species. It is important to note many countries have environmental programs in place that focuses only on individual species.
Tourism based on free-ranging animals located in remote wilderness areas and natural parks is one of the fastest growing sectors of the tourism industry. This rapid growth of tourism is having an impact on wildlife worldwide. These impacts are continuous and leading to rapid human modification in natural environments, increasing interaction between humans and wildlife. Although studying behavioral responses to human disturbances is generally not the preferred way to establish whether a species feels threatened due to the presence of humans, it can provide insights into the mechanisms underlying human-animals interaction by evaluating them from the anti-predator perspective.
Risk disturbance hypothesis...

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...maller groups or sparse vegetation and steep terrain reduced the dilution effect.
This research required little input from researchers to determine how habitat quality varies from day to day with the presence of tourist. This study has provided valuable information for conservation managers in deciding when and where to allow access by tourists. One strong suggestion was to limit human access to a prime foraging location where the Ibex could remain undisturbed while foraging.
My final thought is numerous studies have indicated that behavior is relevant to conservation and conservation behavior can be used to promote and preserve biodiversity. This article clearly demonstrates the importance of understanding behavior in striking a balance between tourism and conservation. Incorporating animal behavior into conservation programs should not be subject to debate.

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