What Wildlife Stories Tell us: A Conservation Perspective in El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve, Mexico

Non-human animals have interacted with humans since the beginning of our evolutionary history. We create stories to understand our environment and recognize the species with which we share resources. Although current human contact with wildlife is less common than in the past, stories that we create around animals could reflect human-wildlife interactions. The main objective of this study is to analyze human perceptions of wild animal species in El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve (ETBR) Mexico, through storytelling workshops. We designed and applied a storytelling workshop in 13 rural communities of ETBR. We collected 74 stories, and we used qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze perceptions about wildlife considering the basic emotions related to animal species and the Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK) involved in the stories. Our findings showed that humans were the most recurrent characters in these stories, appearing either as a “protector of nature” or a “hunter.” Fear was the most common emotion found in the stories; it was most experienced and caused by humans and experienced by the white-tailed deer. Anthropomorphism was very evident; it revealed that wildlife is represented not only by biological aspects but also by social and moral aspects. This study shows that psychological and cultural aspects have an important effect on human perceptions about wild animal species and could impact attitudes and behaviors towards them. We propose to consider human emotions and perceptions towards wild animals in conservation plans. Furthermore, we suggest storytelling workshops as an effective participatory approach for exploring the complex interactions between humans and wildlife.