This capstone project is expected to be published by United States Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Wildlife Services (USDA APHIS WS) as part of a technical series guide available to the public through the website (https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/wildlifedamage/sa_reports/ct_wildlife+damage+management+technical+series). USDA APHIS WS is responsible for mitigating human-wildlife conflict and...
On June 20, 2019, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) announced it would conduct a 5-year status review of the Spruce-Fir Moss Spider as part of the process mandated by the Endangered Species Act. Although the Spruce-Fir Moss Spider has been listed as endangered since 1994, minimal research has...
The black-footed ferret is a meso-predator within the Great Plains region of North America. Before the 1900s, black-footed ferret populations were self-sustaining in large ecological patches throughout the geographical range of the Great Plains. During the 1900s, various factors such as the systematic extermination of prairie dogs (the primary food...
North American beavers (Castor canadensis) are ecological engineers that improve biodiversity and can improve the health of riparian ecosystems. Beavers are generalist herbivores with some evidence of species preference, utilizing woody material for both food source and dam construction. In the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, Charleston, Oregon, a...
In the last decade, many U.S. parks and protected areas (PPA) experienced record breaking visitation levels. Managers of these PPAs face the challenging task of providing a range of quality and accessible outdoor experiences without compromising the integrity and health of surrounding ecosystems. Understanding how PPA visitors move and interact...
Sea otters act as valuable indicators of ecosystem health and consume prey items that contain anthropogenic microparticles, including microplastics. Microplastic ingestion can exert a wide range of deleterious effects depending on the organism and plastic type. We investigated the ingestion of microparticles by wild sea otters (Enhydra lutris) in Alaska...
Community science (also called citizen science) has become an increasingly popular data collection technique for scientists researching nature at a large scale. Many ecologists have also looked to community science as a method for educating the public about science. Over the past several decades, researchers have attempted to define an...