Digital Commons Network^™

Integrating Robotics Into Wildlife Conservation: Testing Improvements To Predator Deterrents Through Movement, Stewart W. Breck, Jeffrey T. Schultz, David Prause, Cameron Krebs, Anthony J. Giordano, Byron Boots

USDA Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Background Agricultural and pastoral landscapes can provide important habitat for wildlife conservation, but sharing these landscapes with wildlife can create conflict that is costly and requires managing. Livestock predation is a good example of the challenges involving coexistence with wildlife across shared landscapes. Integrating new technology into agricultural practices could help minimize human-wildlife conflict. In this study, we used concepts from the fields of robotics (i.e., automated movement and adaptiveness) and agricultural practices (i.e., managing livestock risk to predation) to explore how integration of these concepts could aid the development of more effective predator deterrents.

Methods …

A Systematic Map Of Human-Carnivore Coexistence, Cassandre C. Venumière-Lefebvre, Stewart W. Breck, Kevin R. Crooks

USDA Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Carnivore populations globally have largely declined, and coexistence, where humans and carnivores share landscapes, plays a crucial role in carnivore conservation. However, the term “coexistence” is often used in scientific and popular literature without being clearly defined. Herein, we provide a global perspective on what coexistence is and how it is studied. We conducted a systematic map of 366 articles published between 1987 and 2020 to characterize human-carnivore coexistence literature according to coexistence definitions, temporal trends, geographic and taxonomic focus, and four thematic aspects of coexistence: carnivore ecology, human endeavors, social conflict and human-carnivore conflict. We used chi-squared tests and …

Dietary Overlap Between Wolves And Coyotes In Northwestern Montana, Wendy M. Arjo, Daniel H. Pletscher, Robert R. Ream

USDA Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

We studied effects of recolonizing wolves (Canis lupus) in the North Fork of the Flathead area of northwestern Montana on the diets of coyotes (C. latrans) from 1994 to 1997. Wolf and coyote diets differed in frequency of occurrence of prey species during 3 of the 4 summers and winters (P< 0.001) during the study. Coyote diets contained more murid prey items, and wolf diets contained more deer (Odocoileus virginianus and O. hemionus) in the summer and elk (Cervus elaphus) in the winter. Coyotes and wolves ate prey of different size during both the summer (P < 0.001) and winter (P < 0.001) months in 1994– 1996: wolves took a greater proportion (P < 0.001) of large (>45 kg) prey species and coyotes, small (<2 kg) prey (P < 0.001). Wolves selected a larger proportion of adults (P …