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SCIENCE AND CONSERVATION AGENCIES: STILL AN UNEASY PARTNERSHIP

In February of this year, SCB member Joel Berger and his wife and research associate Carol Cunningham left the U.S. for Namibia, where they had been studying black rhinos for the past three years. Their research goals included evaluating the effects of "dehorning" as a conservation measure and providing comparative data on reproduction in horned and dehorned rhinos. In March, Berger and Cunningham were back in the U.S., their research permits not renewed and their money frozen by the Namibian government. The reason? Their data, published in the journal Science (Volume 263:1241-1242, 1994), showed that dehorned rhinos were unable to protect their young from predators and suggested that dehorning might not be the most prudent conservation policy.

Namibian officials in the ministry of Wildlife, Conservation, and Tourism (WCT) have stated that the reason for these actions was that Berger and Cunningham's research was "abusive and non-objective." In truth, their research was neither but rather yielded results that cast doubt on the wisdom of an established policy, an event that all too often results in strong negative reactions by resource management agencies against individual scientists or even research in general. Namibia is hardly alone in this respect; for example, stories abound of U.S. agencies muzzling, transferring, or dismissing scientists whose research results conflict with official policy.

Incidents like these should be of great concern to the SCB, since one of our major goals is to increase the amount and quality of scientific input into conservation decisions. Achieving this goal involves, among other things, increasing agency understanding of the role of science in policy decisions and clarifying the obligations of both scientists and managers in this process. Such as understanding rests on three points.

First, resource management agencies need high-quality scientific advice. All such agencies are faced with the enormous challenge of reconciling the conflicting demands of short-term expediency with long-term sustainability. And, in a rapidly changing world, long-term problems are going to arrive much sooner than later. At the least, science can provide agencies with an early-warning system so they will be better prepared to meet these challenges.

Second, agencies need to ensure that scientific research that bears on policy decisions is of high quality. How can this be evaluated, particularly by agencies that lack adequate expertise in the relevant disciplines? Publications provide a good first cut. Quality science is usually published in reputable journals, and most peer-reviewed articles have already undergone a critical quality-assessment procedure. On the other hand, projects which disappear into file drawers unpublished often are not of particularly high quality. These considerations lead to the suggestion that scientists with strong publication records are likely to be better researchers than those who publish rarely. However, many good studies have not yet been published, so a second cut at quality assessment can come from looking at the methodology employed. Were reasonable hypotheses tested? Were observations, measurements, or experiments adequately controlled and replicated, and were the results analyzed by valid statistical procedures? Or, does the research seem to have been designed to produce a desired result? The source of funding for the research can provide another index of its quality. Obtaining funding from many sources, such as the U.S. National Science Foundation, is a competitive and stringently peer-reviewed process. Thus, research that has attracted significant funding from such sources is likely to be of high quality.

Third, agencies need to understand the relationship between research results and policy. Rather than reacting negatively to high-quality research that challenges the wisdom of existing policies, agencies should be pleased to receive this information in a timely manner, since any problems generated by current policy are likely to get much worse as time goes on. Nevertheless, once the information is received, agencies are usually free to choose either to abandon or modify the current policy or continue to follow it because of other considerations.

How does the Berger / Cunningham affair stack up against these points? With regard to the first, rhino dehorning as a conservation policy is clearly an issue that requires sound scientific input if it is to succeed. Second, Berger and Cunningham's research is likely of sufficiently high quality to bear significantly on this policy. Both are well-known investigators who have published two major books and numerous articles on large mammal ecology and conservation. Their rhino research was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, the New York Zoological Society, World Wildlife Fund, National Geographic Society, Frankfurt Zoological Society (Germany), Hasselblad Foundation (Sweden), Rhino Rescue Ltd., and the American Philosophical Society -- hardly a poorly conceived, fly-by-night project. They used accepted methodology, and while their sample sizes were necessarily small (rhinos are now quite rare), their results were statistically valid. Finally, the study was published in a first-rate, rigorously peer-reviewed journal.

How should Berger and Cunningham's research have influenced the Namibian government's dehorning policy? Because they had filed detailed annual progress reports, their results were well known to the WCT prior to the publication of the Science article. In fact, their most recent report, submitted in July 1993, contained sections almost identical to that article. Clearly, Namibia felt no obligation to change its dehorning policy as the progress reports came in, nor does the country have any obligation to change its policy now. A prudent course would be to weigh the benefits of whatever short-term gains are realized from dehorning against the risk of losing long-term sustainability of the resource. The final decision, of course, is Namibia's. However, taking sanctions against reputable scientists whose results do not support this policy casts a severe chill on the relationship between science and management worldwide.

Peter F. Brussard

Reprinted from Society for Conservation Biology Newsletter 1(2):1 (May 1994).

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