Center, Internet, Wildlife Damage Management
Human–Wildlife Interactions
Response to Perryman Comment on Siemer et al. (2013)
Date of this Version
Fall 2013
Document Type
Article
Citation
Human–Wildlife Interactions (Fall 2013) 7(2): article 11
doi: 10.26077/6brq-n922
Special topic: Sage-grouse
Abstract
We are pleased to have an opportunity to respond to Heidi Perryman’s commentary on our article appearing the spring 2013 issue of Human Wildlife Interactions (Siemer et al. 2013). Some of the content in Dr. Perryman’s commentary is an expression of her personal views on trapping and the appropriate relationship between humans and beavers (e.g., “Massachusetts truly has a remarkable opportunity to learn about the relationship between humans and wildlife, but this cannot happen if the term 'beaver management' continues to be synonymous with the term 'beaver trapping.'). While public discourse on such topics is healthy, we offer no response to such comments here because they are tangential to the purpose and focus of our manuscript. On the other hand, Dr. Perryman does proffer a few research critiques to which we here respond. Those critiques include the following: (1) the data on which the research is based is 10 years old; (2) the data were not adjusted to account for potential nonresponse bias; and (3) the manuscript fails to acknowledge “contrasting” results found by Needham and Morzillo (2011).
. . .
Needham and Morzillo (2011) found that most respondents, including those who had experienced beaver damage, found lethal control of beavers to be an unacceptable approach to managing negative impacts associated with beavers. Perhaps that is the result that led Dr. Perryman to discount our findings. We do not refute the possibility that overall acceptability of lethal removal of beavers may differ among regions, such as the West Coast and northeastern United States. We hope that readers will understand that such differences do not represent a threat to the validity of the findings reported in Siemer et al. (2012).