Doubting Thomases and the Cougar: The Perceptions of Puma Management in Northern Ontario, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The purpose of this discussion is to provide a better understanding of the conflicting perceptions regarding cougar (Puma concolor) management in northern Ontario, Canada. Despite two alleged puma attacks, numerous cougar sightings throughout the region and the recent confirmation of the puma's existence in Ontario through DNA analysis, the existence of these animals in the north‐east of Canada and the USA remains largely contentious. Findings derived from interviews conducted in northern Ontario and content analysis of media sources in Canada and the USA suggest that the ongoing debate over the existence of pumas in this region of Canada can be attributed to current wildlife management largely predicated on the grand narrative of the wildlife expert. This centralised, bureaucratic approach decreases the opportunity for constructive dialogue between stakeholders and mitigates the implementation of community‐based wildlife management approaches. While this analysis largely focuses in Ontario, Canada, the debate provides insights into the human dimensions of wildlife management, especially elusive wildlife, in North America and elsewhere.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.019 | 0.012 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".