Will Brazilian City Dwellers Actively Engage in Urban Conservation? A Case Study with the Charismatic Neotropical Blue-and-Yellow Macaw (Ara ararauna)
, Piotr Tryjanowski 3, Jeater Santos 2, Beatriz Martinez-Miranzo 4,5, Deleon Leandro 2,6, João Bohrer 7, Juciane Maria Johann 2 and Mark D. E. Fellowes 8Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors, this is a very interesting manuscript about a topic rarely analyzed in the Neotropical Region. I have only minor comments made on the pdf file that I hope help the authors to improve the manuscript.
Best regards
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer
Thank you very much for your valuable recommendations. As William Zinsser very aptly claimed it in his book On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction", the essence of writing is rewriting". We strived to heed your suggestions, in order to improve our manuscript.
About your recommendation "It would be nice to see here the average willingness of people to plant fruit trees or installing artificial nests."
>>> We included that data in the abstract.
About your recommendation "Please provide more details about how and when people was approached to make the survey."
>>> We included these informations in the manuscript: "Respondents were approached in places with large circulation of residents of all social classes, such as hypermarkets, urban parks and shopping malls, for three months, between April and July 2021."
About your recommendations "Please give more details about the test. For example, I do not understand what is the numerical identification on each species, maybe between 1 and 10?"; "The test is clear, but it would nice to also include the famility error structure used. I think this correspond to Gaussian. Please ass this information for each GLM tha you ran." and "For example, in this case I think that the response variable was 0 and 1, and the error structure was binomial."
>>> We largely reworked the Data Analysis and Results sections. Furthermore, we added this phrase in the manuscript:
"The bird species were presented to the interviewees on an A4 card, with 10 photos of the same size, numbered from 1 to 10, following this sequence 1=Cariama cristata; 2=Sicalis flaveola; 3= Ara ararauna; 4=Pitangus sulphuratus; 5=Brotogeris tirica; 6=Columbina talpacoti; 7=Ramphastos toco; 8=Vanellus chilensis; 9=Ara chloropterus; 10=Crotophaga ani."
Finally, we would like to say that we are at your disposal for further improvements to the manuscript, if you deem it necessary.
Greetings from Brazil,
The Authors.
Reviewer 2 Report
The Work is quite interesting and brings good contributions, however, it lacked some important references that address related issues and would be worth reading and discussing (Toledo et al. 2011; Calderan et al., 2019; Calderan et al. 2021). Another very important issue that needs to be evaluated is that there is no survey of the amount of nests available in the city, nor the scarcity of them, to suggest artificial nests. The suggestion of artificial nests should only occur with a real need. More than just placing nests, it is important to involve the community in conservation and in the planting of fruit species that can provide natural nests in the future, not only for the Hyacinth Macaws, but also for other species.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer
About your recommendations: "The Work is quite interesting and brings good contributions, however, it lacked some important references that address related issues and would be worth reading and discussing (Toledo et al. 2011; Calderan et al., 2019; Calderan et al. 2021). Another very important issue that needs to be evaluated is that there is no survey of the amount of nests available in the city, nor the scarcity of them, to suggest artificial nests. The suggestion of artificial nests should only occur with a real need. More than just placing nests, it is important to involve the community in conservation and in the planting of fruit species that can provide natural nests in the future, not only for the Hyacinth Macaws, but also for other species."
We agree with all your important suggestions, and we have added the following bibliographic references to the manuscript:
31. Barbosa, L.T., Calderan, A.M.P., de Souza, C.C., & Guedes, N.M.R. (2019). Biodiversity conservation: evaluation of the perception of high school students. Brazilian Journal of Environmental Education (RevBEA), 14(1), 362-376.
32. Calderan, A., Tinoco, L., Souza, C.C., & Guedes, N.M.R. (2019). Residents' perception of blue-and-white macaws (Ara ararauna), in the urban area of Campo Grande (MS). Brazilian Journal of Environmental Education (RevBEA), 14(2), 277-294.
33. Calderan, A., Tinoco, L., Appel, S., & Guedes, N. (2021). Residents' perception of the yellow-faced maracanã (Orthopsittaca manilatus, Aves: Psittacidae), in an urban area of Campo Grande-MS. Brazilian Journal of Animal and Environmental Research, 4(2), 2134-2145.
34. Toledo, M.C.B., Donatelli, R.J., & Batista, G.T. (2012). Relation between green spaces and bird community structure in an urban area in Southeast Brazil. Urban Ecosystems, 15(1), 111-131.
We believe that these citations have strengthened the discussion of our results. Finally, we would like to say that we are at your disposal for further improvements to the manuscript, if you deem it necessary.
Greetings from Brazil, the Authors.
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors attempted to understand public perception of common bird species encountered in an urban setting and the propensity to engage in activities that would support, specifically, macaws’ nesting habitat needs. The premise is a good one and the introduction is well-written to frame the problem and objectives. The methods, however, are not robust enough to develop any significant conclusions. There are some flaws in the questions that are potentially producing biases. In addition, the methodology is not fully articulated in the methods section to fully understand the implementation or reproducibility of the research. I did not respond to the results or discussion in depth or at all, because I think the methods are sufficiently flawed that conclusions will not be robust or informative.
Line 99: Can the authors quantify the scarcity of nesting trees?
Line 116: I suggest converting to km^2
Line 130 and 131: Do these lines say the same thing, thus redundant; or was there two divisions of the sampled population, please clarify.
Line 136: Weighted? And what is meant by extrapolated to the current sample?
Line 129-143: There needs to be more on the background of the survey, the authors mention “questionnaire” and “interviewees”, does this mean in-person interviews were conducted, or self-administered questionnaires were provided? How big was the sample size, i.e., n=300 so 300 questionnaires were distributed and there was a 100% return rate? How were participants selected, randomly? What data did the authors use to identify residents? How were the residents initially contacted? Was there follow-up if a questionnaire was not returned? If an individual sample did not respond, was there replacement? What was and how was sampling error calculated? The authors must provide a more comprehensive account of the entire sampling methodology.
Results: Where are the raw response values, not the summarized proportions?
Question 3: it is difficult to know if this question is selecting for a specific group of people that would be highly knowledgeable about birds because the authors are referencing the scientific names only and not the common names or even families. This would bias the response towards individuals with deeper knowledge of birds and thus keener interests, missing those with superficial knowledge yet interests. I think this a a big flaw in the methodology.
Question 4: same as Question 3.
Question 6: This is a loaded question, because it leaves open to interpretation whom he/she is agreeing to allow this activity to happen, i.e., who is asking to plant trees, and that alone may influence the response. Is it the government, a non-profit, a local bird organization, etc… And who has the burden of cost? And, are you asking the respondent to physically plant the tree, or are you asking if they are willing to purchase and plant the tree; are you asking for permission for someone else to come in and plant the tree? That is all largely unknown based on the question, thus not a robust question because you are leaving a lot of the unknowns to the respondent’s own interpretation, introducing significant biases into the responses.
Question 7: Same as Question 6
Line 180: What is meant by positively selected?
Figures 2-4: These can be combined into one figure.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer
Thank you very much for your valuable recommendations to improving the quality of our manuscript. As William Zinsser very aptly claimed it in his book "On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction", "the essence of writing is rewriting". Based on your recommendations and advice, we were able to reformulate profoundly the manuscript, and we believe its quality has increased. However, we are at your disposal to continue modifying the text, if necessary.
About your comments: "The authors attempted to understand public perception of common bird species encountered in an urban setting and the propensity to engage in activities that would support, specifically, macaws’ nesting habitat needs. The premise is a good one and the introduction is well-written to frame the problem and objectives. The methods, however, are not robust enough to develop any significant conclusions. There are some flaws in the questions that are potentially producing biases. In addition, the methodology is not fully articulated in the methods section to fully understand the implementation or reproducibility of the research. I did not respond to the results or discussion in depth or at all, because I think the methods are sufficiently flawed that conclusions will not be robust or informative."
>>> We have reformulated profoundly all sections of the manuscript, and we've redone the statistical calculations, in order to comply with your recommendations and improve our paper.
About your recommendation: Line 99: Can the authors quantify the scarcity of nesting trees?
>>> We've added these information: "11 pairs of Ara ararauna build their nests in trunks of dead palm trees of the Caribbean royal palm Roystonea oleraceae in Rondonópolis City (Figure 1), and we have observed competition between pairs for the dead palm trees (João Bohrer, unpublished data) For comparison purposes, Pranty et al found 15 Blue-and-Yellow Macaw nests in Miami-Dade County, Florida, USA [35]."
About your recommendation: "Line 116: I suggest converting to km^2"
>>> We did it.
About your recommendation: "Line 130 and 131: Do these lines say the same thing, thus redundant; or was there two divisions of the sampled population, please clarify."
>>> We've reworked that paragraph in this way: "Responses to three hundred (300) questionnaires were collected from Rondonópolis City residents. Interviewees were approached in places with large circulation of residents of all social classes, such as hypermarkets, urban parks and shopping malls, for three months, between April and July 2021. The population was divided into three social classes, depending on the annual income of each household, namely: 1. high socioeconomic class (monthly household income of US $3,715.00, or higher); 2. middle socioeconomic class (monthly household income ranging from US $501.00 to US $3,714.00); and 3. low socioeconomic class (monthly household income of US $500.00, or lower). These income brackets were converted from Reais to US dollars, based on the exchange rate on October 20th, 2021. Each social class was weighed and extrapolated to the current sample (n = 300 interviews) in order to find a representative sample for each social class."
About your recommendations and questions: "Line 136: Weighted? And what is meant by extrapolated to the current sample?
Line 129-143: There needs to be more on the background of the survey, the authors mention “questionnaire” and “interviewees”, does this mean in-person interviews were conducted, or self-administered questionnaires were provided? How big was the sample size, i.e., n=300 so 300 questionnaires were distributed and there was a 100% return rate? How were participants selected, randomly? What data did the authors use to identify residents? How were the residents initially contacted? Was there follow-up if a questionnaire was not returned? If an individual sample did not respond, was there replacement? What was and how was sampling error calculated? The authors must provide a more comprehensive account of the entire sampling methodology.
Results: Where are the raw response values, not the summarized proportions?"
>>> We have reformulated profoundly all sections of the manuscript, and we've redone the statistical calculations, in order to comply with your recommendations and improve our paper. Those changes are too extensive to be exposed in this space. Therefore, we kindly ask you to view the Materials & Methods, Results and Discussion sections of the new version of our manuscript.
About your comments: "Question 3: it is difficult to know if this question is selecting for a specific group of people that would be highly knowledgeable about birds because the authors are referencing the scientific names only and not the common names or even families. This would bias the response towards individuals with deeper knowledge of birds and thus keener interests, missing those with superficial knowledge yet interests. I think this a a big flaw in the methodology.
Question 4: same as Question 3."
>>> We agreed with you that the methodology could be improved. We could, for example, have added a few more questions to the questionnaire to get more information about the backyards of residents in Rondonópolis, because one of our goals was to measure residents' agreement to allow changes to their backyards, such as planting fruit trees. Even with some shortcomings, we believe that we were successful in obtaining very useful information for future conservation projects for macaws and other bird species in the Cerrado - a global biodiversity hotspot - in the city of Rondonópolis. We would like to add that most studies on urban ecology and biodiversity were carried out in cities in the Northern Hemisphere, according to the literature. In this sense, we believe that our article, as it presents relevant knowledge about the ecology of a tropical city, deserves to be published in Birds.
Interestingly, we redid the statistical calculations and found these results: "Overall, respondents were able to identify half of the birds presented to them (overall median: 5; Fig 2), and of these, there was a clear preference for more colourful and charismatic species, such as toucans (Ramphastos toco) and macaws (Ara ararauna and Ara chloropterus; Fig 3). There was a significant difference in the number of species identified by each respondent between socioeconomic groups (H = 16.63, d.f. = 2, p < 0.001). Residents with intermediate income (middle class; median identified: 4) were the ones who identified the smallest number of species in comparison to low- (median: 7) or high-income respondents (median: 5). Similarly, almost half (47%) of respondents had seen macaw nests, this was not affected by socioeconomic group (X2 = 4.52, d.f. = 2, p = 0.1)."
About your comments: "Question 6: This is a loaded question, because it leaves open to interpretation whom he/she is agreeing to allow this activity to happen, i.e., who is asking to plant trees, and that alone may influence the response. Is it the government, a non-profit, a local bird organization, etc… And who has the burden of cost? And, are you asking the respondent to physically plant the tree, or are you asking if they are willing to purchase and plant the tree; are you asking for permission for someone else to come in and plant the tree? That is all largely unknown based on the question, thus not a robust question because you are leaving a lot of the unknowns to the respondent’s own interpretation, introducing significant biases into the responses.
Question 7: Same as Question 6."
>>> We apologize for our miscommunication. Respondents were informed that trees and nests would be planted/installed free of charge by the Municipal Environment Department of the city of Rondonópolis. We will include this information in the Questionnaire, in the Supplementary Materials section.
About your question: "Line 180: What is meant by positively selected?"
>>> We've reworked the Results section, and tha phrase wea eliminated.
About your recommendation: "Figures 2-4: These can be combined into one figure."
>>> We redid the figures of the manuscript.
Finally, we would like to say again that we are at your disposal for further improvements to the manuscript, if you deem it necessary.
Greetings from Brazil,
The Authors.
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
I find that there are still inconsistencies and flaws in the presentation of methods, the analysis of the data, and the extrapolated conclusions.
Line 126-130: The writing needs to be made more concise for clarity
Line 134-137: Same as above
Line 169 and 187: The authors state that the Interviewees were approached in what seem to be populous areas, but they also say they investigated the interviewees’ backyard structure. The authors don’t explain how they survey people in populous areas away from the interviewees’ homes and also investigate their homes.
Line 194: What is the “other data” that isn’t clear
Line 215 and 218: How is it possible that the lower socio-economic class had a mean backyard of almost 10m^2 less than the high, but there were no differences found among groups?
Results: How many members were within each socio-economic group? Important, see comment for line 239.
Line 239: Why? The authors provide no rationale for why middle-class citizens are less engaged with nature. Are there any studies that refute or support this conclusion? Are there any characteristics about this citizen group in this country that could explain this, or is this an artifact of the data and the relative sample size within each treatment group?
Line 244: How is it that the middle socio-economic group are “less engaged with nature” (line 239), yet there is considerable support for the provision of nest sites and planting of fruit trees with no difference between socioeconomic groups (line 244)?
Author Response
Dear Reviewer
Thank you very much. Your recommendations are very pertinent and strengthen the writing of our manuscript. Therefore, we've fully accepted them.
"Line 126-130: The writing needs to be made more concise for clarity / Line 134-137: Same as above"
Please read the lines 136-138:
Eleven pairs of Ara ararauna nested in trunks of dead palm trees of the Caribbean royal palm Roystonea oleraceae in Rondonópolis City in 2020 (Figure 1), and we have observed competition between pairs for the dead palm trees (João Bohrer, unpublished data). For comparison purposes, fifteen nests of feral blue-and-yellow macaw were found in a survey of Miami-Dade County, Florida, USA [17]. The Caribbean royal palm is native to northern South America and parts of the Caribbean.
Line 169 and 187: The authors state that the Interviewees were approached in what seem to be populous areas, but they also say they investigated the interviewees’ backyard structure. The authors don’t explain how they survey people in populous areas away from the interviewees’ homes and also investigate their homes.
Please, read the lines 217-220: Next, their backyard’s structure was investigated. The interviewees were asked about the areas of their yards and about how many trees they had in those spaces.
"Line 194: What is the “other data” that isn’t clear"
Please read the lines 226-228:
Other data (i.e., from the questionnaire – see the Supplementary Materials) were analysed using Chi-square tests. We considered p ≤ 0.05 as significant in our statistical tests.
"Results: How many members were within each socio-economic group? Important, see comment for line 239."
Please, read the lines 209-210: The numbers of respondents within each group were as follows: higher socioeconomic class – 61; middle socioeconomic class – 183; lower socioeconomic class – 53.
"Line 239: Why? The authors provide no rationale for why middle-class citizens are less engaged with nature. Are there any studies that refute or support this conclusion? Are there any characteristics about this citizen group in this country that could explain this, or is this an artifact of the data and the relative sample size within each treatment group?"
Please, read the lines 261-271: Most studies suggest that ability to identify wild species is correlated with increasing socioeconomic status (a proxy for education), and is also affected by age and gender. For example, a study in Casa Nova, Bahia, Brazil found that socioeconomic status, increasing age and male gender positively correlated with ability to name bird species [22]. Nevertheless, we found a different pattern, in that individuals of the middle socioeconomic group were significantly less likely to be able to identify local bird species, and those in the lowest socioeconomic group identified the most species. Why this is so is not clear, and is worthy of further investigation. Overall respondents were able to correctly identify around half of the species presented, which is similar to numbers of local bird species correctly identified by first year UK zoology undergraduates [23].
"Line 244: How is it that the middle socio-economic group are “less engaged with nature” (line 239), yet there is considerable support for the provision of nest sites and planting of fruit trees with no difference between socioeconomic groups (line 244)?"
Please, read the lines 261-288:
Most studies suggest that ability to identify wild species is correlated with increasing socioeconomic status (a proxy for education), and is also affected by age and gender. For example, a study in Casa Nova, Bahia, Brazil found that socioeconomic status, increasing age and male gender positively correlated with ability to name bird species [22]. Nevertheless, we found a different pattern, in that individuals of the middle socioeconomic group were significantly less likely to be able to identify local bird species, and those in the lowest socioeconomic group identified the most species. Why this is so is not clear, and is worthy of further investigation. Overall respondents were able to correctly identify around half of the species presented, which is similar to numbers of local bird species correctly identified by first year UK zoology undergraduates [23]. We consider this an encouraging result for future projects on the conservation of Brazilian avifauna, given the deficiencies of environmental education in Brazilian schools [24, 25, 26]. In other words, despite the usually low priority given to environmental education in schools, the citizens of Rondonópolis are relatively familiar with their urban birds. We consider the ability to correctly identify common bird species as being a good proxy for awareness of general biodiversity, and this may suggest that middle class residents of Rondonópolis are less engaged with nature, but this results is not held up by their other responses. Similarly, individuals were familiar with blue-and-yellow macaw nests, with just under half having seen nest sites, despite their relative scarcity.
Individuals were also very likely to support active conservation efforts. Overall, there is considerable support for the provision of nest sites (70% agree) and the planting of fruit trees (78% agree), and this did not differ between socioeconomic groups. A similar result was obtained in Campo Grande, another city in the Brazilian Cerrado [27]. This suggests that there is no need to target populations where engagement is a limiting factor, but instead engagement can be based on opportunity, largely driven by habitat suitability.
Finally, we would to like to inform that we are at your disposal for any other possible changes, in case you consider it necessary.
All the best,
The Authors
