Samenvatting

Now that the grey wolf (Canis lupus lupus) returned to Germany, pastoralists need to adopt protection measures to prevent their animals from incidents. Most of the incidents arise where wolves establish themselves in new territories and pastoralists have not yet adjusted to their presence. The facts that there are effective herd protection measures (HPMs) available and the number of incidents is still high, lead to the expectation that the attitudes and the implementation of measures correlate. The core of the problem is that the implementation of HPM is satisfying for neither the pastoralists nor the contracting authority of the research, the Gesellschaft zum Schutz der Wölfe (GzSdW) (The Society for the Protection of the Wolf). The aim of this study is to describe the pastoralists’ attitudes towards the wolf in Lower Saxony and the herd protection measures and whether there is a relation between these attitudes and the pastoralists’ actual behaviour in terms of applying HPM. Research has shown that attitudes and behaviour are highly correlated. In this study, an affective, a conative and a cognitive component was measured to infer an attitude. The study gave answer to the following research questions:1. What are the attitudes of pastoralists in Lower Saxony towards the wolf and the (applied) herd protection measures?2. How do these attitudes influence the pastoralists’ behaviour in terms of applying herd protection measures?