Date of Award:

12-2026

Document Type:

Dissertation

Degree Name:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department:

Environment and Society

Committee Chair(s)

Stefani A. Crabtree

Committee

Stefani A. Crabtree

Committee

Courtney Flint

Committee

Elizabeth Metcalf

Committee

Anna Miller

Committee

Kirsten Vinyeta

Abstract

Wildlife recovery programs depend not just on animals, but on how people feel about living with them. The degree to which people accept the disruptions wildlife brings to their lives, known as social tolerance, can determine whether a recovery program succeeds or fails, yet it remains understudied and underapplied in management plans. This dissertation studies how people in Poland and the western United States feel about living with the two living species of bison, the largest land animals in Europe and North America. In Poland, we surveyed 242 residents living at different distances from European bison habitat. Surprisingly, the most negative views came not from those living in designated bison territory, but from those just outside it, where bison wander but the government has no formal plan for managing conflict. In the Yellowstone region we surveyed 130 residents across Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Most supported bison, but a small group living near the nonprofit conservation organization American Prairie Reserve in north-central Montana held strongly negative views, driven by concerns about disease risk and by feelings of exclusion from decisions about their own landscape. By analyzing written open-ended survey responses from both countries, we developed a model to explain these patterns. People’s tolerances are not mainly about how close they live to bison or how much they know about the animals. Instead, they depend on whether people feel that they themselves belong on the landscape, whether they believe the bison belong there too, and whether the institutions managing the species treat local residents as true partners in, rather than passive observers of, conservation. Where these conditions are met, people absorb the costs of living with bison and coexistence can flourish. Where they are not, people reject the animal as a symbol of a system that does not represent them. Importantly, the surveys cost almost nothing, showing that wildlife managers can gather valuable information without large expenses. The findings suggest that successful conservation depends not only on managing animals, but on building governance systems in which the people who live with them have a genuine voice.

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