Archive for the ‘human-carnivore conflict’ Tag

Making room for large carnivores

Over the last few posts, I’ve mentioned that a number of groups around the world are working to reduce human-carnivore conflict- some of those strategies have been more successful than others, but we do have a better sense of what helps limit conflict, both from the human and the wildlife perspective. To get insight into […]

The large carnivore in the room

In the past few years there has been an emphasis on assessing what makes a carnivore conservation effort successful (or not) and what the long-term prospects are for the variety of strategies in use. The reality is that there is no magic bullet or guarantee of success, but we certainly have a better sense of […]

What it means to live large

When looking at large carnivore conservation this past week, it became evident that there are lots of layers to this topic. It’s about more than habitat availability or prey populations- it also includes the individuality of species and human attitudes. To begin with, there is the nature of carnivore ecology– these animals have large home […]

Is there room at the top?

A friend of mine recently returned from a year of field work in the Southwest- she’s investigating how carnivore species respond to each other and different levels of human activity in an arid environment. Some of the pictures from her camera traps make me completely jealous- she’s dealing with mountain lions and badgers and ringtails, […]

Building a better dingo house

Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen that dingoes play a variety of roles in the environment, and the extent and importance of those roles is hotly debated by researchers. Dingoes may help native wildlife by keeping exotic predator numbers down, but they may also prey upon threatened species in Australia. Dingoes are apex predators […]

Keeping up with the pack

Dingoes seem to be pretty controversial animals, and I think I even found about as close as you’ll get to a fight in the scientific community over the ecological roles of the dingo (what was fascinating about the exchange was not just what was said, but how it was said- scientists can be mean). A […]

It’s a dog’s life

This week I’d like to give you an introduction to the history and ecology of the dingo (Canis lupus dingo), but I’m not sure how thorough I can be here- one of the things that struck me in my reading was how many opinions there are about dingoes. And people with differing conclusions seem to […]