DOI: 10.5061/dryad.zgmsbccj7
title: Data from: The role of governance in rewilding the United States to stem the biodiversity crisis

description: A critical, yet underattended, feature of the biodiversity crisis is the
 contraction of geographic range experienced by most studied terrestrial
 vertebrates. In the United States, the primary policy tool for mitigating
 the biodiversity crisis is the Endangered Species Act (ESA). For the past
 two decades, the federal agencies that administer the ESA have interpreted
 the act in a manner that precludes treating this geographic element of the
 crisis. Therefore, the burden of mitigating the biodiversity crisis
 largely falls on state wildlife agencies, which are obligated to operate
 on behalf of the interests of their constituents. We present survey
 research indicating that most constituents expect state agencies to
 prioritize species restoration over other activities, including hunting.
 This prioritization holds even among self-identified hunters, which is
 significant since state agencies often take the provisioning of hunting
 opportunities as their top priority. By prioritizing rewilding efforts
 that restore native species instead, state agencies could unify hunting
 and non-hunting constituents while simultaneously stemming the
 biodiversity crisis.
description: We commissioned a survey of adult residents of seven eastern
 states (Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania,
 Vermont, West Virginia) as well as Minnesota and Colorado in February
 2022. Respondents were recruited through an online panel maintained by the
 commercial sampling firm, Qualtrics (Provo, Utah). Quota-based sampling
 methods were used for participant selection in our study, in order to
 obtain (i) responses from approximately 400 individuals in each state
 (with the exception of Vermont) and (ii) a 1:1 male/female ratio among
 respondents across the nine states (though not necessarily within each
 state). The survey (administered via Qualtrics’ online software) was
 reviewed by The Ohio State University’s Office of Responsible Research
 Practices and determined to be exempt from Institutional Review (protocol
 number 2021E1229).
description: # The Role of Governance in Rewilding the United States to Stem the
 Biodiversity Crisis
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.zgmsbccj7](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.zgmsbccj7) We commissioned a survey of adult residents of seven eastern states (Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia) as well as Minnesota and Colorado in February 2022. Respondents were recruited through an online panel maintained by the commercial sampling firm, Qualtrics (Provo, Utah). Quota-based sampling methods were used for participant selection in our study, in order to obtain (i) responses from approximately 400 individuals in each state (with the exception of Vermont) and (ii) a 1:1 male/female ratio among respondents across the nine states (though not necessarily within each state). The survey (administered via Qualtrics’ online software) was reviewed by The Ohio State University’s Office of Responsible Research Practices and determined to be exempt from Institutional Review (protocol number 2021E1229). ## Description of the data and file structure To enhance state-level representativeness of our sample among selected social and demographic characteristics – i.e., sex, educational attainment, and political ideology – post hoc weights were created through the process of iterative proportional fitting (i.e., raking). State population distributions for sex and educational attainment were based on benchmarks from the 2016-2020 American Community Survey (ACS), conducted by United States Census Bureau (www.census.gov/acs/, date last accessed 10 September 2022). State population distributions for political ideology were based on estimates from the 2018 Gallup U.S. Poll. Weights were applied via the RAKE extension in IBM SPSS Statistics v28 (Chicago, Illinois). Details regarding each variable in the dataset can be found in the corresponding Codebook. Planned missingess is represented by an empty cell, unplanned missingness is represented by the value 99. ## Code/Software Syntax is provided for all figures generated in SPSS.