The protection of natural areas around the world requires legitimately created laws with which people comply. The Pantanal is among the world’s largest wetlands and a conservation priority region—a natural area where protection is imperative. Most of the Pantanal is in Brazil, which protects the wetland’s natural resources with a wide-ranging set of laws and rules. Voluntary compliance with natural resource management rules theoretically depends on perceived legitimacy of rules and those in charge of creating and enforcing them, but related attitudes have not been explored in the Pantanal. The goal of this research was to establish baseline insights about noncompliance in the Pantanal to inform efforts aimed at improving protection in the region. I explored both at noncompliance with natural resource laws in general and specific violations of fishing rules by professional fishermen. I first conducted exploratory key-informant interviews (N=11), through which I found strong sentiments in the community that enforcement is incapable of coercing compliance, and lack of perceived fairness of between those creating and enforcing rules. Then I administered a face-to-face questionnaire (N=41) in March–September, 2016. Most participants self-reported that they violated the rule (85.4%). Trust in biologists who help define the size limits significantly influenced frequency of violations. Half of the participants distrusted biologists to set the rules, even though a large majority (87.8%) had never talked to biologists. The literature suggests that interpersonal interactions can increase perceptions of fairness, and therefore in this community more positive interactions between biologists, enforcement, and locals may increase compliance.
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