An overview and hypotheses on the effects of wold predation

Exclusion of birds from bilberry stands: Found that birds had a greater impact on exposed feeding insects than on concealed feeders. Damage to the host plant was greater inside exclosures. This is a simple straight forward paper.

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Abstract A major challenge in biodiversity conservation is to facilitate viable populations of large apex predators in ecosystems where they were recently driven to ecological extinction due to resource conflict with humans. Monetary compensation for losses of livestock due to predation is currently a key instrument to encourage human—carnivore coexistence.

However, a lack of quantitative estimates of livestock losses due to predation leads to disagreement over the practice of compensation payments.

This disagreement sustains the human—carnivore conflict. The level of depredation on year-round, free-ranging, semi-domestic reindeer by large carnivores in Fennoscandia has been widely debated over several decades. In Norway, the reindeer herders claim that lynx and wolverine cause losses of tens of thousands of animals annually and cause negative population growth in herds.

Conversely, previous research has suggested that monetary predator compensation can result in positive population growth in the husbandry, with cascading negative effects of high grazer densities on the biodiversity in tundra ecosystems. We utilized a long-term, large-scale data set to estimate the relative importance of lynx and wolverine predation and density-dependent and climatic food limitation on claims for losses, recruitment and population growth rates in Norwegian reindeer husbandry.

Claims of losses increased with increasing predator densities, but with no detectable effect on population growth rates. Density-dependent and climatic effects on claims of losses, recruitment and population growth rates were much stronger than the effects of variation in lynx and wolverine densities.

Our analysis provides a quantitative basis for predator compensation and estimation of the costs of reintroducing lynx and wolverine in areas with free-ranging semi-domestic reindeer. We outline a potential path for conflict management which involves adaptive monitoring programmes, open access to data, herder involvement and development of management strategy evaluation MSE models to disentangle complex responses including multiple stakeholders and individual harvester decisions.

This recognition has led to some notable campaigns to restore large carnivores into areas where persecution drove them to ecological extinction only a few decades ago. The recovery of large carnivores in terrestrial ecosystems is nonetheless one of the most controversial wildlife management actions of present times.

Reindeer herding is a circumpolar activity, and in Norway, Sweden and Finland, about half the land area is utilized for year-round grazing. The Sami reindeer herders of Norway share their ranges with wildlife including Eurasian lynx Lynx lynx L. Semi-domesticated reindeer Rangifer tarandus L.

To reduce human—carnivore conflicts, predators are controlled through hunting quotas and culling by the Norwegian Environment Agency to keep population sizes and their spatial distributions within politically determined limits. Among the other predators of reindeer, the golden eagle Aquila chrysaetos L.

Wolves are prevented from establishing within the reindeer herding area.Effects of competition, predation by Thais lapillus, and other factors on natural populations of the barnacle Balanus balanoides. Ecological Monographs Connell, Joseph H.

We assessed the effects of wolf mortality on reducing livestock depredations in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming from – using a 25 year time series.

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The number of livestock depredated, livestock populations, wolf population estimates, number of breeding pairs, and wolves killed were calculated for the wolf-occupied area of each state for . 5 64 understanding of the complexity of existing interactions. Furthermore, as the list of empirical 65 examples of P-MIs accumulates, new patterns, predictions and hypotheses will result, thus 66 contributing to ecological theory.

67 The scope of this paper encompasses P-MIs between herbivorous agents, which we define 68 broadly to include both arthropods and plant pathogens. XU CAI-LIN and LI ZI-ZHEN, Effect of Diffusion and Spatially Varying Predation Risk on the Dynamics and Equilibrium Density of a Predator–Prey System, Journal of Theoretical Biology, , 1, (73), ().

Title: Of wolves, elk and willows: how predation structures ecosystems ABSTRACT PAGE The Issue Elimination of top predators (e.g.

wolves) from regions like the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem leads to changes in prey population density and .

a) molecular biology b) cosmology c) accounting d) sociology e) environmental science 7) Fundamental environmental issues include a) littering b) sustainability c) wolf predation on sheep in Yellowstone National Park d) all of the above 8) The main human perturbations of the global environment stem from a) pollution and hunting b) .