Exploring biological and cultural factors influencing wildlife relevance for students of a rural school of central Argentina

In the present work, we analyze how biological and cultural factors influence the importance of wildlife for rural high-school students in the Argentine Dry Chaco. Through free-listing and interviews, students identified a total of 51 species of wild animals, and highlighted mammals as the most prominent. We observed a negative correlation between Cognitive Salience and the Ecological Relevance Index (rs: -0.48), indicating that the least easily sighted species were the most prominent. On the other hand, Cognitive Salience was positively correlated with Positive Value Cultural index (rs:0.56) and Integral (rs:0.75), the latter including the negative value of animals. Among the positive contributions (63.1%), the material value predominated (49%) over the non-material value (8.6%) and regulating (5.5%) of the animals. On the other hand, for the negative contributions, the damage caused to domestic animals was highlighted (23.2%). The results suggest a complex network of biological and cultural factors that are modeling the cognitive salience and local perceptions of young people over wild animals, empathizing the need to integrate local ecological knowledge into conservation strategies in the Dry Chaco and beyond.