The socio-cultural benefits and costs of thetraditional hunting of dugongs Dugong dugonand green turtles Chelonia mydas inTorres Strait, Australia

AU R É L I E D E L I S L E , M I L E N A K I A T K O S K I K I M , N A T A L I E S T O E C K L

F E L E C I A WA T K I N L U I and H E L E N E M A R S H

Abstract Signatory states of the Convention on BiologicalDiversity must ‘protect and encourage the customary useof biological resources in accordance with traditionalcultural practices that are compatible with conservation orsustainable use requirements’. Thus the management oftraditional hunting of wildlife must balance the sustainabil-ity of target species with the benefits of hunting to traditionalcommunities. Conservation policies usually define the valuesassociated with wild meats in terms of income and nutrition,neglecting a wide range of social and cultural values that areimportant to traditional hunting communities. We elicitedthe community-defined benefits and costs associated withthe traditional hunting of dugongs Dugong dugon andgreen turtles Chelonia mydas from communities on two is-lands in Torres Strait, Australia. We then used cognitivemapping and multidimensional scaling to identify separablegroups of benefits (cultural services, provisioning services,and individual benefits) and demonstrate that traditionalowners consider the cultural services associated with trad-itional hunting to be significantly more important than theprovisioning services. Understanding these cultural valuescan inform management actions in accordance with theConvention on Biological Diversity. If communities are un-able to hunt, important cultural benefits are foregone. Basedon our results, we question the appropriateness of conserva-tion actions focused on prohibiting hunting and providing

monetary compensation for the loss of provisioning servicesonly.

Keywords Chelonia mydas, cognitive mapping, culturalvalues, dugong, Dugong dugon, green turtle, Torres Strait,traditional hunting

Supplementary material for this article is available athttps://doi.org/./S

Introduction

The hunting of terrestrial and marine wildlife is typi-cally considered to be amatter of conservation concern,

even though it can be an important source of livelihood tolocal communities (Nasi et al., ), particularly indigen-ous communities. Scientific studies have described the nega-tive impacts of hunting on wildlife, particularly on the nativebiota in Africa (e.g. Bowen-Jones & Pendry, ; Brashareset al., ). Research on the hunting of marine mammalsand turtles is somewhat less common (Sohou et al., )despite the fact that, since , people in at least

countries have consumed one or more of at least marinemammal species (Robards & Reeves, ). Green turtlesChelonia mydas are still harvested legally for food in severalrange states despite being categorized as Endangered at aglobal scale (Seminoff, ).

Historically, the development of species managementtools has generally been guided by knowledge of the species’biology, with limited attention to the broader context ofmanagement and the impacts of actions on the users ofwildlife. However, the impacts of conservation actionssuch as hunting regulations on local communities, and theirrights to be involved in management, are now beingacknowledged. Hence, wildlife managers and conservationorganizations face the challenge of minimizing the negativeimpacts of hunting on the long-term sustainability of wild-life while enhancing the positive impacts (Nasi et al., ;Nyaki et al., ; Duffy et al., ).

In the s, as wildlife managers and conservation prac-titioners began to recognize the important links betweenbiodiversity and people, there was a concurrent movementto recognize the rights of indigenous peoples. These

AURÉLIE DELISLE*† (Corresponding author) James Cook University, College ofBusiness Law and Governance, Douglas, Queensland, AustraliaE-mail adelisle@uow.edu.au

MILENA KIATKOSKI KIM‡ and HELENE MARSH James Cook University, College ofScience and Engineering, Douglas, Queensland, Australia

NATALIE STOECKL James CookUniversity, Division of Tropical Environments andSocieties, Douglas, Queensland, Australia

FELECIA WATKIN LUI James Cook University, Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander Centre, Cairns, Queensland, Australia, and James Cook University,The Cairns Institute, Cairns, Queensland, Australia

*Also at: James Cook University, College of Science and Engineering, Douglas,Queensland, Australia†Also at: University of Wollongong, Australian National Centre for OceanResources & Security, Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia‡Also at: James Cook University, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Centre,Cairns, Queensland, Australia

Received March . Revision requested May .Accepted September . First published online December .

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processes led to the explicit international recognition of therole of indigenous peoples in the conservation and sustain-able use of biodiversity. Two articles (article (j) on trad-itional knowledge, innovations and practices, and article(c) on customary sustainable uses of biodiversity) were in-cluded in the Convention on Biological Diversity. Article (c) requires signatory states (Parties) to ‘protect and encour-age the customary use of biological resources in accordancewith traditional cultural practices that are compatible withconservation or sustainable use requirements’. Both articlesthus bind Parties to the Convention to respect, protect andpromote traditional knowledge, innovations and practices.These articles also oblige Parties to protect and encouragecustomary uses of biological resources in accordance withtraditional cultural practices. The articles can be adaptedat the national and local levels to strengthen indigenousinvolvement in decision making in the sustainable use ofbiodiversity (Sutherland, ).

Cultural dimensions of hunting

The most obvious positive outcomes of hunting are its con-tributions to nutrition, food security, income generationand livelihoods in rural and remote areas (Bassett, ;Nasi et al., ). These outcomes apply not only to thehunters themselves but also to others along the supplychain (Crookes & Milner-Gulland, ; Allebone-Webbet al., ). Nevertheless, the range of motivations, benefitsand costs associated with hunting can be more comprehen-sive than these values, especially for indigenous and trad-itional groups. Indigenous communities have particularlystrong connections with nature, as their way of life often de-pends on their access to natural resources (United NationsEnvironment Programme, ), and traditional culturescan help maintain the diversity and resilience of natural sys-tems (Bélair et al., ).

Anthropologists and ethnoecologists have studied thecultural values of hunting (Cocks et al., ; Peterson,), emphasizing the important cultural role that thehunting and sharing of wild meats (which may include ter-restrial and marine species of conservation interest) plays inthe transmission of traditional ecological knowledge, cul-tural identity, and medicinal and spiritual values, and inthe maintenance of community cohesion (van Vliet et al.,; Kalland, ; Reo & Whyte, ; Baggio et al., ;BurnSilver et al., ; Watkin Lui et al., a). However,the incorporation of the social and cultural dimensions ofhunting is still relatively undeveloped in contemporarymanagement practices (Nasi et al., ), and conservationpolicies based onWestern concepts usually define the valuesof wild meats solely in terms of income and protein (Nyakiet al., ). Even a widely discussed concept such as foodsecurity, often regarded as a direct benefit of hunting, isoften based on a Western definition focusing on nutrition,

calories and purchasing power rather than the holisticnature of food security held by indigenous people such asthe Alaskan Inuit, who consider food security to encompassboth cultural and environmental systems (Inuit CircumpolarCouncil-Alaska, ).

The difficulties of incorporating the social dimensions ofindigenous hunting into contemporary management arecompounded when the target species (marine and terres-trial) are of conservation concern (e.g. dugongs Dugongdugon and green turtles Chelonia mydas in Australia; belugaDelphinapterus leucas and bowhead whales Balaena mysti-cetus in the Arctic). Policies are usually defined according tothe predominant discourse based on a value system that nar-rowly defines hunting values and does not reflect the spec-trum of values identified by direct resource user groups(Turner et al., ). Moreover, the costs and benefits asso-ciated with hunting (or the conservation policies regulatingsuch activity) are generally more salient to the members ofindigenous communities than to the outside organizationsthat typically develop conservation policies (Nyaki et al.,). Thus, clarifying the range of benefits and costs asso-ciated with hunting, and their relative importance from theperspective of indigenous hunting communities, can helpthe development of understanding about the potential im-pacts of conservation policies on these communities. Therisks of not considering the range of impacts resultingfrom policies may have severe negative consequences forindigenous peoples (Turner et al., ); for example, re-searchers have highlighted eight invisible losses experiencedby First Nation communities in western North America as aresult of a lack of recognition of cultural values during thedevelopment of environmental policies that affected theiraccess to traditional lands and resources (Turner et al.,). Losses included lifestyle losses, loss of identity, healthlosses, loss of self-determination, emotional losses, loss oforder in the world, knowledge losses, and indirect economiclosses (Turner et al., ).

Such social impacts are not confined to indigenousgroups. In the development of marine national parks, man-agers in New SouthWales, Australia, did not fully recognizesocial impacts on commercial fishers of banning commer-cial fishing in some areas. Fishers reported that the man-agers considered only economic impacts when makingtheir decision, and ignored the loss of well-being and com-munity cohesion (Momtaz & Gladstone, ). As a result,fishers became distrustful of the local management author-ity (Voyer et al., ).

A potential explanation for the lack of recognition or legit-imacy of cultural values in the policy arenamay stem from thetypes of assessments used to describe non-market values.Policy makers and managers may respond better to marketvalues such as income because they are quantifiable for com-parison with other values. Moreover, research indicates thatdecisionmakers aremore inclined to use ecological indicators

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andmarket studies rather than non-market valuation studies,at least partially because of the complexity of the methods(Rogers et al., ). Non-market valuation studies such ascontingent valuation have also been criticized as being unsuit-able for research in indigenous communities (Adamowiczet al., ; Venn & Quiggin, ).

The sharing of food (BurnSilver et al., ) is a corner-stone of whaling by indigenous communities in theAlaskan Arctic and is integral to maintaining community co-hesion. Nonetheless, the system has been described mostly ina qualitative rather than a quantitative manner (BurnSilveret al., ). Baggio et al. () and BurnSilver et al. ()analysed social networks, harvest and household economicdata to quantify the importance of indigenous whaling inthe Alaskan Arctic. This quantitative assessment combinedwith more descriptive studies of the complex values asso-ciated with indigenous hunting can assist in formulating anarrative and policies looking at the future of indigenouscommunities in the face of global environmental change(Baggio et al., ; BurnSilver et al., ).

A participatory approach to understanding costs andbenefits of indigenous hunting

The ecosystem services concept has been used widely toidentify the values people derive from ecosystems, includingthrough extractive activities such as hunting and fishing(Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, ; Chan et al.,a). Most users of the Ecosystem Services Frameworkemphasize the economic valuation of tangible servicesover the identification of intangible benefits associatedwith social and cultural values (Chan et al., b). Usingeconomic valuations to inform decision making can beproblematic, as the intangible benefits associated withEcosystem Services can matter more to people than themonetary benefits (Chan et al., b). Accordingly, theeffective identification and prioritization of the values de-rived from ecosystems requires the use of qualitative andparticipatory methods that include the perspectives of com-munities that are more closely linked with such ecosystemsand are therefore potentially affected by managementactions (Chan et al., a).

We used a participatory modelling approach known ascognitive mapping to investigate the costs and benefits ofthe traditional hunting of two culturally significant speciesin an area inhabited by indigenous, natural resourcedependent communities. Our approach avoids the use ofcontingent valuation but still defines costs and benefits, asnon-market valuation estimates are generally part of acost–benefit analysis (Supplementary Material ). Cognitivemapping is an umbrella term that encompasses such techni-ques as causal, semantic and concept mapping. A cognitivemap is a qualitative model describing the elements of agiven system. The map uses defined variables and describes

their relationships. The variables can represent physical orabstract ideas (Özesmi & Özesmi, ). The person makingthe cognitive map decides on the important variables that af-fect a system and then either draws causal relationshipsamong these variables (i.e. causal mapping), with the possi-bility of indicating the relative strength of the relationshipswith a number between − and (i.e. fuzzy causal mapping),or decides how the variables are interrelated (i.e. conceptmap-ping). Such techniques are used to study decision making andpeople’s perceptions of complex social systems (Axelrod, ;Brown, ; Carley & Palmquist, ) and have been appliedsuccessfully in natural resource management to improve deci-sion making, define management objectives and analyse sta-keholders’ perceptions of ecosystems (Radomski & Goeman,; Özesmi & Özesmi, ; Hobbs et al., ; Mendoza &Prabhu, ). Cognitive mapping and other mental modeltechniques have been particularly useful in describing howvarious stakeholder groups perceive a similar natural resourcemanagement issue. In cases of human–wildlife conflict, thereasons and potential solutions can vary between policy ma-kers and other stakeholder groups (Mosimane et al., ). Abetter understanding of how various people interpret a similarproblem can identify areas of agreement and disagreement,and can be the precursor in establishing a closer working re-lationship towards effective environmental policy and deci-sion making (Mosimane et al., ). All cognitive mappingtechniques try to understand how an individual interpretsconcepts, and describe those concepts and their relationshipsin a graphical layout (Fiol & Huff, ).

We used cognitive mapping to address the followingquestions: What are the social–cultural costs and benefitsassociated with traditional hunting of marine megafaunafrom the perspective of an indigenous community? Howare the costs and benefits linked/grouped, and what istheir relative importance? The cultural significance of thespecies and the fact that the meat cannot be sold helps toemphasize the social and cultural rather than the monetaryvalues of hunting.

Case study: traditional fisheries in Torres Strait, Australia

Most of the people living in the Torres Strait region betweenAustralia and Papua New Guinea are indigenous (ABS,) (Fig. ). Dugongs and green turtles (hereafter turtles)have significant cultural importance for Torres StraitIslanders and have been hunted for millennia. The turtleharvest originated at least , years ago (Wright, ),and the dugong harvest at least , years ago (Crouchet al., ). The remains of thousands of dugong bonesin middens indicate that the harvest has been substantialfor at least – years (McNiven, ), pre-datingEuropean settlement in the th century.

Torres Strait currently supports the largest population ofdugongs globally (Marsh et al., b). A population decline

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has not been detected by aerial surveys of dugongs conductedduring – (Marsh et al., ; Hagihara et al., ),probably because dugongs are harvested in only % of the, km of very high dugong density habitat as the resultof cultural and government controls on the harvest, andsocio-economic factors. Contemporary evidence thus sug-gests that the dugong harvest in Torres Strait is sustainable(Marsh et al., ; Hagihara et al., ; Urwin et al., ).

Torres Strait also provides foraging grounds for abundantstocks of juvenile and adult turtles (Limpus, ; Fuenteset al., ; Hagihara et al., ) and is an important corridorfor populations migrating between eastern Indonesia, theArufura Sea, the Gulf of Carpentaria and the northernGreat Barrier Reef (Limpus & Parmenter, ). The levelof hunting of green turtles in Torres Strait is likely to be sus-tainable (Hagihara et al., ). However, there are concernsabout the long-term future of the turtle stock, largely becauseof mounting evidence of environmentally caused recruitmentfailure at Raine Island in the northern Great Barrier Reef, thelargest green turtle rookery (Limpus, ).

As a signatory to CITES and the Convention onBiological Diversity, Australia has multiple responsibilitiesassociated with the conservation and management of du-gongs and turtles. For example, commercial trade in thesespecies (both of which are listed in Appendix I of CITES,) is prohibited. Traditional owners in northernAustralian coastal indigenous communities have the right

to hunt dugongs and turtles in their Sea Country (anAustralian indigenous term that relates to the ‘authorityheld and responsibilities of particular groups of traditionalowners to particular areas of sea, and is based on culturalrelationships with these areas’; Plagányi et al., ). Thisright is upheld under the Australian Native Title (e.g.Native Title Act ) and environment laws in accordancewith the Torres Strait Fisheries Act , which facilitate theTorres Strait Treaty between Australia and Papua NewGuinea (Havemann & Smith, ). Operationally, thesefisheries are managed at the community level through

non-statutory community-based turtle and dugong man-agement plans (Marsh et al., a).

Our research was conducted in two remote indigenous is-land communities in the Australian waters of Torres Strait(Fig. ). In there were close to , Torres StraitIslanders and/or Aboriginal people living in the region(OESR, ), including c. and residents in ourstudy communities of Mabuiag and St Paul’s, respectively(Fig. ).

Dugongs and green turtles are cultural keystone speciesin Torres Strait (Butler et al., ), defining Torres StraitIslanders wherever they reside (Watkin Lui et al., b).The hunting and distribution of dugong and turtle meatare part of Ailan Kastom (island custom). The CambridgeExpedition (Haddon, ) reported that green turtles anddugongs were an essential part of the diet of MabuiagIslanders, a fact confirmed by subsequent studies inTorres Strait (Nietschmann, ; Bliege Bird & Bird, ;Bliege Bird et al., ; Kwan et al., ). Both species arealso important for ceremonies (Fitzpatrick-Nietschmann,), and hunting confers prestige and recognition withinthe community on the hunters of eastern Torres Strait(Bliege Bird et al., ).

In common with other indigenous peoples, the residentsof the two study communities are at a significant socio-economic disadvantage compared with the wider commu-nity. Almost % of jobs in Mabuiag and St Paul’s are avail-able only to residents who participate in an employmentbenefit scheme (Delisle, ). Residents earn c. % ofwhat their Australian counterparts earn. Each communityhas only one general store at which to purchase food, andthe mean price of commodities is c. % higher than onthe mainland. Community residents thus face the doubleburden of low income and high prices, with real incomessubstantially below those of their non-indigenous mainlandcounterparts.

The spending pattern of residents is also different fromthat of the average Queensland household (Delisle, ).For example, in St Paul’s c. % of all expenditure is onfood and beverages, compared to % for the averageQueensland household (ABS, ), which is an indicatorof the financial pressures on the residents of these remotecommunities.

FIG. 1 Locations of the study communities of Mabuiag and StPaul’s (circled) in Torres Strait, Australia.

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Methods

Data collection

After obtaining ethical approval from local institutions(Torres Strait Regional Authority and each island’s trad-itional owner institution, called a prescribed body corpor-ate), AD travelled to each of the study communities,meeting with leaders to describe the project and discussappropriate research methods and associated communityconsultation. The communities requested that we hold regu-lar community meetings to keep them informed of progress,and conduct interviews with a cross-section of individualsfrom each community.

During May –December AD undertook eightfield trips, each of –weeks duration, to the two study com-munities to () elicit the community members’ perceivedbenefits and costs associated with hunting, () understandhow those benefits and costs were related (using cognitivemapping exercises), and () determine the perceived im-portance of each benefit and cost (by asking individuals torate them).

Information from () and () was used to identify separ-able groups of benefits and costs associated with hunting.Information from () and () was used to estimate the aver-age importance of groups of separable benefits and costs,and mean values were compared. Statistical tests wereused to determine if the differences were significant, so wecould determine the relative importance of groups of bene-fits and costs.

Eliciting the benefits and costs of traditional hunting

We used free listing to identify, via interview, a broad rangeof benefits and costs associated with hunting. Intervieweeswere selected from a list, provided by community represen-tatives, of people who were deemed knowledgeable (in thatthey had sufficient knowledge of hunting and of the com-munity to provide sound information) and included malesand females, young and old. Each interviewee was asked twofocal questions: () What are the benefits of traditionaldugong and turtle hunting? () What are the costs oftraditional dugong and turtle hunting?

Responses were recorded in writing, and audio-recordedif permitted by the participant. At the beginning of eachinterview the participant was shown the list developed inprevious interviews and encouraged to contribute anyitems that he/she believed should be on it. We stopped con-ducting these interviews once saturation was reached (i.e.no new elements were identified by new interviewees;Stark & Torrance, ). Saturation occurred after inter-viewing participants (six men and four women) onMabuiag Island, and AD decided to interview the samenumber of participants (five women and five men) in St

Paul’s, even though saturation occurred with fewer partici-pants there.

The wording used during free listing sometimes variedbetween individuals. The content of the list and the variousthemes elicited were analysed qualitatively for similarity. Afinal list was generated, accounting for the similarities be-tween the ideas of participants and discarding redundan-cies. The final lists of benefits and costs were reviewedcollectively by the interviewees of each island to check foraccuracy and to develop an agreed set of definitions foreach item.

Identifying groups of benefits and costs

We then used cognitive mapping to test for the separability(or lack thereof) of the costs and benefits elicited in theprevious step.

The people from each island who had participated inthe free-listing activities were invited to take part in the cog-nitive mapping exercises, as were additional members ofeach community, who were recruited using snowball sam-pling, with the goal of speaking to a broad cross-section ofthe population.

Each participant was invited to view and categorize indi-vidual values (Rosenberg & Kim, ; Coxon, ) via asorting activity using two sets of cards (benefits andcosts). Each card had a description of one of the items iden-tified from the free-listing exercises. Respondents wereasked to place the cards into groups that ‘went well together’(ideally, not a single group), and provide a name or label foreach group of cards. The exercise was performed twice, onceusing cards that related to benefits, and once with cardsrelating to costs.

The groups of benefits and costs were coded into separ-ate binary matrices. The name of each benefit or cost ap-peared as a header on both the columns and the rows ofeach matrix. If a respondent had placed two items in agroup together, then the entry in the cell of the matrix cor-responding to those two items was ; otherwise it was . Wethen constructed a single aggregate matrix for each com-munity (Mabuiag and St Paul’s); simplistically, the sum ofall individual matrices. These aggregate matrices were thenanalysed using multidimensional scaling. We used bothmetric (which deals with interval or ratio-level data) andnon-metric multidimensional scaling (which deals with or-dinal data) to obtain visual representations of the relation-ships between the numerous benefits and costs identified inthe free-listing exercises, using normalized raw stress scoresto determine the optimal number of dimensions. Withthese visual representations we were able to identify separ-able groups of benefits and costs. Following Blake et al.() we calculated the Euclidean distance between all va-lues in the matrices, for each community, and then calcu-lated Pearson’s R to determine if the observed differences

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between communities were statistically significant (Blakeet al., ).

Representativeness of participants

OnMabuiag Island residents were asked to participate inthe cognitive mapping and agreed ( men and ninewomen; % of the permanent adult population of theisland). In St Paul’s, residents were asked to participateand agreed (men and women; % of the permanentadult population). Hunting is a male-only activity in TorresStrait. Our sample included male hunters and non-hunters,including elders who no longer hunt but teach the youngergeneration about hunting, and women, who do not hunt butprepare the food products of the hunt. Based on discussionwith community members who defined an age cut-off of years between younger and older men, our sample includeda total of older men (. years) and younger men(# years). Twenty households ( people) on Mabuiagand ( people) in St Paul’s ( and % of the total popu-lation, respectively) were asked to provide information onhunting patterns. Using this approach we were able to inter-view % of all active hunters.

The demographic composition of the surveyed house-holds was analysed and compared with the secondary socio-demographic data available from the census (ABS,a,b). There were no statistically significant differences(ascertained using one-sample z-tests for population pro-portions) between the household composition of thesampled population and the socio-demographic data fromthe census (ABS, a,b). Thus we have no reason to be-lieve that our sample was not representative of the generalpopulation of these communities.

Estimating the relative value of each group of benefitsand costs

We used the sets of cards that had been provided for thesorting session, and asked interviewees to score each itemon a scale from = not important to = very important.To account for individual differences, scores were normal-ized, so the sum of all the scores given by any single individ-ual equalled .

We then calculated the mean value of each of the separ-able groups of costs and benefits identified in the multidi-mensional scaling (hereafter clusters, k), and their meanvalue relative to the other clusters. For each participant:mean value of k = sum of individual item values/numberof items, and relative value of k = mean value of k/sum ofvalue of all clusters.

For each participant the relative value thus represents theproportion of total value captured by each cluster k. AWilcoxon test was used to determine if differences between

cluster means and cluster relative values were statisticallysignificant.

Results

The benefits and costs of traditional hunting

Eighteen benefits and costs were identified through thefree-listing exercises (Table ). The graphical representa-tions of the results of the multidimensional scaling analyses(Fig. ) helped identify three clusters each of benefits (com-munity, family, individual) and costs (community, family,environmental; Table ).

The typology of the benefit clusters was identical for thetwo study communities. The two representations of the ben-efits of hunting were highly correlated (R = ., P = .level); thus we present the combined cognitive map of ben-efits. All stress values for the multidimensional scaling out-puts were acceptable (Kruskal & Wish, ) and indicatedthat a three-dimensional solution produced the best fit atboth the aggregated and individual levels.

The analyses also identified three distinct clusters forcosts associated with hunting for Mabuiag respondents,and four distinct clusters for St Paul’s. The two aggregatedrepresentations based on the island of residence were per-fectly correlated (R = ., P = .). As a result, we ana-lysed the cognitive maps of respondents from Mabuiagand St Paul’s combined. When data from all respondentswere combined, the analyses identified the same three dis-tinct clusters defined by the Mabuiag respondents.

There were no statistical differences between Mabuiagand St Paul’s regarding the relative importance of commu-nity and family benefits (community benefits, P = .;family benefits, P = .; Mann–Whitney test). The meanimportance of the community benefits cluster was signifi-cantly greater than that of family benefits, which in turnwas greater than that of individual benefits, and these differ-ences were statistically significant (Fig. a).

There were no statistically significant differences in theimportance of cost clusters between communities. The im-portance of community costs was significantly greater thanthat of both family and environmental costs. There was nosignificant difference in the importance of family and envir-onmental costs (Fig. b).

The age of male residents was a statistically significantdeterminant of the relative importance of a cluster.Younger men placed more importance on family benefits(P = .; Mann–Whitney test), whereas older men placedmore importance on community benefits (P = .;Mann–Whitney test). Age had no significant effect on therelative importance of individual benefits (P = .;Mann–Whitney test). Older men considered communitycosts to be more important than the younger men did(P = .; Mann–Whitney test), whereas younger men

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considered family costs to be more important than the oldermen did (P = .; Mann–Whitney test). The relative im-portance of environmental costs was independent of age(P = .; Mann–Whitney test).

Discussion

The free-listing exercises confirmed the multidimensionalnature of the benefits and costs of traditional hunting ofmarine megafauna for two communities in Torres Strait.The cognitive mapping exercises demonstrated that trad-itional hunting provides bundles of benefits and costs tothese communities. Community-defined benefits associatedwith traditional hunting in this region are clearly separableinto one market and two non-market-based clusters (interms of benefits to family, community and individuals).

Family benefits were all related to meat/market valuesand were thus closely associated with provisioning services,highlighting the importance of food for sustenance and toindirectly supplement incomes by foregoing the need topurchase other types of protein (Penny & Moriarty, ;Altman, ). Individual benefits encapsulated health ben-efits (Rose, ; Burgess et al., ), but also acknowl-edged that hunting gives men an opportunity todemonstrate their skills (Bliege Bird et al., ), which isimportant to their sense of identity. Community benefits in-cluded a broad range of cultural benefits, including, but notlimited to, sharing (Wenzel, ; Bliege Bird & Bird, ),the maintenance of culture (Severance et al., ; Vaughan

& Vitousek, ), and the provision of food for ceremonialpurposes (Nietschmann, , ; Kwan, ).

Our cognitive mapping exercises did not separate clearlymarket and non-market costs. Fuel and time costs (bothlinked to the market) grouped together with ‘pressure forresults when in need of food and/or when asked to go hunt-ing’ (in a group termed family costs). However, communitycosts were deemed to be significantly greater than familycosts, confirming previous observations that socio-cultural(community) values (be they costs or benefits) are more im-portant thanmarket values. People are motivated by both ex-trinsic and intrinsic factors (Gneezy et al., ), and thesefindings suggest that intrinsic motivations are likely to bestrongly associated with culture. The important policy impli-cation of this finding is that policy makers need to be carefulthat extrinsic incentives designed to alter hunting behavioursdo not negatively affect these intrinsic (cultural) motivations.

The valuation of such services (formally, indigenous cul-tural services, as defined in the Common InternationalClassification of Ecosystem Services; BISE, ) is particu-larly challenging for three reasons. Not only is the idea of‘valuing’ indigenous cultural services contentious and prob-ably inappropriate in many contexts (Venn & Quiggin,), but many of these services are inherently inseparablefrom each other and from other ecosystem services.Consequently, one cannot simply estimate the value ofindividual services and sum them (de Groot et al., ;Carbone & Kerry Smith, ). There are also tenuous ornon-existent links between most indigenous cultural

TABLE 1 Benefits and costs of hunting perceived by Torres Strait Islanders from the communities of Mabuiag and St Paul’s (Fig. ), elicitedduring free-listing exercises, grouped into clusters identified through multidimensional scaling. The numbers in parentheses are mean ±SD of raw rating scores (range –).

Benefits Costs

Community CommunityKeeps tradition (9.12 ± 0.98) No respect for cultural protocols (7.94 ± 1.64)Keeps culture (9.09 ± 1.17) Bad hunting (8.42 ± 1.22)Sharing (7.95 ± 1.40) Less sharing (7.80 ± 1.54)Unity of community (8.24 ± 1.24) Injuries; i.e. an injured hunter cannot provide to the

community (4.06 ± 1.69)Islan Pasin; i.e.traditional island way of life (7.81 ± 2.01)Teaching the children (8.13 ± 1.45)Spiritual connection to the sea (6.66 ± 1.72)Food for ceremonies (7.60 ± 1.37)Shows knowledge of the hunter (6.26 ± 1.54)Essence of being an Islander (5.94 ± 2.03)Family FamilyFood for home consumption (6.60 ± 1.70) Fuel (8.08 ± 2.06)Fresh food (4.45 ± 1.33) Time (7.08 ± 1.74)Tasty food (4.02 ± 1.55) Pressure for results when in need of food (4.13 ± 1.74)Cost-effective practice (6.00 ± 1.80) Pressure for results when asked to go hunting (3.47 ± 1.82)Individual EnvironmentalShows skills of the hunter (4.05 ± 1.55) Few animals (6.01 ± 1.66)Shows strength of the hunter (3.96 ± 1.55) Cleaning animal waste on the beach (4.72 ± 1.88)Prestige (2.90 ± 1.46) Disturbance of animals from noise (4.83 ± 1.90)Health (3.90 ± 1.16)

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services and market prices (Daniel et al., ), requiring theuse of sophisticated valuation approaches by which infer-ences may be drawn about those values. There is a substan-tive and rapidly growing body of literature on methods fordoing so (Bateman & Great Britain Department forTransport, ; Day et al., ) but not all of these meth-ods can be validly applied in all settings. Although simplerthan more accepted approaches to cost–benefit analysissuch as contingent valuation, our methodological approachfacilitates quantification of the cost-effectiveness of variousmanagement approaches (Supplementary Material ), usingculturally appropriate participatory methods to address theproblems outlined above.

Further developments

Our research group continues to work with the communitiesand agencies involved and we are confident that the

population status of dugongs and turtles and the hunting pat-terns and values of Torres Strait Islanders have not changed(Fuentes et al., ; Marsh et al., ; Cleguer et al., ;Hagihara et al., ; Urwin et al., ; Watkin Lui et al.,a,b). We have also conducted research on the values ofhunting with the Torres Strait Islander diaspora (WatkinLui et al., a,b) with whom c. % of the meat is shared,an important cultural practice (Supplementary Material ).

Nonetheless, the debate over traditional hunting of du-gongs and turtles has intensified (Watkin Lui et al.,b). The Australian government is under increasingpressure to ban the practice and to offer monetary compen-sation to the Islanders based on the replacement value of themeat. Yielding to these demands would reflect a limited un-derstanding of the multidimensional benefits gained by theTorres Strait communities involved in traditional hunting.Not considering the full spectrum of values as assessed byan affected community group can have negative

FIG. 2 Multidimensionalscaling representations of theclusters of benefits (a & b) andcosts (c & d) of hunting, at theaggregated and individuallevels, for the respondents ofMabuiag and St Paul’s (Fig. )combined (N = ). Theclusters of benefits includecommunity benefits (tr, keepstradition; cu, keeps culture; un,unity of the community; sh,sharing; pa, Islan Pasin; te,teaching the children; sp,spiritual connection to the sea;ce, food for ceremonies; kn,shows knowledge of thehunter; is, essence of being anIslander), family benefits (co,food for home consumption;fr, fresh food; ta, tasty food; ef,cost-effective), and individualbenefits (sk, shows skills of thehunter; st, shows strength ofthe hunter; pr, prestige; he,health). The clusters of costsinclude community costs(resp, no respect for culturalprotocols; bhu, bad hunting;lsh, less sharing; inj, injuries),family costs (fu, fuel; ti, time;prne, pressure for results whenin need of food; pras, pressurefor results when asked to gohunting), and environmentalcosts (la, few animals; cl,cleaning animal waste on thebeach; no, disturbance ofanimals from noise).

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consequences for resource users (invisible losses; Turneret al., ) as well as decision makers, who risk angeringpeople with whom they want to work (Voyer et al., ),which can lead to regulatory non-compliance, especiallyin remote areas such as Torres Strait.

The recognition and integration of cultural values of indi-genous hunting into the environmental decisionmaking andpolitical discourse is politically difficult but could help fosterco-management processes based on institutional fit, fromlocal to global (Robards & Lovecraft, ). However, amore open dialogue about indigenous hunting risks makingway for interest groups that disagree with indigenous per-spectives (Robards & Lovecraft, ). Indigenous groupsmust prepare for possible conflicts with non-indigenous at-titudes about wildlife conservation, sustainability and envir-onmental management, while being ready to confrontdecisions made at the global or national level by global pol-itical environment groups ignorant of the cultural impacts oftheir decisions (Wenzel, ).

Banning the hunting of dugongs and green turtles inTorres Strait would also contravene the hunting rights

established by Australian Native Title and environmentallaws, and the Torres Strait Treaty between Australia andPapua New Guinea (Havemann & Smith, ). Thus ourresults contribute to the debate by providing policy makersand interested stakeholder groups with a comprehensive un-derstanding of the hunting values of Torres Strait Islanders,which could be used as a foundation for co-managementprocesses for the management of dugong and turtle hunt-ing. We have made an initial attempt at estimating a lowerbound for the monetary value of these values inSupplementary Material .

Conclusion

The methodology we developed provides insights into typesof benefits and costs associated with traditional hunting,and their relative importance from a community perspec-tive. Our approach could be used to develop a typology ofcosts and benefits of related activities in other communitiesthat hunt for terrestrial and marine wild meats. The tech-nique also made it possible to make various kinds of benefitsand costs more visible, and to use a quantitative assess-ment. Our findings reinforce the call of previous researchers(e.g. Gregory et al., ; Turner et al., ) to considersocio-cultural issues when devising natural resource man-agement strategies. Various groups interested in the sustain-able management of wildlife inevitably hold diverse images,values and worldviews. A comprehensive understanding ofthe values held by those primarily affected by a manage-ment decision can assist stakeholders to work together toachieve a common goal, and fulfil the requirements ofco-management promoted by management agencies. Theapproach outlined here is relatively straightforward to im-plement in remote communities and cross-cultural situa-tions, and could have wide application with indigenouscommunities.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grants from the Marine andTropical Sciences Research Facility, the Australian MarineMammal Centre and James Cook University stipend andfee-offset scholarships to AD. We thank the people ofMabuiag and St Paul’s, who welcomed AD into their com-munity and their homes and made this research possible.The Torres Strait Regional Authority provided valuablelogistical support and advice. We also thank two anonym-ous reviewers for their valuable comments.

Author contributions

The study was conceived and conducted as a PhD project byAD under the supervision of NS and HM. FWL provided

FIG. 3 Relative importance scores for clusters of (a) benefits and(b) costs of hunting as perceived by respondents from Mabuiagand St Paul’s in Torres Strait, Australia (Fig. ). The median isrepresented by a horizontal line, the box represents theinter-quartile range, and the whiskers represent the data range.Box plots that do not share the same letter are derived fromdistributions that are significantly different from each other atP, . (Wilcoxon test).

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cultural advice from the perspective of an AustralianIndigenous researcher. MKK recast the research into an ap-propriate theoretical background for an Oryx special issueon cultural values in the context of her work with theother members of the research team on associated projects.

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WRIGHT, D. () Mid Holocene maritime economy in the westernTorres Strait. Archaeology in Oceania, , –.

Biographical sketches

AURÉL I E DEL I S L E ’ s research lies at the intersection of environmentalsustainability, governance, food security and livelihood outcomes,particularly in Pacific island countries and territories. MI LENA

K IATKOSK I K IM is an expert in environmental governance and thesocio-cultural factors associated with environmental management inLatin America and Oceania. NATAL I E STOECKL is an economist in-terested in the environmental and social/distributional issues asso-ciated with economic growth. FE LEC IA WATK IN LU I is a TorresStrait Islander whose research interest and practice focus onIndigenous studies. HELENE MARSH is a specialist on dugong andsea turtle biology and conservation.

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Oryx, 2018, 52(2), 250–261 © 2017 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605317001466

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