Knowledge of conservationists on the effect of lead toxicity on the conservation status of African mourning dove ( Streptopelia decipiens ) in Ibadan , Nigeria

The role of humans in any conservation action is vital and plays a key role in the success of biodiversity and wildlife conservation. The awareness and related activities of people to the risk of lead contamination as a threat to the conservation status is evaluated, particularly with respect to the status of the mourning dove. Lead pollution and toxicity has been reported in mourning dove with associated health and mortality patterns, and is therefore a recognised threat to the conservation of the species. This study therefore aimed to assess the knowledge, attitude and perception of conservationists, who are the custodian of knowledge, on the conservation status of African mourning dove (Streptopelia decipiens) as a species model, and lead toxicity as an associated threat. The result shows that all the correspondents had varying degree of knowledge about the conservation of African mourning dove (S. decipiens) and the associated threat of lead toxicity. 16.3% of the respondents showed very high level of attitude, while 27.6 and 46.9% showed an average and high level of attitude to the conservation of African mourning dove (S. decipiens) and the associated threat of lead toxicity. Based on perception scores, 41.8% showed average level, while 28.6 and 5.1% showed high and very high level of perception, respectively; but 13.3% of the respondents showed low level of perception. Higher educational status corresponds to a higher knowledge, but less significant relationship to attitude and perception. It is concluded that, knowledge about conservation would affect the attitude and perception, though there are no significant gender and age differences regarding the topic.


INTRODUCTION
The conservation status of a species indicates the status of its continued existence and the likelihood of becoming extinct in the near future [International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 2015].One of the greatest challenges facing wildlife and environmental conservation is how to balance anthropogenic impact and influence with environmental stability (Kioko et al., 2010).As such, the role of humans in any conservation action is very vital.Humans play a key role in the success of biodiversity and wildlife conservation plans, but anthropogenic activities also pose a major threat to wildlife and biodiversity (Gemeda et al., 2016).The effect of a dual assault in the form of urbanization and industrialization has led the human population to interface with natural habitats impacting negatively on wildlife (Gupta and Bakre, 2013).There are several factors taken into account when assessing the conservation status of species; which includes rate of decline, population size, area of geographic distribution, breeding rates, and known associated threat (IUCN, 2012).Among the known threats are environmentally associated impacts such as desertification, climate change, and environmental pollution.Exposure to environmental pollutants are often regarded insignificant, but may constitute threat to the survival of species such as Streptopelia decipiens (Primack et al., 2008).Environmental pollutants such as heavy metals have been reported to have caused globalscale environmental contamination with subsequent poisoning of the humans and animals (Tong et al., 2000).The effects of heavy metal poison, such as reported in lead poisoning, could pose a threat to the conservation status of all known species.
Lead poisoning was first reported in wild birds in a sporting and scientific paper in the United States of America in the late 1800s, which cited the occurrence in waterfowls (Grinnell, 1894;Lewis and Legler, 1968).Despite the early warnings, the situation persisted during years of investigation and controversies, complicated by the dynamics of human interface with wildlife and wildlife conservation.The story remains unchanged with increase in anthropogenic contact with wildlife and the interaction of wildlife with humans due to further encroachment by humans into the wild.Poisoning from ingestion of spent lead shot in mourning dove has been identified as a conservation and management issue, with a need for a better understanding of its potential population effects (Tomlinson et al., 1994).There have been reports of ingested lead shots of 0.3 to 6.4% in mouring doves (Kendall, 1996;Schulz et al., 2002).Kendall (1996) estimated the frequency of ingestion of lead shot, based largely on data from Mourning dove to be about 3%, indicating the importance of lead toxicity to the species' conservation and associated threat to conservation in general.
Several authors have reviewed the exposure and effect of exposure of environmental lead poisoning in the mourning dove, and reported effects ranging from ill health to mortalities in the wild (Castrale, 1991;Schulz et al., 2006) and experimentally (Schulz et al., 2007).
Despite international awareness of lead poisoning in wildlife, including wild birds and mourning dove, there is still insufficient data on the knowledge and practice of their conservation; and particularly in relation to the connection between conservation and environmental pollution in the species, particularly as addressed in this case study in Nigeria.Mourning dove has been identified as a source of meat internationally, and is eaten by locals in Nigeria; it is regarded as a delicacy and among the list of meat called bush meat by locals (Green, 2005;Natala et al., 2009).There has been no report of the knowledge and practice of the locals on the conservation status of Mourning doves, as most issues are assumed to be naturally controlled (Baskett et al., 1994).Data was collected using a cross sectional design, by distributing a well-structured questionnaire each containing 34 items to 100 potential respondents, and 98% responded.
The assessment of peoples' knowledge, attitudes and perceptions (KAP) towards conservation and its associated threat has become significant in the study of wildlife conservation (Newmark et al., 1993).Presently, there is a lack of adequate understanding of the KAP in wildlife conservation issues (Kioko et al., 2010).Assessing attitudes, knowledge and perceptions of students and staff of conservation-related institutions toward wildlife can provide insights on their role to ensure and contribute to the conservation of wildlife (Carter et al., 2013).This study therefore aimed to assess the knowledge, attitude and perception of conservationists on the conservation status of African mourning dove (S. decipiens) as a model of species conservation, and better insight into lead toxicity as an associated threat, particularly given its widespread occurrence ecologically, and its use as a source of meat.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
In a cross sectional design, sampling was done using a wellstructured questionnaire with 34 items, distributed to 100 people and 98% responded to the distributed questionnaires.The questionnaires were pretested and administered to a purposively selected sample of conservationists at the Departments of Wildlife and Ecotourism Management (WEM), Forest Resources Management (FRM) at the University of Ibadan, and Forest Conservation and Protection (FCP) at the Forest Research Institute of Nigeria.The participants were students and staff of institutions concerned with the study of conservation; therefore, a representative of people with related knowledge, and also a likely mirror of the opinions of some members of society on conservation matters.Based on the population of the study areas (Figure 1), 29.6% of the questionnaires (29 copies) were administered at WEM, 39.9% (39 copies) at FRM, and 30.6% (30 copies) of the questionnaires were administered at FCP; 98 copies in total.The questionnaire was structured into four sections: (1) sociodemographic characteristics of the respondents, (2) the level of their awareness and concepts related to the subject (used to assess their Knowledge), (3) attitudes as related to activities in relation to the subject, and 4) perception on conservation status, as assessed by the effect of the information that they possess about the subject has on the mode of action to be taken by the participants.Upon Table 1.Knowledge, attitude and perception scores of respondents on conservation status and the effect of lead toxicity, expressed as number (n) and percentages (%).
with regard to quality of perception, the scoring scheme was: "exceptional" (28); "very high" (above 24), "high" (20 to 24), "average" (15 to 19), and "low" (below 15).There were 34 items alltotalled: socio-demographic details (8), knowledge (10), attitude (9), and perception (7).Statistical analysis and interpretation of the results were done by descriptive statistics and correlation analysis using SPSS version 22. Correlation analysis was also carried out to test if significant relationships existed between items assessing knowledge, attitude and perception of the respondents.

Knowledge, attitude and perception (KAP) of respondents on conservation status and the effect of lead toxicity
The qualitative categorical analyses (Table 1) showed that majority of the respondents [50 (51.0%)] had a high knowledge level of conservation issues with reference to African mourning dove (S. decipiens), 15 (15.3%) of the respondents showed average knowledge while only 19 respondents (19.4%) showed very high knowledge, and none of the respondents had scores indicating low or lack of knowledge.Based on attitude scores, the largest part of the respondents [46 (46.9%)] showed a high level of attitude towards conservation, 27 respondents (27.6%) showed an average level of attitude, while only 16 respondents (16.3%) showed a very high level of attitude.Moreover, none of the respondents had a low attitude score.Based on the perception scores, most of the respondents [45 (41.8%)] showed average level of perception of the conservation status of African mourning doves, while 28 respondents (28.6%) showed a high level of perception on their conservation status, and five respondents (5.1%) showed a very high level of perception, whilst 13 respondents (13.3%) showed a low level of perception.

Relationship between KAP and respondents' gender on conservation status and associated threat
Table 2 shows the relationship between knowledge and respondents' gender.A majority of the male respondents [32 (54.2%)] had high level of knowledge of conservation status with reference to African mourning dove (S. decipiens) and the associated effect of lead toxicity as a threat; while only 10 (16.9%) of the male respondents had very high knowledge with merely 8 (13.6%) of them having average knowledge.Similarly, most of the female respondents [18 (46.2%)] had a high level of knowledge; while only 9 (23.1%) of the female respondents had a very high knowledge, with only 7 (17.9%) of them having average knowledge.Based on the relationship between attitude and respondents' gender, a majority of the male respondents [23 (39%)] had high level of attitude towards conservation status and the associated effect of lead toxicity as a threat; while only 19 (32.2%) of the male respondents had average attitude with only 12 (20.3%) of them having very high attitude.In the same way, most of the female respondents [23 (59.0%)] had a high level of attitude towards conservation status and the associated effect of lead toxicity as a threat; while only 8(20.5%) of them had an average attitude, and merely 4(10.3%) of them had a very high attitude.
Based on the relationship between perception and respondents' gender, a majority of the male respondents [29 (49.2%)] had average level of perception of conservation status and the associated effect of lead toxicity as a threat; while only 14 (23.7%) of the male respondents had a high perception score with only 1 (1.7%) of them having a very high perception score.On the contrary, most of the female respondents [14 (35.9%)] had a high level of perception; while 12 (30.8%) of them had an average perception, and only 4 (10.3%) of them had a very high perception.It is noteworthy that only 4 (10.3%) of the female respondents had a low perception as compared to 9 (15.3%) of the male respondents.

Relationship between KAP and respondents' educational level on conservation status and associated threat
Table 3 shows the relationship between knowledge and respondents' educational status; the results show that majority of the undergraduates [29 (50.0%)], postgraduates [17 (58.6%)] and lecturers [ 4(40%)], respectively, had a high level of knowledge of conservation status with reference to African mourning dove (S. decipiens).Based on the relationship between attitude and respondents' educational status, most of the undergraduates [31 (53.4%)] had a high attitude score with respect to conservation status of the African mourning dove (S. decipiens).Moreover, with respect to the associated effect of lead toxicity as a threat, 12 (20.7%) of them had an average attitude score.The postgraduates [11 (37.9%)] had an average attitude score; while 10 (34.5%) had a high attitude score.Meanwhile, among the lecturers 4 (40%) scored both average and high in their attitude.
With respect to the relationship between perception and respondents' educational status, the results show that 22 (37.9%) and 18 (62.1%) of undergraduates and postgraduate respondents, respectively, had an average perception score; while 19 (32.8%) and 4 (13.8%) of these respondents, respectively, had a high perception score.Among the lecturer respondents, 4 (40%) had a high perception score; while only 1 (10%) had an average perception score.Also, as expected, among the undergraduates, 7 (21.1%)had the highest incidence of low perception score, followed by postgraduates 4(13.8%) and lecturers 2(20%) as shown in Table 3.

Correlation between knowledge, attitude and perception (KAP) on conservation status and associated threat
Table 4 shows the correlation between knowledge, attitude and perception of respondents on conservation status with reference to African mourning dove (S. decipiens) and the associated effect of lead toxicity as a threat.The r -values between knowledge and attitude, knowledge and perception, and attitude and perception are 0.309**, 0.347** and 0.227*, respectively; showing that correlations are consistently positive among pairs of data for knowledge, attitude and perception.This  suggests that a good knowledge of conservation status could promote a better attitude and perception with respect to conservation of species such as the African mourning dove (S. decipiens).Although the correlations are all statistically significant, the correlations are not exceptionally strong, accounting for only approximately 12% of the variance.However, the correlation data are sufficient to suggest a positive relationship between improved knowledge and better attitudes toward conservation of the African mourning dove.Also, the evidence in this study showing a positive correlation between perception and attitude suggests that a favourable perception would enhance a better attitude toward conservation of species.Moreover, the positive correlations among knowledge, attitude, and perception of the effect of lead toxicity as an associated threat to the conservation status of the species, were apparent.

DISCUSSION
This study has shown that the majority of the respondents 59 (60.2%) were males; while females were 39 (39.8 %).The greatest number of the respondents 41 (41.8 %) were in the age group of 15 to 24 and single; while undergraduate students formed the largest group of the respondents 58(59.2%).
The general KAP of respondents on conservation status using African mourning dove as a species model, and the associated effect of lead toxicity as a threat, showed that majority of the respondents had a high knowledge and favourable attitude scores, but an average perception score.Knowledge is not exclusive in determining attitude, but it is often a contributing factor.The high knowledge and attitude scores can be attributed to the fact that the respondents are active in the field of conservation either as students or lecturers.Knowledge has also been described as an essential precursor to attitude (Asunta, 2003).In fact, research on environmental topics has shown that the higher a person's actual knowledge, the better their attitude (Trewhella et al., 2005;Sexton and Stewart, 2007;Prokop et al., 2009).
Surprisingly, most of the respondents in the research reported here had an average perception score.This was among the least expected results from a practical standpoint, because the respondents are involved in conservation, directly or indirectly, and was expected to have very high knowledge as shown in this study which should influence the level of perception.The success of wildlife conservation depends on the attitudes of people towards conservation (Katrina, 2000).Conservation education is very imperative to change the attitude of the people towards wildlife (Kahan and Ali, 2015).Understanding the knowledge, attitude and perception (KAP) of people towards conservation and associated threat is also an important element for wildlife conservation and evaluating the success of conservation projects, in general (Soto et al., 2001;Sundaresan et al., 2012).
A number of significant results have been presented in other research and in the study reported here indicating substantial differences in gender knowledge, attitudes and perceptions towards animals.On the relationship between KAP and respondents' gender on conservation status with reference to African mourning dove (S. decipiens) and associated threat, the male respondents had higher knowledge score than the females.This is consonant with the research by Kellert and Berry (1987) and Tikka et al. (2000) who reported that males significantly have higher knowledge scores towards wildlife than females.By contrast, the female respondents were found to have a higher attitude and perception scores than the male respondents.Substantial published evidence shows that females have stronger and more affective attitudes towards animals than males.For instance, Borden and Francis (1978) and Van Liere and Dunlap (1980) reported that females exhibit higher perceptions concerning the environment than males.Tikka et al. (2000) also observed that females show a higher degree of environmental concern through their daily activities than men.As summarized by Kellert and Berry (1987), gender is among the most important sociodemographic influences on attitudes towards animals in our society.
On the relationship between KAP and respondents' educational level on conservation status with reference to African mourning dove (S. decipiens) and associated threat, in this study the lecturers had higher knowledge, attitude and perception scores compared to postgraduate and undergraduate respondents.This further supports the assertion that there is a positive association between KAP on wildlife issues and level of schooling or educational status (Pashby and Weis, 2002).Favourable attitudes toward wildlife conservation were found to be higher among the people in the upper school classes as reported by Kioko et al. (2010).Also, earlier findings associated higher education and/or increase in educational status to more compassion for wildlife (Bradley et al., 1999).On the correlation between Knowledge, Attitude and Perception (KAP) on conservation status with reference to African mourning dove (S. decipiens) and associated threat, the results show that a significant relationship exists between Knowledge, Attitude and Perception of respondents as regards conservation of the African mourning dove.For this reason, identifying knowledge, attitude and perception of people on wildlife conservation is very likely a pre-requisite for conservation action (Ebua et al., 2011).And the Knowledge, Attitude and Perception of the effect of lead toxicity as an associated threat will further be a strong asset in promoting conservation efforts by emphasizing the environmental impact on the species.
The greatest enemy to wildlife conservation is ignorance of the issues related to conservation and management of natural resources (Ebua et al., 2011).For an effective wildlife conservation action, it is crucial to understand the issues beyond the need of individual wildlife species, to promote an understanding as well of the human, cultural and economic aspects that overwhelmingly affect conservation efforts (Baillie et al., 2004).Therefore, understanding the factors that influence attitudes is important to enable wildlife managers and conservationists to implement approaches that attract support of stakeholders and the general public (Ebua et al., 2011).People tend to develop a negative attitude towards conservation, especially when they do not believe that they are receiving benefits and yet must bear the costs of living in harmony with wildlife (Omondi, 1994;Hill, 1998).Nonetheless, despite the costs of living with wildlife, some people and/or communities have retained a positive attitude towards conservation (Newmark et al., 1993;DeBoer and Baguete, 1998).Information on Knowledge, Perceptions and Attitudes of people is imperative to identify management programmes and strategies that best suit conservation efforts of biodiversity and wildlife resources (Kideghesho et al., 2007).People's attitudes and perceptions are results of not just personal experiences, but also a wide variety of social factors including fundamental socio-demographics (Kleiven et al., 2004;Majić and Bath, 2010), extending more broadly to encompass wider societal experiences, cultural norms, expectations and beliefs (Dickman, 2008).

Conclusion
This study has established that people in the field of nature conservation within the study areas have higher knowledge and attitude than perception of conservation status and the associated effect of lead toxicity as an anthropogenic threat to wildlife.There is a positive relationship between Knowledge and Attitude, Knowledge and Perception as well as Attitude and Perception in members of the surveyed institutions.This means that, better knowledge about conservation will promote good attitude and enhance positive perception.Higher educational status such as postgraduate programmes is important to a very high knowledge of conservation but less significant to attitude and perception.Though, there is no known study on evaluation of Knowledge, Attitude and Perception (KAP) of people that are not in the field of nature conservation, but taken inference from this study, it can be expressed that the little or no knowledge on conservation would affect the attitude and perception.

RECOMMENDATIONS
Conservation education should be incorporated into school curricula across all levels of education, and taught in secondary schools and higher institutions to educate people on conservation of natural resources.There should be more public enlightenment on radio, television and other mass media about the effects of threats to the environment and wildlife, including the release of environmental pollutants such as lead resulting from anthropogenic activities, such as mining, ore processing, smelting, refining ore, and the recycling or disposal of leaded battery, and leaded ammunition; especially, emphasizing the importance for survival of wildlife species and the effect on their conservation status.
Further research is needed to establish guidelines mitigating the effects of lead toxicity on the health and reproductive success of S. decipiens (African mourning dove).There is also a need to encourage community conservation and participatory management of wildlife resources for effective conservation and/or sustainable utilization.

Table 2 .
Relationship between KAP and respondents' gender, expressed as number (n) and percentages (%).

Table 3 .
Relationship between KAP and respondents' educational status, expressed as number (n) and percentages (%).