Under the plan, with support from federal funding, the Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks manages wolves in northwestern Montana. As of , approximately wolves are estimated to live in the state. A crucial step in setting up a successful conservation program is constructing a robust method to monitor how many specimens are in a given area. Monitoring involved a variety of methods, including radio telemetry, howling and track surveys, and reports from natural resource agency professionals.
Encouraging people to share any sightings or evidence of wolf activity, program officials essentially crowd-sourced the monitoring project. Officials set up a website to allow members of the public to report their sightings easily and efficiently. Using these methods, officials determined that , by the end of , there were a total of 46 packs, defined as consisting of two or more wolves, with a minimum of wolves in Montana.
The average number of wolves per pack also increased from 4. The Montana program is an excellent example of not only how successful conservation programs can be, but also how members of the public can play a critical role in that success. Learn more about the recovery program and the results in BHL. Predators are critical for healthy ecosystems, ensuring that a greater variety of species survive and thrive by keeping prey populations in check. While many predator species are threatened today, our wolf use case shows us that there is hope.
If we are proactive, conservation programs are capable of ensuring a positive future for these and other species. Increasing awareness about the effect of species decline is a critical step in saving biodiversity.
By providing free access to literature about these species, BHL is helping conservations, ecologists, and researchers gain the critical knowledge they need to protect and bolster these populations. You can help support our endeavors with a donation to BHL. Remember, each person can make a difference, and unless we act now, the future for many of these creatures, and our own planet, may be quite bleak. In this capacity, she developed and managed BHL's communication strategy, oversaw social media initiatives, and engaged with the public to excite audiences about the wealth of biodiversity heritage available in BHL.
That's a good question. If conservation efforts were combined with protected areas as they often are in marine fishing environments , you would expect the success rate to be significantly higher than simply establishing a protected area.
Conservation doesn't have any easy answers. Multiple approaches are needed to ensure species survival. Do alternate stable community states exist in the Gulf of Maine rocky intertidal zone?
Ecology 83 , Carpenter, S. Cascading trophic interactions and lake productivity. Bioscience 35 , Doering, P. Reduction of attractiveness to the sea star Asterias forbesi Desor by the clam Mercenaria mercenaria Linnaeus. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 60 , Estes, J. Sea otters, Their role in structuring nearshore communities.
Science , Ferner, M. Habitat complexity alters lethal and non-lethal olfactory interactions between predators and prey. Marine Ecology Progress Series , Slow-moving predatory gastropods track prey odors in fast and turbulent flow.
Journal of Experimental Biology , Finelli, C. Physical constraints on ecological processes, A field test of odor-mediated foraging. Ecology 81 , Grabowski, J. Habitat complexity disrupts predator-prey interactions but not the trophic cascade on oyster reefs. Ecology 85 , How habitat setting influences restored oyster reef communities. Ecology 86 , Predator-avoidance behavior extends trophic cascades to refuge habitats. Griffiths, C. Chemically induced predator avoidance behaviour in the burrowing bivalve Macoma balthica.
Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology , Hollebone, A. An invasive crab alters interaction webs in a marine community. Biological Invasions 10 , Irlandi, E. Modification of animal habitat by large plants - mechanisms by which seagrasses influence clam growth. Oecologia 87 , Jackson, J. Bed roughness effects on boundary-layer turbulence and consequences for odor-tracking behavior of blue crabs Callinectes sapidus. Limnology and Oceanography 52 , Leonard, G. Flow-driven variation in intertidal community structure in a Maine estuary.
Ecology 79 , Malmqvist, B. Changing risk of predation for a filter-feeding insect along a current velocity gradient.
Oecologia , Menge, B. Top-down and bottom-up community regulation in marine rocky intertidal habitats. Community regulation,variation in disturbance, competition, and predation in relation to environmental stress and recruitment. American Naturalist , Organization of the New England rocky intertidal community, role of predation, competition, and environmental heterogeneity.
Ecological Monographs , Micheli, F. Effects of predator foraging behavior on patterns of prey mortality in marine soft bottoms. Ecological Monographs 67 , Nakaoka, M. Nonlethal effects of predators on prey populations, predator-mediated change in bivalve growth. Paine, R. Food web complexity and species diversity. Peterson, C. Clam predation by whelks Busycon spp.
It is a sobering lesson for the eastern U. Yet despite such developments, researchers of trophic cascades have despaired of securing the money and means to examine predator removal in large-scale, long-term trials on land.
Some have dealt with constrictions by adopting a more manageable, meadow-sized scale. The type of predation — active versus ambush hunting — also appears to be consequential, affecting the composition of plant communities and nitrogen levels.
Spiders that hunt actively reduce grasshopper density, allowing grass and goldenrod to dominate other plants and increasing available nitrogen. Ambush hunting has an opposite effect, forcing grasshoppers, which would rather feed on grass, to shelter in goldenrod, yielding a more diverse plant community and less nitrogen. We have to pay attention to their health and well-being if we want a healthy ecosystem. A reduction in lion and leopard populations in Ghana has led to an explosion of olive baboons.
In science, new ideas are rightly met with skepticism, if not denials and dismissals. Naylor, P. Vitousek, H. Reynolds, D.
Hooper, S. Lavorel, O. Sala, S. Hobbie, M. Mack, S. Consequences of changing biodiversity. Estes, J. Berger, C. Martinez del Rios. Wolf researchers took a close look at the broad range of attitudes expressed by trophy hunters, government wildlife managers, those who hunt for food, those who eat no meat, and animal rights advocates and concluded that killing predators for sport is not justified on biological, moral or ethical grounds.
Killing wolves might protect one farm's livestock at the expense of others - OPB. The undeniable value of wolves, bears, lions and coyotes in battling disease - Mountain Journal , Dec. The case for mass slaughter of predators just got weaker - National Geographic, Sept. Nelson, Oxford Handbooks Onlin e, July Predators kill and usually eat other organisms.
Carnivores require mainly a diet of meat or animal tissue to survive. Many species are both carnivores and predators, such as wolves, sharks, eagles, spiders, even the plant Venus flytrap.
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