Predators

Hunting large carnivores is a contentious issue in wildlife management and conservation. It’s on the ballot in fall 2024 in Colorado, where voters will consider Proposition 127, a proposed ban on hunting and trapping of mountain lions, bobcats and lynx in the state. Wildlife agencies often use regulated hunting as a tool for controlling carnivore populations, reducing their impacts on vulnerable wildlife or minimizing the risk of conflict between carnivores and people, pets and livestock. But scientific studies have questioned how effectively recreational hunting achieves these goals. And public attitudes are shifting as participation in hunting declines. We direct Colorado State University’s Center for Human-Carnivore Coexistence and Animal-Human Policy Center. Together with our colleague Benjamin Ghasemi, we recently surveyed Colorado residents about their perceptions of hunting mountain lions and black bears in the state. We found that support for hunting depen...

From sports to pop culture, there are few themes more appealing than a good comeback. They happen in nature, too. Even with the Earth losing species at a historic rate, some animals have defied the trend toward extinction and started refilling their old ecological niches. I’m a philosopher based in Montana and specialize in environmental ethics. For my new book, “Tenacious Beasts: Wildlife Recoveries That Change How We Think About Animals,” I spent three years looking at wildlife comebacks across North America and Europe and considering the lessons they offer. In every case, whether the returnee is a bison, humpback whale, beaver, salmon, sea otter or wolf, the recovery has created an opportunity for humans to profoundly rethink how we live with these animals. One place to see the rethink in action is Colorado, where voters approved a ballot measure in 2020 mandating the reintroduction of gray wolves west of the Continental Divide. Colorado’s Parks and W...

At the United Nations biodiversity conference that opens in Montreal on Dec. 7, 2022, nations aim to create a new global framework for transforming humanity’s relationship with nature. The conference logo features a human reaching to embrace a panda – but from an ecological perspective, a weasel or badger would be a more appropriate choice. Logo for the COP 15 conference in Montreal, which was delayed from its original 2020 date due to COVID-19. Convention on Biological Diversity, CC BY-ND Large mammals with widespread appeal, also known as charismatic megafauna, often represent the highest achievement in biodiversity protection. As the logic goes, saving the tiger, polar bear, wolf or lion means saving an entire ecosystem, since these species often have large ranges and may sit at the top of food chains. But research shows that, relatively speaking, many large charismatic species aren...

In the arid American West, wildfires now define summer. Recent years have seen some of the worst wildfires in recorded history. Climate change, the loss of Indigenous burning practices and a century of fire suppression are increasing the risk of larger, hotter and more frequent wildfires. I’m a wildlife ecologist studying how the presence of wolves and other predators is affecting deer and elk in Washington state. I’m particularly interested in understanding how these species interact in changing landscapes. Habitat degradation and other factors have caused populations of mule deer, a common species in many parts of the West, to decline across much of their native range. My collaborators and I recently published a study examining how mule deer use forests that have burned, and how wildfires affect deer interactions with cougars and wolves. We found that mule deer use these burns in summer but avoid them in winter. Deer also adjusted their movement to reduce preda...