Marcel Hunziker

Forest restoration increasingly depends on public support, yet the mechanisms through which such support is formed remain insufficiently understood. This study examines how perceptions of restoration practices shape support through belief-based evaluations of restoration outcomes and ecosystem service benefits. Using survey data from 12 European countries (N = 12,343) and structural equation modelling, we analyse the relationships between perceived forest restoration practices, ecological/cultural and provisioning impact beliefs, and support for forest restoration.,The results show that support is shaped primarily through a belief-mediated pathway. Perceived restoration practices were positively associated with both ecological/cultural and provisioning impact beliefs, which in turn were positively associated with support. However, the direct association between restoration practices and support was negative, indicating that restoration activities do not automatically generate support. Rather, support depends on whether restoration practices are perceived to produce valued ecological, cultural, and provisioning outcomes. Both ecological/cultural and provisioning impact beliefs contributed significantly to support, highlighting the multidimensional nature of public evaluations of restoration.,These findings demonstrate that public support for forest restoration is interpretive and outcome-dependent. From a policy and governance perspective, increasing support requires not only implementing restoration practices but also ensuring that restoration benefits are visible, meaningful, and aligned with public expectations. The study contributes by clarifying the belief-based pathways through which perceptions of restoration practices and ecosystem service outcomes translate into support.

Impact evaluation design and implementation require technical and methodological skills and funding. If the interest is in bridging the research–practice gap and mainstreaming its recommendations into decision‐making, then impact evaluations will require collaboration among researchers, practitioners, and funders. In 2020, Switzerland began applying impact evaluations to assess conservation and sustainable development outcomes in Swiss parks of national importance. Four years later, we count four impact evaluations on park effects. While three studies focus on the park effect on ecological compensation areas, turnover/business efficiency, direct payments, and farm income, one study compares the effect of park status on perceived landscape quality. Plans to design and implement further studies exploring the park effect are underway. In this paper, we present the main opportunities and challenges encountered during the design and implementation of these evaluations. Against this background, we emphasize that collaboration is key to mainstreaming impact evaluation into practice. This paper offers suggestions for fostering such collaboration across various stages of the impact evaluation process, including technical capacity, data collection, and funding.

The resurgence of wolf populations in Germany is causing controversies regarding their management policies. Through 41 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders, we found that respondents favored the management directives predicated on the narratives they entertained, i.e., beliefs about wolves and nature more broadly. We identified 18 narratives that ranged from the extreme of “beings-focused, harmony-oriented, and wolf-favoring” extreme through “ecosystem-focused, conservation-oriented, and wolf-ambivalent” to another extreme of “human-centered, dominion-oriented, and wolf-critical” extreme. The 24 directives aim to allow, balance, and control wolf behavior. Narratives and directives correlate: participants and stakeholders holding beings-focused views tend to propose more allowing directives, those endorsing ecosystem-focused perspectives lean to choose balancing directives, and those inclined to human-focused stances prefer controlling directives. Thus, our research allows wildlife managers to understand better why people endorse or oppose specific management options and devise effective communication strategies by working with the underlying narratives.

Human dimensions research has proposed a multitude of variables impacting the viability of wildlife populations. Extant approaches to systematizing these variables have mostly focused on human relations to only one animal species or taxon and are largely descriptive, rather than explanatory. In this study, we provide a three-layer framework for understanding people’s responses to a variety of human–wildlife encounters. We conducted a comparative qualitative study, interviewing 20 stakeholders on one of three ecologically disparate model animals. Through thematic analysis, we identified person-specific, species-specific, and overarching factors whose interplay shapes people’s reactions to encounters with wildlife. The person-specific factors, individual people’s biographic backgrounds and life themes, fuel the polarization of stances towards wildlife. The species-specific factors, people’s mental images of wild animals, explain the particular character of different human–wildlife relations. The overarching factors, fundamental questions regarding the place of humans in nature or motivations of control over animal agents, stir the intensity inherent in human encounters with wildlife. This three-layer framework amends existing proposals by providing a cohesive system and an in-depth portrayal of shared and specific factors and processes in various human–wildlife relations and by elucidating their interaction in influencing people’s responses to encounters with wild animals.

Biological invasions strongly increased during the last centuries and are challenging environmental managers worldwide. In this context, public acceptance of management measures is a key factor determining the long-term success of the control of invasive species. However, in the case of charismatic and iconic invasive species, the public has often been unwilling to accept strict management measures. Here, we studied the public perception of the Chinese windmill palm (Trachycarpus fortunei) in Switzerland, which is declared as invasive in southern Switzerland but also recognized as iconic. We conducted a nation-wide online survey in the multilingual and multicultural context of Switzerland, investigating the influence of social and cultural factors on the knowledge of, the attitude toward, and the willingness to control the invasive T. fortunei. Results confirm that the knowledge and perception of invasive plants have a strong social and cultural component and may vary greatly as a function of the cultural background, education level, age, and other social characteristics. Furthermore, information on the invasiveness of the focal species provided during the survey significantly affected informants’ perceptions, which are closely related to the acceptance of possible management and control measures. This allows us to highlight the importance of a holistic approach that includes targeted public information when dealing with biological invasions, especially in the case of charismatic and iconic species. Based on the obtained results, we suggest avenues for refining management and control strategies of T. fortunei in Switzerland, many of which generally applicable to other cases of invasive species.