Sophie Louise Gilbert

• Widlife Biology
• Professor (Affiliate) at University of Idaho

The decline of top carnivores has released large herbivore populations around the world, incurring socioeconomic costs such as increased animal-vehicle collisions. Attempts to control overabundant deer in the Eastern U.S. have largely failed, and deer-vehicle collisions (DVCs) continue to rise at alarming rates. We present the first valuation of an...

The UN's Paris Agreement goal of keeping global warming between 1.5 and 2°C is dangerously obsolete and needs to be replaced by a commitment to restore Earth's climate. We now know that continued use of fossil fuels associated with 1.5–2°C scenarios would result in hundreds of millions of pollution deaths and likely trigger multiple tipping element...

Carnivores across much of the world are declining, leading to loss of biodiversity as well as the ecosystem services carnivores provide. In 2020, the Alexander Archipelago (AA) wolf was petitioned for protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) for the third time in 30 years. Concerns included habitat alteration from industrial timber ha...

This article is a product of a collaboration between ecosystem scientists and energy system modelers. It is currently in review at Nature Geoscience. The main points are: 1. Climate mitigation goals of 1.5-2°C are not adequate given current understanding of ecosystem sensitivity to climate and the high social costs of carbon emissions. 2. More aggr...

The global energy system is undergoing the largest and fastest transformation since the Industrial Revolution. Breakthroughs in renewable production and storage have made solar and wind the cheapest and cleanest energy ever available. Consequently, solar, wind, and batteries now make up more than 90% of all new energy production built each year. Be...

Abstract As species’ distributions shift in response to changing environmental conditions, novel species interactions are emerging, challenging researchers and managers alike. When new species enter existing ecological communities, their effects on fellow guild members are difficult to predict. Competition between species within the same guild can...

As global climate change progresses, wildlife management will benefit from knowledge of demographic responses to climatic variation, particularly for species already endangered by other stressors. In Canada, climate change is expected to increasingly impact populations of threatened woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) and much focus has be...

Two vital policy aims—biodiversity conservation and food production—are increasingly in conflict. Efforts to evaluate trade‐offs between agriculture and conservation have shaped scholarly discourse around two broad strategies to agricultural production that seek to either “share” land with biodiversity or “spare” land from agriculture. However, eff...

Conservation strategies are hindered by a lack of accurate maps of important habitat for many wildlife species, but especially for species inhabiting managed forest landscapes. Prioritizing restoration efforts on Alaska's Tongass National Forest from past extensive clearcut logging is extremely challenging given the difficulty in accurately mapping...

Habitat loss is often the ultimate cause of species endangerment and is also a leading factor inhibiting species recovery. For this reason, species‐at‐risk legislation, policies and plans typically focus on habitat conservation and restoration as mechanisms for recovery. To assess the effectiveness of these instruments in decelerating habitat loss,...

Conservation of predators – especially large carnivores and those that potentially pose threats to humans – can be controversial among stakeholders who must coexist with them. What is often overlooked, however, are the direct and indirect ecosystem services and disservices predators provide as a result of consumption of herbivores (“predation servi...

The pathways through which environmental variability affects population dynamics remain poorly understood, limiting ecological inference and management actions. Here, we use matrix-based population models to examine the vital rate responses to environmental variability and individual traits, and subsequent transient dynamics of the population in re...

Apex predators play keystone roles in ecosystems through top-down control, but the effects of apex omnivores on ecosystems could be more varied because changes in the resource base alter their densities and reverberate through ecosystems in complex ways. In coastal temperate ecosystems throughout much of the Northern Hemisphere, anadromous salmon o...

Background Temperatures in arctic-boreal regions are increasing rapidly and pose significant challenges to moose ( Alces alces ), a heat-sensitive large-bodied mammal. Moose act as ecosystem engineers, by regulating forest carbon and structure, below ground nitrogen cycling processes, and predator-prey dynamics. Previous studies showed that during...

A recurring challenge for resource managers and decision makers is quantifying the trade-offs associated with alternative recovery actions for threatened species. Structured decision-making approaches can help evaluate such complex problems by formalizing objectives and constraints into functions that quantify the benefits and costs associated with...

Research on the ecology of fear has highlighted the importance of perceived risk from predators and humans in shaping animal behavior and physiology, with potential demographic and ecosystem‐wide consequences. Despite recent conceptual advances and potential management implications of the ecology of fear, theory and conservation practices have rare...

Glaciers support diverse ecosystems that are largely comprised of microbial life. However, at larger, macroscopic scales, glacier moss balls (sometimes called “glacier mice”) can develop from impurities on ice surfaces and represent a relatively rare biological phenomenon. These ovoid-shaped conglomerations of dirt and moss are only found on some g...

The future of conservation and human-wildlife relationships in the American West is at a defining moment. The region consists of a mosaic of land-cover types, with large amounts of public land under varying degrees of protection, use, and ownership. This public land provides the foundation for high levels of connectivity and habitat for healthy pop...

Glaciers support diverse ecosystems that are largely comprised of microbial life. However, at larger, macroscopic scales, glacier moss balls (sometimes called "glacier mice") develop from impurities in the ice and represent a relatively rare biological phenomenon. These ovoid-shaped conglomerations of dirt and moss are only found on some glacier su...

Article impact statement: Resources should target leading edges of species’ climate envelopes rather than populations at the trailing edge of climate change. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

In this paper, we provide an overview of positioning systems for moving resources in forest and fire management and review the related literature. Emphasis is placed on the accuracy and range of different localization and location-sharing methods, particularly in forested environments and in the absence of conventional cellular or internet connecti...

Quantifying both the lethal and non-lethal (or "risk") effects of predation has emerged as a major research focus in carnivore-ungulate systems. While numerous studies have examined predation risk and risk effects in recent decades, a lack of standardization in approaches has impeded progress in the field. We provide an overview of five major study...

Many rural communities are increasingly relying on off‐road motorized vehicles to access wildlife for both subsistence harvest and recreational hunting. Understanding the effects of trail and road networks on wildlife behavior is crucial to effective management for subsistence opportunities in communities that depend on accessible populations as an...

Science communication is seen as critical for the disciplines of ecology and conservation, where research products are often used to shape policy and decision making. Scientists are increasing their online media communication, via social media and news. Such media engagement has been thought to influence or predict traditional metrics of scholarshi...

Supplementary Information

Brown bears are known to use rubbing behavior as a means of chemical communication, but the function of this signaling is unclear. One hypothesis that has gained support is that male bears rub to communicate dominance to other males. We tested the communication of dominance hypothesis in a low-density brown bear population in southeast British Colu...

Animals play an important role in the seed dispersal of many plants. It is increasingly recognized , however, that the actions of a single disperser rarely determine a seed's fate and final location; rather, multiple abiotic or animal dispersal vectors are involved. Some carnivores act as secondary dis-persers by preying on primary seed dispersers...

In seasonally varying environments, animals should alter habitat selection through time to avoid the harshest conditions. Winter severity is limiting for many ungulates in high-latitude ecosystems, and quality of habitat is an important determinant of winter survival. Previous studies in Southeast Alaska indicated that Sitka black-tailed deer (Odoc...

In forested ecosystems, estimating the abundance or trend of most wildlife populations is difficult. Therefore, vital rates are often used to model population change, but validating such models is important. Using data from woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus), we compared estimates of population change (λ) based on vital rate models to λ based on...

Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) - also called unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones - are an emerging tool that may provide a safer, more cost-effective, and quieter alternative to traditional research methods. We review examples where UAS have been used to document wildlife abundance, behavior, and habitat, and illustrate the strengths and wea...

Background. The Alexander Archipelago wolf, inhabiting the coastal temperate rainforest of North America, was recently evaluated for protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, but ultimately was not listed. Stressors thought to be impacting the population include about habitat alteration from industrial timber harvest and subsequent declines...

Background. The Alexander Archipelago wolf, inhabiting the coastal temperate rainforest of North America, was recently evaluated for protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, but ultimately was not listed. Stressors thought to be impacting the population include about habitat alteration from industrial timber harvest and subsequent declines...

The coastal temperate rainforest is one of the rarest ecosystems in the world, and a major portion of the global total is found in Southeast Alaska. In this ecosystem, Sitka black-tailed deer are the dominant large herbivore, influencing large carnivores that prey on deer such as wolves and bears, as well as plant species and communities through br...

New-hoof growth is regarded as the most reliable metric for predicting age of newborn ungulates, but variation in estimated age among hoof-growth equations that have been developed may affect estimates of survival in staggered-entry models. We used known-age newborns to evaluate variation in age estimates among existing hoof-growth equations and to...

Neonate survival is a key life history trait, yet remains challenging to measure in wild populations because neonates can be difficult to capture at birth. Estimates of survival from neonates that are opportunistically captured might be inaccurate because some individuals die before sampling, resulting in data that are left truncated. The resulting...

Background/Question/Methods Behavior of animals can be strongly influenced by both fear and hunger as animals seek to optimize fitness outcomes. In a multi-predator, single ungulate prey system, female ungulates may face risk-forage trade-offs that vary by reproductive status, as different predators focus on females versus fawns. Here we focus on...