Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center, University of Florida, Fort Lauderdale, FL, 33314, USA.
Sci Rep. 2024 Sep 20;14(1):21976. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-73286-y.
We successfully employed targeted outreach to communities in Palm Beach County, Florida, to enhance detection of invasive reptiles. We defined targeted outreach as delivering a specific message to a specific audience, at a specific location, to obtain a specific result. These efforts improved our ability to solicit community involvement focused on target species of interest in locations at risk of potential establishment of incipient populations. From 2018 through 2020, we reached over 112,000 individuals who reported over 50 nonnative lizard sightings to EDDMapS, a web-based mapping system for documenting invasive species, and the State-managed IVE-GOT1 reporting hotline. We considered reports to be directly attributed to our outreach efforts when the reporter indicated our outreach method as the source from which they obtained information on reporting large invasive lizards. We found print media elicited the most reports, while social media reached the largest audience both in direct shares and spillover to additional communities outside our target area. We concluded that to help improve invasive species management programs, three tactics could be employed: (1) using multiple forms of media, (2) additional educational support to improve the accuracy of public reports, and (3) rapid, dedicated capability to respond to reported sightings.
我们成功地在佛罗里达州棕榈滩县的社区开展了有针对性的外展活动，以提高对入侵爬行动物的检测能力。我们将有针对性的外展定义为在特定地点向特定受众传递特定信息，以获得特定结果。这些努力提高了我们的能力，能够在有潜在初生种群建立风险的地点，吸引社区参与关注我们感兴趣的目标物种。从 2018 年到 2020 年，我们接触了超过 112000 人，他们向 EDDMapS（一个用于记录入侵物种的基于网络的地图系统）和州管理的 IVE-GOT1 报告热线报告了超过 50 次非本地蜥蜴的目击事件。当报告人将我们的外展方法作为他们获取报告大型入侵蜥蜴信息的来源时，我们认为这些报告可以直接归因于我们的外展工作。我们发现，平面媒体引发的报告最多，而社交媒体的直接分享和对我们目标区域外的其他社区的溢出效应，触及的受众最大。我们的结论是，为了帮助改善入侵物种管理计划，可以采用三种策略：（1）使用多种形式的媒体；（2）提供额外的教育支持，以提高公众报告的准确性；（3）快速、专门的能力来应对报告的目击事件。
