{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"BioScience Talks","title":"Wolf Recovery and Its Challenges, with David Mech and David Ausband","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1663,"description":"\nFor today's episode, we were joined by L. David Mech, from the US Geological Survey’s Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center and the University of Minnesota in St. Paul and David E. Ausband, from the Idaho Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, at the University of Idaho. They were here to talk about the successful recovery of gray wolves in North America, and in particular, the challenges associated with that success. Below is a brief article describing their BioScience article.\n\n____\n\n\nOver the past 30 years, efforts to recover gray wolf populations in the United States have been broadly successful, with many regions now sporting robust populations of the charismatic carnivore. Writing in BioScience, wolf experts David E. Ausband and L. David Mech describe the conservation landscape and also the obstacles that wolves face as their populations expand into their historical ranges.\n\"Remarkable wolf conservation success yields remarkable challenges,\" say the authors, as 6000 wolves now occupy habitat across 11 states. These growing populations now face significant threats as they attempt to colonize human-dominated areas, among them \"fragmented habitats and barriers to dispersal, as well as increased encounters with humans, pets, and livestock.\"\nIn response to those concerned about wolves’ potential impacts to prey populations and domestic livestock production, many jurisdictions have ramped up wolf efforts. For instance, in Wisconsin, \"the legislature requires a public hunting or trapping season whenever wolves are delisted from the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) list of Endangered species.\" In contrast, wolves are seen as desirable in other areas, such as Colorado, where voters recently passed a ballot initiative to reintroduce them in the state. The authors caution that such pro-reintroduction initiatives, which may seem initially promising for wolves, could have the unintended consequence of setting precedent for laws barring reintroduction...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/qBYks7z_LrDl0xWejdg8NVAnyaJl-cO9SFuWMRl7QoQ/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzE5MzM0LzE2MTU1/OTEwMDEtYXJ0d29y/ay5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}