LWA EU ACTION explanation corner 1: Action D1

Welcome to the EXPLANATION CORNER. What does it consist of? A series of posts to tell you about the more than 27 actions of the project one by one.

We start today with an action that has just gone live, action D1 “Assessment of Attitudes and Perceptions about Wolves among General Public and Key Stakeholder Groups”.

What is all this about?

Understanding the attitude towards the wolf of people living in the Alpine territory is fundamental for a project whose main objective is the development of shared practices for coexistence with the wolf.

IN PRACTICE this involves the administration of a questionnaire, with a series of questions designed to photograph the attitudes of the sample population towards the wolf. The questionnaire is being distributed now, and will be redistributed at the end of the project to a sample population representative of the main stakeholders.

WHAT DOES IT CONSIST OF? In a series of questions, developed by the University of Ljubljana, the referent partner for the action. In fact, 16 areas have been identified for the distribution of questionnaires. The questions are multiple-choice and are “flat”: since it is a survey, they must be standardised, so that the answers can be quantified and repeatable at the end of the project in order to make a comparison. Although the questionnaire is “aseptic”, it is designed to allow both positive and negative feelings on a given issue to be expressed.

The initial plan, when the project was drafted, was to privilege FACE-TO-FACE meetings to fill in the questionnaires. Because of this, the action, which should have taken place in 2020, was delayed due to the pandemic. Unfortunately, the situation is similar today, and it was not possible to extend the timeframe any further. 

We would like to thank in advance those who, despite the difficulties of the moment, took 10 minutes of their time to respond anonymously.

 This type of survey does not claim to go into the merits of critical and thorny issues, because to be standard it cannot be tailored to particular cases and contexts. But for this, there are special arrangements, such as the partnership with hunters (action C3), the emergency response teams (WPIU, action C1), the meetings and dialogue platforms with stakeholders (action E3), the stewardship programme (action E2).

Finally, the general idea of action D1 is to provide an overview of the perception of wolves and coexistence, and to report on the variation of this over the course of the project as has already happened in the LWA project.