Our common blood

Scientific Reports, 2022

In the face of an accelerating extinction crisis, scientists must draw insights from successful conservation interventions to uncover promising strategies for reversing broader declines. Here, we synthesize cases of recovery from a list of 362 species of large carnivores, ecologically important species that function as terminal consumers in many ecological contexts. Large carnivores represent critical conservation targets that have experienced historical declines as a result of direct exploitation and habitat loss. We examine taxonomic and geographic variation in current extinction risk and recovery indices, identify conservation actions associated with positive outcomes, and reveal anthropogenic threats linked to ongoing declines. We find that fewer than 10% of global large carnivore populations are increasing, and only 12 species (3.3%) have experienced genuine improvement in extinction risk, mostly limited to recoveries among marine mammals. Recovery is associated with species legislation enacted at national and international levels, and with management of direct exploitation. Conversely, ongoing declines are robustly linked to threats that include habitat modification and human conflict. Applying lessons from cases of large carnivore recovery will be crucial for restoring intact ecosystems and maintaining the services they provide to humans.

We used a spatially explicit population model of wolves (Canis lupus) to propose a framework for defining rangewide recovery priorities and finer-scale strategies for regional reintroductions. The model predicts that Yellowstone and central Idaho, where wolves have recently been successfully reintroduced, hold the most secure core areas for wolves in the western United States, implying that future reintroductions will face greater challenges. However, these currently occupied sites, along with dispersal or reintroduction to several unoccupied but suitable core areas, could facilitate recovery of wolves to 49% of the area in the western United States that holds sufficient prey to support wolves. That percentage of the range with recovery potential could drop to 23% over the next few decades owing to landscape change, or increase to 66% owing to habitat restoration efforts such as the removal of some roads on public lands. Comprehensive habitat and viability assessments such as those presented here, by more rigorously defining the Endangered Species Act's concept of "significant portion of range," can clarify debate over goals for recovery of large carnivores that may conflict with human land uses.

Yellowstone Cougars: Ecology Before And During Wolf Restoration, 2019

Science (New York, N.Y.), 2014

The conservation of large carnivores is a formidable challenge for biodiversity conservation. Using a data set on the past and current status of brown bears (Ursus arctos), Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx), gray wolves (Canis lupus), and wolverines (Gulo gulo) in European countries, we show that roughly one-third of mainland Europe hosts at least one large carnivore species, with stable or increasing abundance in most cases in 21st-century records. The reasons for this overall conservation success include protective legislation, supportive public opinion, and a variety of practices making coexistence between large carnivores and people possible. The European situation reveals that large carnivores and people can share the same landscape.

Journal of Mammalogy

For 90 years, the American Society of Mammalogists (ASM) has made science-based challenges to widespread lethal control of native mammals, particularly by the United States federal government targeting carnivores in the western states. A consensus is emerging among ecologists that extirpated, depleted, and destabilized populations of large predators are negatively affecting the biodiversity and resilience of ecosystems. This Special Feature developed from a thematic session on predator control at ASM's 2013 annual meeting, and in it we present data and arguments from the perspectives of ecology, wildlife biology and management, social science, ethics, and law and policy showing that nonlethal methods of preventing depredation of livestock by large carnivores may be more effective, more defensible on ecological, legal, and wildlife-policy grounds, and more tolerated by society than lethal methods, and that total mortality rates for a large carnivore may be driven higher than previously assumed by human causes that are often underestimated.

Conservation Biology, 1996

Transactions of the.. …, 2007

Food Webs

Large carnivores are depicted to shape entire ecosystems through top-down processes. Studies describing these processes are often used to support interventionist wildlife management practices, including carnivore reintroduction or lethal control programs. Unfortunately, there is an increasing tendency to ignore, disregard or devalue fundamental principles of the scientific method when communicating the reliability of current evidence for the ecological roles that large carnivores may play, eroding public confidence in large carnivore science and scientists. Here, we discuss six interrelated issues that currently undermine the reliability of the available literature on the ecological roles of large carnivores: (1) the overall paucity of available data, (2) reliability of carnivore population sampling techniques, (3) general disregard for alternative hypotheses to top-down forcing, (4) lack of applied science studies, (5) frequent use of logical fallacies, and (6) generalisation of results 3 from relatively pristine systems to those substantially altered by humans. We first describe how widespread these issues are, and given this, show, for example, that evidence for the roles of wolves (Canis lupus) and dingoes (Canis lupus dingo) in initiating trophic cascades is not as strong as is often claimed. Managers and policy makers should exercise caution when relying on this literature to inform wildlife management decisions. We emphasise the value of manipulative experiments, and discuss the role of scientific knowledge in the decision-making process. We hope that the issues we raise here prompt deeper consideration of actual evidence, leading towards an improvement in both the rigour and communication of large carnivore science.

2020

This book explores attitudes and strategies towards the return of the wild in times of ecological crisis, focusing on wolves in Europe. The contributions from a variety of disciplines discuss human encounters with wolves, engaging with traditional narratives and contemporary conflicts. Covering a range of geographical areas, the case studies featured demonstrate the tremendous impact of the return of the wolf in European societies. Wolves are a keystone species that exemplify humanity's relation to what is called nature and their return generates powerful debates about what 'nature' actually is and how much it is needed or should be permitted to exist. The book considers the return of the wild as a catalyst for fundamental socio-biological changes of the world within human societies, and the various responses of humans to wolves demonstrate both our potential and limitations when it comes to multispecies communities and negotiating societal change. Managing the Return of the Wild will be relevant to a broad audience interested in discussions of social and ecological conflict today, including scholars from multispecies studies and diverse disciplines such as biology, forestry management and folklore studies.