Determinants of invasive species policy: Print media and agriculture determine U.S. invasive wild pig policy

Abstract

Conflicts between wildlife, invasive species, and agricultural producers are increasing. Although direct management actions taken to mitigate these conflicts remain controversial, most stakeholders agree that better policies are needed to balance socioeconomic considerations with invasive species management, wildlife conservation, and agriculture. However, the interaction between societal and biological drivers that influence human–invasive species–wildlife conflict mitigation policy is poorly understood. We identify factors influencing policy leading to the establishment of a new federal program to control invasive wild pigs (IWPs) in the United States. We fit generalized linear models relating frequency of congressional policy activity, such as congressional hearings and reports, to frequency of print newspaper media and percent of the U.S. agricultural industry co-occurring with IWPs for 29 yr preceding the establishment of the federal program in 2013. Our models explained 89% of the deviance in congressional policy activity indicating a strong linkage between congressional IWP policy activity and predictors representing the number of negative of newspaper articles, geographic distribution of print media, and percent of agricultural producers co-occurring with IWPs. These effects translated to 3.7% increase in the number of congressional policy actions for every additional five states with negative news media. Invasive wild pig congressional policy activity increased 6.7% for every additional 10 negative newspaper articles. Increases in co-occurrence of agriculture and IWPs had the largest effect; for every 1% increase in co-occurrence, there was a 41% increase in congressional policy activity. Invasive wild pig congressional policy activity that explicitly addressed livestock increased at nearly twice the rate of policy activity addressing crop agriculture. These results suggest that agriculture and media coverage may act as determinants for invasive species policy. Our approach may provide early insight into emerging policy areas enabling proactive policy development by agencies or early engagement by scientists to find solutions before the policy area becomes gridlocked. Our results can also support policy and program evaluation providing a means of determining if the implemented policies match the original policy determinants ensuring best alignment with public, environmental, and stakeholder interests.