Adrian Treves

University of Wisconsin–Madison | UW · Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies

Wildlife control is the subfield pertaining to preventing threats to human property or safety from wild animals. Various research fields interact within wildlife control from animal behavior to agricultural management and other social sciences. We review understanding of the effectiveness of interventions using nighttime lights and fladry, both vis...

Crop loss to wildlife, particularly elephants, threatens livelihoods and support for conservation around many protected areas in Africa and Asia. Low-cost elephant barriers have been successfully deployed in savannas but seldom tested around isolated forest parks where the stakes are high for local farmers and isolated elephant populations. We meas...

Human-carnivore conflict is still characterized by lethal control, even while some evidence suggests that carnivore removal may not affect the likelihood of future livestock predation, or that it may even exacerbate the problem. Here we propose five non-exclusive, and likely additive, hypotheses for why lethal removals could fail to mitigate livest...

Given the ecological importance of top predators, societies are turning to non-lethal methods for coexistence. Coexistence is challenging when livestock graze within wild predator habitats. We report a randomized, controlled experiment to evaluate low-stress livestock handling (L-SLH), a form of range riding, to deter grizzly (brown) bears, gray wo...

New methods for estimating wolf abundance have been applied to US state policies. We review evidence for the accuracy, precision, and sensitivity to changing conditions for one such method: Wisconsin’s 2022 ‘scaled occupancy model’. We conclude that the Wisconsin method systematically overestimates wolf abundance by large margins.

We comment on a correction to a 2016 article in PLoS One. Although we commend the authors for making a correction, we find problems remain. We identify missing data and nondisclosures of competing interests.

A comment posted 12 December 2022 to the 13 February 2020 PLOS One article: The Elephant in the room: What can we learn from California regarding the use of sport hunting of pumas (Puma concolor) as a management tool? Article and comment online: https://tinyurl.com/28z3n4vv. Abstract Decisions that hope to advance broad public interests require a r...

Comment on Treves A, Louchouarn NX. Uncertainty and precaution in hunting wolves twice in a year. PLoS One. 2022; 17(3):e0259604. Treves, A. Louchouarn, N.X. In the associated publication [1], we explained and modeled how uncertainty about Wisconsin gray wolf vital statistics would interact with a wolf-hunting quota in relation to three precautiona...

We summarize qualitative data on experiences with gold standard, randomized, controlled trials with crossover design to evaluate the effectiveness of non-lethal methods to reduce carnivore attacks on domestic animals in four countries. We synthesize lessons learned in four categories: Experiences with randomized, controlled trials (RCTs), Design re...

In the face of biodiversity crises and concerns raised about animal ethics, some societies are re-examining many human uses of animals. One activity that may once have been unobjectionable has undergone little scrutiny in most countries: hunting mammals with free-running hounds. We present two novel datasets about this under-studied `behavioral int...

Poaching is the major cause of death for large carnivores in several regions, contributing to their global endangerment. The traditional hypothesis used in wildlife management (killing for tolerance) suggests reducing protections for a species will decrease poaching. However, recent studies suggest reducing protections will instead increase poachin...

When humanity confronts the risk of extinction of species, many people invoke precautions, especially in the face of uncertainty. Although precautionary approaches are value judgments, the optimal design and effect of precautions or lack thereof are scientific questions. We investigated Wisconsin gray wolves Canis lupus facing a second wolf-hunt in...

Poaching is the main cause of mortality for many large carnivores, and mitigating it is imperative for the persistence of their populations. For Wisconsin gray wolves (Canis lupus), periods of increased risk in overall mortality and poaching seem to overlap temporally with legal hunting seasons for other large mammals (hunting wolves was prohibited...

Given the ecological importance of top predators, societies are turning to non-lethal methods for coexistence. Coexistence is challenging when livestock are released within wild predator habitats, even when people supervise or use lethal methods. We report a randomized, controlled design to evaluate low-stress livestock handling (L-SLH), a form of...

Given the ecological importance of top predators, societies are turning to non-lethal methods for coexistence. Coexistence is challenging when livestock graze within wild predator habitats. We report a randomized, controlled experiment to evaluate low-stress livestock handling (L-SLH), a form of range riding, to deter grizzly (brown) bears, gray wo...

When humanity confronts the risk of extinction of species, many people invoke precautions, especially in the face of uncertainty. Although precautionary approaches are value judgments, the timing and effect of precautions or lack thereof are scientific questions. We investigated the Wisconsin gray wolves Canis lupus facing a second wolf-hunt in Nov...

Transformed landscapes caused by human activity leave remnant patches of natural habitat for wildlife. The persistence of species in the face of such transformation depends on individuals’ ability to adapt to novel habitat, and to secure resources and reproductive opportunities despite habitat alterations. The leopard, Panthera pardus, is the last...

Transformed landscapes caused by human activity leave remnant patches of natural habitat for wildlife. The persistence of species in the face of such transformation depends on individuals’ ability to adapt to novel habitat, and to secure resources and reproductive opportunities despite habitat alterations. The leopard, Panthera pardus, is the last...

In January 2021, there were 7 known individual red wolves (Canis rufus) remaining in the only wild population, located in Northeastern North Carolina (NENC). Anthropogenic mortality is the largest threat to survival of this population. Leading theory predicts that by understanding the attitudes and behavioral inclinations of the general public towa...

Governments around the world invest considerable resources to reduce damages caused by large carnivores on human property. To use these investments more efficiently and effectively, we need to understand which interventions successfully prevent such damages and which do not. In the European Union, the LIFE program represents by far the largest fina...

Predators and their protection are controversial worldwide. Gray wolves, Canis lupus , lost U.S. federal protection (delisting) and the State of Wisconsin began lethal management first among all states and tribes that regained authority over wolves. Here we evaluated the initial success of reaching the state’s explicit objective, “…to allow for a s...

Governments around the world invest considerable resources to reduce damages caused by large carnivores on human property. To use these investments more efficiently and effectively, we need to understand which interventions successfully prevent such damages and which do not. In the European Union, the LIFE program represents by far the largest fina...

The reintroduced red wolf (Canis rufus) population in northeastern North Carolina declined to 7 known wolves by October 2020, the majority of which is due to poaching (illegal killing), the major component of verified anthropogenic mortality in this and many other carnivore populations. Poaching is still not well understood and is often underestima...

Worldwide, unsustainable use of nature threatens many ecosystems and the services they provide for a broad diversity of life, including humans. Yet, governments commonly claim that the best available science supports their policies governing extraction of natural resources. We confront this apparent paradox by assessing the complexity of the inters...

To prevent and mitigate human-carnivore conflicts associated with livestock losses it is important to predict hazards from carnivores to target interventions. However, when constructing models of risk, we must account for uncertainty and bias of livestock kill data. Quality of these data depend on how accurately and precisely verification programs...

Despite illegal killing (poaching) being the major cause of death among large carnivores globally, little is known about the effect of implementing lethal management policies on poaching. Two opposing hypotheses have been proposed in the literature: implementing lethal management may decrease poaching incidence (killing for tolerance) or increase i...

Despite illegal killing (poaching) being the major cause of death among large carnivores globally, little is known about the effect of implementing lethal management policies on poaching. Two opposing hypotheses have been proposed in the literature: implementing lethal management may decrease poaching incidence ("killing for tolerance") or increase...

The rapid extinction of species over the past few decades has created a biodiversity crisis. Factors contributing to recent extirpations are linked to increased human population growth, habitat loss and fragmentation, and over-exploitation of wildlife. Only decisive, effective action to combat biodiversity loss can reverse these trends. The use of...

The reintroduced red wolf population in northeastern North Carolina declined to 7 known wolves by October 2020. Poaching (illegal killing) is the major component of verified anthropogenic mortality in this and many other carnivore populations, but it is still not well understood. Poaching is often underestimated, partly as a result of cryptic poach...

Recent advances in genomics have increased our understanding of geographic patterns of intraspecific variation and the importance of this variation in enhancing species’ potential to adapt to novel threats. However, as part of an effort to limit the scope of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the US government has proposed the removal of the gray wo...

The social license to operate framework considers how society grants or withholds informal permission for resource extractors to exploit publicly owned resources. We developed a modified model, which we refer to as the social license to hunt (SLH). In it we similarly consider hunters as operators, given that wildlife are legally considered public r...

Although poaching (illegal killing) is an important cause of death for large carnivores globally, the effect of lethal management policies on poaching is unknown for many populations. Two opposing hypotheses have been proposed: liberalizing killing may decrease poaching incidence (‘tolerance hunting’) or increase it (‘facilitated poaching’). For gr...

Recent extinctions often resulted from humans retaliating against wildlife that threatened people's interests or were perceived to threaten current or future interests. Today's subfield of human-wildlife conflict and coexistence (HWCC) grew out of an original anthropocentric concern with such real or perceived threats and then, starting in the mid-...

Rapid, global changes, such as extinction and climate change, put a premium on evidence-based, environmental policies and interventions, including predator control efforts. Lack of solid scientific evidence precludes strong inference about responses of predators, people, and prey of both, to various types of predator control. Here we formulate two...

Anthropogenic mortality among populations of large terrestrial carnivores undermines the health of ecosystems globally, and generally increases when people respond lethally to real or perceived threats to property, including livestock. Reducing such threats through the use of non‐lethal methods could therefore protect both large predators and human...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0189729.].

We are failing to protect the biosphere. Novel views of conservation, preservation, and sustainability are surfacing in the wake of consensus about our failures to prevent extinction or slow climate change. We argue that the interests and well-being of non-humans, youth, and future generations of both human and non-human beings (futurity) have too...

Mawdsley et al. (2018) respond disapprovingly to our 2018 review of 667 wildlife management systems across Canada and the United States, which found that many of these systems lacked the scientific hallmarks of clear objectives, evidence, transparency, and independent review. Although we strongly agree with several of Mawdsley et al.’s points about...

Carnivore predation on livestock often leads people to retaliate. Persecution by humans has contributed strongly to global endangerment of carnivores. Preventing livestock losses would help to achieve three goals common to many human societies: preserve nature, protect animal welfare, and safeguard human livelihoods. Between 2016 and 2018, four ind...

Protecting biodiversity requires that we correctly identify major threats and effective interventions to abate them. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

The original Article mistakenly coded the constitutional rights of Australia as containing a governmental duty to protect the environment (blue in the figures); this has been corrected to containing no explicit mention of environmental protection (orange in the figures). The original Article also neglected to code the constitutional rights of the C...

Resource management agencies commonly defend controversial policy by claiming adherence to science-based approaches. For example, proponents and practitioners of the “North American Model of Wildlife Conservation,” which guides hunting policy across much of the United States and Canada, assert that science plays a central role in shaping policy. Ho...

Article impact statement: Reporting of population data and associated policies are prone to political influence.

Intergenerational rights to a healthy environment are protected by the constitutions of 75% of the world’s nations. These explicit commitments and similar, ancient principles of sovereign public trust are often overlooked but, if enforced, they o er sustainable protection for the biosphere.

Large carnivores, such as gray wolves, Canis lupus, are difficult to protect in mixed-use landscapes because some people perceive them as dangerous and because they sometimes threaten human property and safety. Governments may respond by killing carnivores in an effort to prevent repeated conflicts or threats, although the functional effectiveness...

Results from frailty mfodels for main dataset, for all spatial scales. (DOCX)

Livestock depredation events involving gray wolves in the state of Michigan, USA (1998–2014). (XLSX)

Distribution of observations and recurrent events between treatments and strata for all spatial scales. (DOCX)

Results for ‘traps placed’ dataset. (DOCX)

Results for post-2003 dataset. (DOCX)

Results for ‘skip-a-year’ dataset and outlier exclusion. (DOCX)

Measuring rates and causes of mortalities is important in animal ecology and management. Observing the fates of known individuals is a common method of estimating life history variables, including mortality patterns. It has long been assumed that data lost when known animals disappear were unbiased. We test and reject this assumption under conditio...

Here, we make available basic sample code for the statistical survival analyses employed in our manuscript. This code should allow for replication of analyses at all spatial scales for all datasets involved. This sample code does not include code lines for dropping or adding observations, which we did for the alternate datasets used. However, this...

Large carnivores, such as wolves Canis lupus, are difficult to protect in mixed-use landscapes because some people perceive them as dangerous and because they sometimes threaten human property and safety. Governments may respond by killing carnivores in an effort to prevent repeated conflicts or threats, although the functional effectiveness of let...

Although participatory planning for conservation has gained prominence over the past few decades, whether this process is successful in protecting biodiversity is still controversial. Moreover, the initial, constitutive decisions about whom to include in the process may undermine the sometimes-implicit goal that non-participants will find the outco...

Government agencies faced with politically controversial decisions often discount or ignore scientific information, whether from agency staff or nongovernmental scientists. Recent developments in scientific integrity (the ability to perform, use, communicate, and publish science free from censorship or political interference) in Canada, Australia,...

Risk maps are spatial models of environmental hazards such as predation on livestock. We tested the long-term validity of a published risk map built from locations where Wisconsin wolves attacked livestock from 1999–2006. Using data collected after model construction, we verified the predictive accuracy of the risk map exceeded 91% for the period 2...

This chapter discusses criminology and social psychology theories for testable hypotheses to explain poaching opportunity and poaching potential. It profiles authors' work aiming to build understanding for a controversial, endangered large carnivores (LC) that is poached without a financial profit motive in a human-dominated ecosystem. Social psych...

Open letter to Congress and the White House argues why gray wolves (C. lupus) should remain federally listed under the Endangered Species Act of 1973.

Starting in the 1970s, many populations of large-bodied mammalian carnivores began to recover from centuries of human-caused eradication and habitat destruction. The recovery of several such populations has since slowed or reversed due to mortality caused by humans. Illegal killing (poaching) is a primary cause of death in many carnivore population...

In our recent perspective article, we noted that most (approximately 0 percent) terrestrial large carnivore and large herbivore species are now threatened with extinction, and we offered a 13-point declaration designed to promote and guide actions to save these iconic mammalian megafauna (Ripple et al. 2016). Some may worry that a focus on saving m...

[ Proc. R. Soc. B 283 , 20152939. (2016; Published online 11 May 2016) ([doi:10.1098/rspb.2015.2939][2])][2] We recently discovered an error in [[1][2]] due to a misalignment of rows between columns in the dataset. Specifically, we misaligned by 1 year the population size with the number of wolves

The growing complexity and global nature of wildlife poaching threaten the survival of many species worldwide and are outpacing conservation efforts. Here, we reviewed proximal and distal factors, both social and ecological, driving illegal killing or poaching of large carnivores at sites where it can potentially occur. Through this review, we deve...