The Ecology of Fear: The presence of a predator keeps prey moving and prevents them from concentrating to browse vegetation. This effect can be reproduced with herding dogs in areas such as the suburbs where introduction of a predator may create safety concerns. This effect is often not achieved by hunting since human predators typically focus their hunts into short time spans determined by hunting seasons, deer and elk quickly understand the pattern and disperse only during the hunting season.
Embedded Files
CSU study: Wolf reintroduction ecosystem restoration claims may be overblown February 9, 2024 Colorado, The Fence Post
... conducted over a 20-year period in Yellowstone National Park ... Colorado researchers found that “Claims of ecosystem restoration, resulting from a trophic cascade following the restoration of the gray wolf to Yellowstone, have been used to justify translocation of wolves to their unoccupied former range in many areas of the world,” the study states. “Careful scrutiny has revealed these claims to be exaggerated or false.” ...
Does restoring apex predators to food webs restore ecosystems? Large carnivores in Yellowstone as a model system January 30, 2024 Ecological Monographs
... A reorganized community of large herbivores was implicated in the suppression of willow growth. We conclude that the restoration of large carnivores to the food web failed to restore riparian plant communities on Yellowstone's northern range, supporting the hypothesis that this ecosystem is in an alternative stable state caused primarily by the extirpation of apex predators during the early 20th century...
Absent Wolves, Ecosystems Changed. Can New Wolves Restore Things? May 1, 2020 Undark Magazine
... Early studies claiming evidence that wolves restored Yellowstone’s ecosystem by changing the behavior of elk, their primary prey, were based on observing correlations between wolf presence and the regrowth of plants that had been suppressed for decades by hungry elk... Recent research shows that a number of other factors were involved — and that the presence of wolves alone can’t be expected to restore ecosystems...
Carnivores' return helps Yellowstone park streams November 11, 2018 Oregon, OregonLive.com
...a new study ... resurgent populations of wolves and cougars have restored the park's natural balance by knocking back elk numbers and changing the herds' behaviors, according to Robert Beschta and William Ripple of the Oregon State University College of Forestry...
Fearing cougars more than wolves, Yellowstone elk manage threats from both predators August 2, 2019 Science Daily
... a new study has found that the secretive cougar is actually the main predator influencing the movement of elk across the winter range of northern Yellowstone National Park... "Cougars hunted mainly in forested, rugged areas at night, whereas wolves hunted mainly in grassy, flat areas during morning and at dusk" ...
Wolves influence elk movements: behavior shapes a trophic cascade in Yellowstone National Park D Fortin, HL Beyer, MS Boyce, DW Smith, T Duchesne… - Ecology, 2005 - Eco Soc America
... Our study clarifies the behavioral mechanisms involved in the trophic cascade of Yellowstone's wolf–elk–aspen system: elk respond to wolves on their winter range by a shift in habitat selection, which leads to local reductions in the use of aspen by elk...
Wyoming's War on Wolves May 10, 2017 JSTOR Daily
... Multiple scientists have also challenged ideas about wolves’ positive impact on Wyoming ecosystems. In a 2009 study, the ecologists Scott Creel and David Christianson contend that elk’s reduced consumption of willow trees “was more strongly affected by snow conditions than by the presence of wolves.” The scientists Matthew Kauffman, Jedediah Brodie, and Erik Jules also refute the notion that wolves played a central role in helping Yellowstone aspen trees to recover in their 2010 article. That study also concludes that “aspen are not currently recovering ...
Habitat selection by elk before and after wolf reintroduction in Yellowstone National Park
JS Mao, MS Boyce, DW Smith, FJ Singer… - Journal of Wildlife …, 2005 - BioOne
... Elk appear to select habitats that allow them to avoid wolves during summer, but they may rely on other behavioral antipredator strategies, such as grouping, in winter. This study provides evidence that wolves can alter seasonal elk distribution and habitat selection, and demonstrates how the return of wolves to Yellowstone restores important ecosystem processes...
New study links wolf numbers to moose calf survival January 30, 2018 Minnesota, Duluth News Tribune
... renowned wolf researcher David Mech is reporting a stark correlation between wolf population levels and survival of moose calves... wolf numbers more than doubled while moose declined ...
Examining the complex coexistence of wolves, moose February 3, 2018 Minnesota, Minneapolis Star Tribune
... When there have been fewer moose calves to feed on within a confined study area, mostly located in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, wolves have died off. The relationship helps explain why moose numbers in northeastern Minnesota have been holding their own after crashing when wolf density was surging from 2002 to 2010...
Experimental moose reduction lowers wolf density and stops decline of endangered caribou 2017 PeerJ
... When the moose harvest was increased, the moose population declined substantially in the treatment area (by 70%) but not the reference area, suggesting that the policy had the desired effect and was not caused by a broader climatic process. Wolf numbers subsequently declined in the treatment area, with wolf dispersal rates 2.5× greater, meaning that dispersal was the likely mechanism behind the wolf numerical response, though reduced recruitment and starvation was also documented in the treatment area. Caribou adult survival increased from 0.78 to 0.88 in the treatment area, but declined in the reference...
Yellowstone Wolves and the Forces That Structure Natural Systems AP Dobson - PLoS biology, 2014
... Once introduced in 1995 and 1996, the wolf population grew rapidly. At the time, the elk population was declining from an all-time high and provided a large supply of prey to fuel wolf reproduction; the population increased at close to the maximum rate ever recorded [1]. As the wolf numbers increased, the elk numbers decreased, but at a rate that was more parsimoniously explained by a prolonged drought and levels of human harvest, the decline in abundance far exceeding that which could be accounted for purely in terms of elk consumed by wolves [2],[3]. Significant evidence does suggest that the elk had changed their feeding habits in the presence of wolves, avoiding areas where they could readily be ambushed [3]–[8]. This allowed vegetation in riparian areas to recover; photographs taken at a variety of locations showed considerable recovery of aspen in areas where it had become overgrazed in the years when elk were abundant [1],[9].... [the presence of wolves, not the result of wolf predation, changed the landscape]
Wolf recovery impact debated in state, valley January 2, 2015 Colorado, Aspen Daily News
... Jonathan Lowsky, wildlife ecologist and principal of Basalt-based Colorado Wildlife Science, said ... “The elk would just hang out like cows and eat every willow sucker that came up ... Now that wolves are back, the area is robust. It completely changed the habitat. Songbirds, beavers, otter, and fish have all tremendously benefitted because the elk can’t just sit there and chow down... ”
Gun deer season 2014 begins, wolf impact November 22, 2014 Wisconsin, The Northwoods River News
... "Impacts of predators on white-tailed deer population growth and recruitment in Wisconsin," by Christopher Jacques, Bureau of Science Services, and Timothy Van Deelen, University of Wisconsin-Madison. The report concluded that, "Wolf effects, measured as the physical presence of a wolf pack territory in [deer management units], had no discernible impact on population growth rates or recruitment of deer in Wisconsin." ...
Adaptive behaviour and multiple equilibrium states in a predator-prey model
A Pimenov, TC Kelly, A Korobeinikov… - Theoretical Population …, 2015
... There is evidence that multiple stable equilibrium states are possible in real-life ecological systems. ... we consider a simple predator-prey model, which is a straightforward extension of the classic Lotka-Volterra predator-prey model... A simple conceptual two-dimensional predator-prey model ... exhibits two stable co-existing equilibrium states with basins of attraction separated by a separatrix of a saddle point...
Don’t blame wolves for problems humans create March 29, 2015 Minnesota, Duluth News Tribune
... Wolves are being blamed for the decline in deer ... Each wolf eats approximately 20 deer a year, according to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. In Wisconsin there are approximately 630 wolves. Hunters killed 200,000 deer in the two-week gun season. That doesn’t include other seasons or bow season. Then add 40,000 deer killed by cars. Do the math...
The wolves of Yellowstone February 15, 2018 Wyoming, Nouse
... Wolves were then trapped, shot or poisoned until the last packs were removed in the 1920’s ... Elk saw rapid increases in their populations ... wolves were finally released [into Yellowstone] in the winter of 1995 ... The main effect the wolves had on the deer population was not the amount they reduced it by but how they altered their behavior ... Changes to the grazing patterns allowed rejuvenation in the areas where the deer avoided...
UW-Madison Professor Discusses Wisconsin Wolf-Deer Issues April 5, 2015, The Pointer
... To determine the causes of deer mortality, he conducted research and found that wolves accounted for less than 5 percent of adult deer deaths in a given year. Furthermore, his research suggested wolves are “opportunistic predators,” typically only preying on juveniles or weak individuals. The presence of wolves on the landscape does have an ecological impact. Van Deelen said deer eat less vegetation in areas where there are more wolves, and deer eat more vegetation in areas with fewer wolves...
Effects of predation risk and group dynamics on white-tailed deer foraging behavior in a longleaf pine savanna MJ Cherry, LM Conner, RJ Warren - Behavioral Ecology, 2015
... We investigated the effects of predation risk on white-tailed deer foraging behavior by manipulating predator distributions through exclusion ... Predator exclusion resulted in a 5% increase in the time females spent feeding during the summer, concurrent with fawning; and 13.4% increase in the time males spent feeding during winter, while in postrut condition. Males were more vigilant than females and demonstrated a stronger response to predator exclusion...
Hearing the howl of the wolves May 26, 2015 Wisconsin, Post-Crescen Media
... researchers documented that in the 1996-1997 winter, 125,894 deer were harvested by rifle and bow hunters, a staggering 70,000 deer were estimated to die by harsh winter conditions, an estimated 10,000 deer died as a result of motor vehicles, leaving only an estimated 2,250 to 2,700 deer consumed by wolves...
With climate change, species are increasingly hybridizing to survive June 2, 2015 Public Radio International
... these super-sized coyotes are only about two-thirds coyote. About 10 percent of their genes belong to domestic dogs and a quarter comes from wolves, with which they hybridized as they moved east north of the Great Lakes ... all the better to kill white-tailed deer, which were making a comeback as forests began to regrow...
Scale-Dependent Effects of Coyote-Predation Risk on Patterns of White-Tailed Deer Browsing along Linear Forest Edges JLB Pierce, SA Dalinsky, AA Chenaille, LM Lolya… - Northeastern Naturalist, New York, 2015
... Predation can influence patterns of browse through decreasing White-tailed Deer abundance and influencing patterns of habitat selection... We did not observe a change in White-tailed Deer browsing at the landscape scale in response to variation in the risk of Coyote predation, or a mitigating role of escape cover. However, we did detect a tendency for White-tailed Deer to shift browsing from the forest edge to interior along transects with more Coyotes. Our study indicates that Coyotes in the focal area were likely influencing patterns of browsing primarily through behaviorally mediated indirect effects...
Effect of Coyotes, Mississippi Study, 2012
When we compared predator abundance to fawn recruitment at all the properties we studied, we found that predator abundance was not related to fawn recruitment at a regional scale. We did observe instances where high predator abundance
corresponded to low fawn recruitment estimates; however, we found just as many locations with high fawn recruitment and high predator abundance.
Coyote Kill January 5, 2015 New Mexico, Las Cruces Sun-News
... When I was a child, hunters killed off the coyote population in New Mexico and the deer started starving because the usual prey of the coyotes eat what deer eat. Without coyotes to control the rodents like jack rabbits, they ate everything in site. It is a delicate balance here....
Minn. cattlemen angered by court ruling restoring wolf protection January 26, 2015 Minnesota, AG Week
... critics point to a recent Washington State University study, which found that killing wolves to protect livestock leads to more cattle deaths, not fewer, at least initially. “It just disrupts the pack and leads to more problems for farmers,” ... The average wolf will take 18 to 20 adult-sized deer per year ...
Wolf predation on wild ungulates: how slope and habitat cover influence the localization of kill sites E Torretta, L Caviglia, M Serafini, A Meriggi - Current Zoology, 2017
... Prey are more vulnerable to predators under certain conditions and predators are capable of selecting for these conditions. Wolves achieved this by selecting particular habitats in which to kill their prey: they preferred steep, open habitats far from human presence, where wild ungulates are more easily detectable and chasable...
Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf Scientist? July 5, 2018 Washington, New York Times
... [Wiegus] found something unusual: Killing wolves one year was associated with more, not fewer, deaths of livestock the following year. The paper further suggested that killing wolves may cause the increased livestock deaths.... they concluded that Wielgus’s study overlooked a simpler explanation for that rise in livestock depredation: Wolves were proliferating at the time...
Wolf Expansion Could Be Curtailed March 18, 2018 Montana, dtnpf.com
... When legal wolf harvests began in Montana and Idaho in 2009, wildlife advocates and some scientists argued their numbers would plummet. Hunters and trappers have since killed almost 4,400 wolves in the two states ... About 1,500 more were killed by government wildlife agents and property owners following attacks on livestock and similar conflicts. But wolves are such prolific breeders that after each hunting season, their numbers bounced back the next spring...
Return of the wolves: How deer escape tactics help save their lives February 27, 2019 Washington, University of Washington
... about 200 wolves in packs across eastern Washington. ... mule deer exposed to wolves, in particular, are changing their behavior to spend more time away from roads, at higher elevations and in rockier landscapes... white-tailed deer that favor sprinting and early detection as ways to escape from predators were more likely to stick to their normal behavior in wolf areas ...
Fear of predators helps keep ecosystems balanced, researchers say February 25, 2016 sportact.net
... the presence of large carnivores creates a ‘landscape of fear’ necessary to keep their prey, like deer, coyotes and raccoons, from eating everything in sight ... experimentally demonstrated, for the first time, the fear of large carnivores is powerful enough to have effects all the way down the food chain ... the team played the threatening sounds of large carnivores (or non-threatening sounds) from speakers along extensive lengths of shoreline ...
Of wolves, deer, maples and wildflowers June 16, 2016 Michigan, Great Lakes Echo
... With the resurgence of wolves in the region, smart deer are learning to keep away from areas with many of the predators, meaning that wildflowers and young maples there have a better chance of survival, according to a recent study by scientists from the University of Notre Dame and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (MDNR)...
Natural and experimental tests of trophic cascades: gray wolves and white-tailed deer in a Great Lakes forest DG Flagel, GE Belovsky, DE Beyer Jr - Oecologia, 2015 Wisconsin
... The results of the exclosure experiments revealed that the negative impacts of deer on sapling growth and forb species richness became negligible in high wolf use areas. We conclude that wolves are likely generating trophic cascades which benefit maples and rare forbs through trait-mediated effects on deer herbivory, not through direct predation kills.
Effects of wildlife management in national parks on its populations - Where to go?Dominik Dachs, Research in Protected Areas, 2013
... "The “landscape of fear” is widely ignored as a key natural process in our ecosystems. Without anti-predation behavior, ungulate species are kept in a system that is far from being natural. For protecting the natural processes in national parks without predators, the question is not if population control is maintained, but rather how it is done (CROMSIGT et al. 2013). Regular hunting is a very poor substitute for imitating the “landscape of fear” normally created by large carnivores (PROFFITT et al. 2009) and contains great risks to the objectives of the national parks. Human hunters can select by unnatural behavioral criteria (MILNER et al. 2007) or have negative genetic effects (COLTMAN et al. 2003).
Urban predator–prey association: coyote and deer distributions in the Chicago (Illinois) metropolitan area SB Magle, LS Simoni, EW Lehrer, JS Brown - Urban Ecosystems, 2014
... Expected predator–prey dynamics were altered in this highly urban system. Though we predicted deer would avoid coyotes on the landscape based on an “ecology of fear” framework, deer and coyote occupancy showed a strong positive association. We suggest that a scarcity of quality habitat in urban areas may cause the species to co-occupy habitat despite potential fawn predation...
Coyotes Vs. Deer: The Predation Effect January 1, 2015 Grand View Outdoors
... There have been a number of studies done where many coyotes were removed from a large area over a long period of time. In some of those studies, the response after one year showed a jump in deer numbers, but over time, deer numbers stabilized at original levels. The majority of studies looking at adult deer predation by coyotes show that coyotes simply don’t appreciably affect deer numbers...
Do We Need Wolves? March 10, 2015 In These Times
... For thousands of years the wolf covered more North American territory than any other mammal ... an estimated 250,000 lived in what’s now the United States... George Monbiot, author of Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea and Human Life, has observed, “the wolves, small in number, transformed not just the ecosystem of Yellowstone National Park … but also its physical geography.” He maintains that by keeping herds of mule deer and elk on the move, wolves reversed over-grazing along the park’s rivers, allowing new growth along the banks... By keeping herds on the move and selecting the weakest prey, for example, wolves can cull the sickest members of a deer population while leaving the healthiest most likely to reproduce...
Project studies deer mortality rates July 24, 2015 Michigan, Daily Press
... "In the low-snowfall zone...we had annual fawn survival range from 35 percent to 59 percent," ... "The adult does were actually avoiding the core areas that wolves use," ... However, coyotes in the area were avoiding these locations, as well. "Coyotes were an important predator of fawns in phase one," ...
Will Coloradans free wolves on the state's public lands? February 1, 2018 Colorado, Boulder Weekly
... Wolf advocates cite the ecological phenomenon known as trophic cascade as one justification for reintroducing the predator. The idea is that as wolves return in significant numbers, they will prevent elk and deer from over-browsing riparian areas, particularly willow and aspen stands. By spreading elk and deer out across the landscape, wolves allow willow and aspen to rebound and their roots hold soil, halting erosion...
Predator Prey Relationship
Pa. Game Commission continues to study predation on deer herd January 5, 2015 Pennsylvania, Olean Times Herald
... The Game Commission studied the effects of fawn predation back in 2001. The study found about half of all fawns born each spring survived to see the fall hunting seasons. Predators including coyotes, bears, bobcats and fishers were responsible for killing about 22 percent of the fawns that died. ... large-scale predator control repeatedly has been found not to work ...
White-tailed deer, coyotes, and the ecology of fear in a longleaf pine savanna MJ Cherry - 2014
Predators can exert powerful influence on their prey, independent of direct killing, by inducing antipredator responses. Coyotes (Canis latrans) have recently achieved abundances capable of influencing white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) population demography in the southeastern USA, but the effects of antipredator responses have not been reported ... his work provided evidence that coyotes can influence white-tailed deer space use and vigilance while foraging, and documented a negative relationship between coyote abundance and body mass of adult female deer during an 11-year period...
Coyote Kill January 5, 2015 New Mexico, Las Cruces Sun-News
... When I was a child, hunters killed off the coyote population in New Mexico and the deer started starving because the usual prey of the coyotes eat what deer eat. Without coyotes to control the rodents like jack rabbits, they ate everything in site. It is a delicate balance here....
Coyote/wolf hybrid spotted at Savannah River March 27, 2014 South Carolina, Greenville News
... The coyote/wolf hybrid that scares deer hunters throughout South Carolina has been found at the Savannah River Site by U.S. Forestry Service ... we took its DNA and a picture. We were stunned when the results came back with Canadian grey wolf in the animal’s background...
33 Fascinating Findings from Deer Research May 22, 2014 Virginia, QDMA
... 84% – The percentage of the total population of coyotes identified by DNA markers from thousands of scats collected in Virginia that only appeared once in the collection. Dana Morin of Virginia Polytechnic and State University said this supports other evidence that coyote populations in Virginia include a high percentage of widely traveling individuals and experience high turnover rates – both of which suggest that shooting coyotes does little to control populations...
Assessment of coyote‐wolf‐dog admixture using ancestry‐informative diagnostic SNPs J Monzón, R Kays, DE Dykhuizen - Molecular Ecology, 2013
.. Hybridization between coyotes and wolves may have introduced adaptive alleles into the coyote gene pool that facilitated an expansion in their geographic range and dietary niche. Furthermore, hybridization between coyotes and domestic dogs may facilitate adaptation to human-dominated environments. We genotyped 63 ancestry-informative single nucleotide polymorphisms in 427 canids in order to examine the prevalence, spatial distribution, and ecology of admixture in eastern coyotes...Ohio coyotes, previously thought to be free of admixture, are also highly admixed with wolves and dogs. Coyotes in areas of high deer density are genetically more wolf-like, suggesting that natural selection for wolf-like traits may result in local adaptation at a fine geographic scale...
WSU study shows wolves' favorite prey is deer — but moose are also on the menu February 19, 2016 Washington, Methow Valley News
... “Deer are by far the most common prey,” ... second-most common prey is moose, which account for about 22 to 28 percent of the animals killed by wolves... about .3 kills per pack per day during the summer grazing season ... equals one kill every 3.3 days, or about 110 kills per year ... “To put this into perspective, roughly 350 deer are killed on the highway in the Methow Valley every year,”
Does Predator Control Really Work? The Science Behind Hunting Coyotes and Other Predators to Protect Game Animals March 28, 2016 Outdoor Life Magazine
... constructed four small, fenced exclosures that were tall enough to exclude coyotes, foxes, and bobcats, but short enough for deer to jump (approximately 4 feet tall ... fawn recruitment was almost double inside the fences. These findings suggest that providing small areas where does can give birth without risk of predation will increase recruitment...
Meta-Analysis of Coyote Diet Reveals Differences by Geographical Region A Adducci, J Monzon - 2018
... Our results show that deer occur significantly more in the diet of Northeastern coyotes than in the diet of Midwestern coyotes, while small mammals occur significantly less. The occurrence of rabbits, hares, birds, vegetation, and fruit do not differ significantly by region. This supports the hypothesis that Northeastern coyotes, due to their larger size and hybridization with wolves, are better adapted at hunting large prey ...
Population responses of naive roe deer to the recolonization of the French Vercors by wolves M Randon, C Bonenfant, J Michallet, T Chevrier… - bioRxiv, 2019
...Both populations of roe deer strongly dropped after an extremely severe winter but the population of the central area facing with wolves was slower to recover (due to a much lower growth rate the following year) and remained at lower abundance levels for 5 years. Fawn body mass was lower in the central area during that period and was not influenced by weather conditions or population abundance. The browsing index in the forests in presence of wolves decreased for a longer period ...
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