African elephants are the largest extant terrestrial mammals, with bodies containing enormous quantities of nutrients. Yet, we know little about how these nutrients move through the ecosystem after an elephant dies. Here, we investigated the initial effec...

The introduction of Rainbow Smelt in Horsetooth Reservoir, Colorado, increased Walleye growth but also led to poor Walleye recruitment and significant ecosystem shifts, including the decline of Daphnia and the disappearance of opossum shrimp from predator...

We explored the efficacy of using trained hounds to haze mountain lions. Our study provides information on a proactive technique that could have applications for mitigating human-wildlife conflict.

We tested whether (1) sage-grouse selected for surrogate habitat and (2) selection behaviors related to surrogate habitat had demographic effects on the population.

Our study supports using older naturally grown sagebrush plants (wildlings) for restoration efforts. Wildlings had already faced various environmental stresses before transplantation and then had a survival advantage when transplanted. Our study also demo...

The number of ground-nesting ducks in the marshes of Great Salt Lake (GSL), Utah has drastically decreased in the past few decades. One potential cause for this decline is the increase in climate extremes caused by global warming. We tested the hypothesis...

Evolutionary niches are great for species survival, but when humans get stuck arguing from viewpoint niches, it can mean bad news for ecosystem resilience. In a big first, an approach to agreement among divergent stakeholders in a step-by-step protocol fo...

Controlling highly fecund invasive species becomes much more feasible if managers can identify an approach that targets all adult age classes. Explicitly considering sustainable harvest metrics provides a framework for evaluating a harvest control program...

To the extent that temporal variation in elk density was attributable to wolf predation, our results suggest that the wolf–elk–aspen trophic cascade was primarily density-mediated rather than trait-mediated. This aligns with the alternative hypothesis tha...

Animals within social groups respond to costs and benefits of sociality by adjusting the proportion of time they spend in close proximity to other individuals in the group (cohesion). Variation in cohesion between individuals, in turn, shapes important gr...

Metabarcoding of environmental DNA (eDNA) has revolutionized the detection of aquatic species across large geographic scales. However, the effectiveness of eDNA metabarcoding across taxa is marker-dependent, often requiring multiple markers to detect dive...

Human disturbance is altering wildlife distributions and densities through habitat loss, climate change, pollution, and direct human presence. Animal behavior plays a key role in linking these disturbances to population outcomes, with the spatial–social i...

Host social and spatial structures, along with pathogen environmental persistence, influence the spread of environmentally transmitted diseases. Using an agent-based model, researchers examined how host mobility, social behavior, and pathogen decay rates ...

The availability of social resources, such as access to mates, can influence animal movement decisions, but these effects are rarely measured. This study examined how breeding season duration affects long-distance foray movements in male bighorn sheep acr...

Community context plays a crucial role in shaping perceptions of forest risks and land management preferences. This study examines how nine Colorado communities responded to the mountain pine beetle outbreak over time using longitudinal interviews and sur...

As the most widespread large carnivore on the planet, domestic dogs can pose a major threat to wildlife, even within protected areas (PAs). Growing human presence in PAs, coupled with increasing pet dog ownership underscores the urgency to understand the ...

Animals may be able to adapt to human-induced environmental change, thereby rescuing their populations from extinction. Yet it is unclear whether long-term adaptive change in genotypes, known as evolutionary rescue, is possible for free-living animals. Us...

Many species of birds, including grouse, are declining across natural ranges and need conservation actions to ensure long-term population stability. Translocation, the intentional capture, transport, and release of animals to a novel area, is one tool tha...

Results suggest that hunting (pursuit with hounds resulting in harvest) and non-lethal pursuit (pursuit with hounds but no harvest allowed) increase avoidance of anthropogenic landscapes during dispersal for juvenile mountain lions. By comparing populatio...

Pocket gophers can damage agriculture and human development infrastructure from consuming plants in agricultural fields to chewing through electrical cables. Understanding and managing pocket gopher habits is the key to effective control. This fact sheet ...

Habitat selection models often struggle to predict animal space use beyond the original study area and time due to individual and environmental variability. This study developed a modeling workflow that accounts for variation in habitat selection from 238...

Forest managers are searching for better approaches to manage low-value material resulting from fuels management and timber harvest. The conventional practice of slash pile burning emits pollutants and greenhouse gases, and leaves behind burn scars that d...

This book explores the multifaceted importance northern Yellowstone elk play in the park’s history, maintaining its biodiversity, and captivating the minds and hearts of people who care about Yellowstone and wildlife. Throughout these chapters, we learn a...

Gray wolves comprise one of the most widely distributed carnivore species on the planet, but they face myriad environmental and anthropogenic pressures. Here, we look at how seasonal home range size and diel activity patterns among resident and non-reside...

Quaking aspen landscapes are valued for their biodiversity, water retention, fire mitigation, aesthetics, and recreation opportunities, however, some aspen populations are experiencing population declines. At a popular recreational area in Utah, USA, iden...

Degradation of drylands has led to extensive efforts to restore big sagebrush in the western U.S., with interest in using greenhouse-grown seedlings ("tubelings") or locally collected transplants ("wildlings"). A study in southeastern Idaho compared the s...

Non‐native species can affect ecosystems by influencing native predator‐prey dynamics. Therefore, management interventions designed to remove non‐natives may inadvertently lead to increased predation on native species. Feral horses are widely distributed ...

The tourism industry needs strategies to reduce emissions and hasten the achievement of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emission reduction targets. A case study of Yellowstone National Park found that tourism generates approximately 1.03 megatons of CO2-equiv...

This study examines genetic resiliency in two sibling bumble bee species of conservation concern by analyzing museum specimens collected between 1960 and 2020 using 15 microsatellite markers. The findings reveal a decline in allelic richness decades befor...

Understanding how invasive species affect the stability and function of ecosystems is critical for conservation. Here, we quantified the effect of an actively suppressed invasive species on the Yellowstone Lake ecosystem using a food web energetics approa...

This study integrates moral norms and stewardship identity into the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to predict hunters' use of non-lead ammunition in southwestern Utah’s California condor recovery zone. Structural equation modeling showed that moral norm...