Ecotourism offers a non-consumptive form of economic activity globally. Human activity, however, might negatively affect the ecology of areas and their biota, likely varying with type and intensity of ecotourism. Wildlife, for example, might perceive ecotourists as predators, and adjust behaviour accordingly (i.e., human avoidance). Alternatively, wildlife might actually seek human activity if it protects them from greater risks (Human Shield Hypothesis). The Anthropause, a period of decreased human activity due to COVID-19, provided unparalleled opportunity to examine wildlife behaviour when perceived risks from humans were removed. In partnership with the Kitasoo Xai’xais First Nation (KX), we assessed if and how ecotourism, in the form of bear-viewing, might influence spatial and temporal activity of grizzly bears. We deployed remote cameras in the Khutze watershed in 2020 in the absence of human use. To provide increased inference when tourism resumed in 2021, KX implemented alternating spatial closure experiments within the watershed. Additionally, in 2021 we implemented a tourist group size experiment in a second watershed, Green River. In Khutze, we found that a closure of 25 days was required for bear detection rate to return to the 2020 (non-ecotourism) level. We did not observe an influence of the alternating within-watershed north-south closures on activity. The data also revealed complex relationships among bear detections, ecotourism activity, and salmon availability, varying by age and sex of bears. Specifically, we found a human shield effect for females with young when salmon levels were moderate to high, but this effect diminished in times of low salmon. An activity pattern analysis in Khutze did not show an effect of ecotourism. In Green, where inference was likely constrained by our short-term experiment, we found a positive influence of the number of days since people were present on detection rate. We additionally found temporal avoidance of within 100m of the viewing site on days when people were present. These patterns from both watersheds show the complex ways in which wildlife can respond to even seemingly benign human presence. Inference from this research has application to wildlife, land, and ecotour management by the KX, who are reasserting authority in governance. More broadly, this study contributes to literature on the dynamic landscape of fear induced by spatiotemporal variation in human activity. / Graduate / 2023-09-09

For as long as humans have waged war, they have distinguished between combatant persons that are liable to attack, and protected persons that should enjoy immunity from attack. And for just as long, combatants have exploited such protected persons as "human shields." They have moved protected persons to military targets, and military targets to protected persons with designs as grand as thwarting the outbreak of war itself, and as narrow as deterring attacks within war. This dissertation explores two sets of questions about these strategies and tactics of "interposition," as I call them, at the intersection of international relations, law, and ethics. First: Whence the power of "human shields?" When and how can belligerents, somewhat paradoxically, find safety in exposure with unarmed persons? Under what conditions can noncombatants exposed at flanks, for instance, deny superiorly positioned ambushers, and captives tied to warehouses deny fleets of aircraft? Second: How do we evaluate harm to people deliberately placed in harm's way? And to what extent are our judgments consistent with prevailing prescriptive models from international law and ethics? In this dissertation, I argue that interposition leverages a peculiar kind of threat. And I attribute the force of this threat to its peculiarities, integrating theory from psychology, anthropology, sociology and evidence from detailed case studies, interviews with military commanders, lawyers and soldiers, and accounts from tens of conflicts across the centuries culled from chronicles, archives, and memoirs. The threat is of killing, of directly and foreseeably harming others, of being identified with killing, of being held liable for killing, of authorizing outrage, massacre and scandal. The threat is distinct because it leverages not a hesitancy to incur damage, which is well documented in the conflict literature, but to inflict damage. And it is under some conditions sufficient to deter and compel even the strongest armies to yield and desist. Moreover, I present suggestive experimental evidence demonstrating some degree of conformity between lay intuitions and prevailing international legal and ethical prescriptions on proportionality in war. Lay respondents to a survey-embedded conjoint experiment balanced military value and collateral damage in ways prescribed by mainstream prescriptive models from international law and ethics. In particular, subjects weighed harm to bystanders and involuntary shields the same, but discounted harm to voluntary shields. In sum, the dissertation illuminates prevalent but poorly understood patterns of conflict behavior, and sheds light on understudied aspects of moral and legal judgment about harm in war.

This study examines the phenomenon of abusive violence (AV) in the context of the American Post-9/11 Counter-terrorism and Counter-insurgency campaigns. Previous research into atrocities by states and their agents has largely come from examinations of totalitarian regimes with well-developed torture and assassination institutions. The mechanisms influencing willingness to do harm have been examined in experimental studies of obedience to authority and the influences of deindividuation, dehumanization, context and system. This study used Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to examine the lived experience of AV reported by fourteen American military and intelligence veterans. Participants were AV observers, objectors, or abusers. Subjects described why AV appeared sensible at the time, how methods of violence were selected, and what sense they made of their experiences after the fact. Accounts revealed the roles that frustration, fear, anger and mission pressure played to prompt acts of AV that ranged from the petty to heinous. Much of the AV was tied to a shift in mission view from macro strategic aims of CT and COIN to individual and small group survival. Routine hazing punishment soldiers received involving forced exercise and stress positions made similar acts inflicted on detainees unrecognizable as abusive. Overt and implied permissiveness from military superiors enabled AV extending to torture, and extra-judicial killings. Attempting to overcome feelings of vulnerability, powerlessness and rage, subjects enacted communal punishment through indiscriminate beatings and shooting. Participants committed AV to amuse themselves and humiliate their enemies; some killed detainees to force confessions from others, conceal misdeeds, and avoid routine paperwork. Participants realized that AV practices were unnecessary, counter-productive, and self-damaging. Several reduced or halted their AV as a result. The lived experience of AV left most respondents feeling guilt, shame, and inadequacy, whether they committed abuse or failed to stop it.