Wildlife Ecology and Conservation

Wildlife ecology and conservation examines how animal populations persist, move, and interact across landscapes shaped increasingly by human activity — tracking everything from how predators trigger cascading changes through entire food webs to how individual animals choose habitat under the pressure of fragmentation and hunting. Researchers use tools like camera trapping and occupancy modeling to turn fleeting glimpses of elusive species into rigorous estimates of abundance and behavior, while population dynamics work asks whether a given species can sustain itself under current conditions or is quietly declining. A central open question is how to disentangle the effects of direct human pressure — poaching, land conversion, livestock conflict — from subtler stressors like chronic predation risk, which can alter animal physiology and movement even when animals survive. Translating ecological findings into effective conservation management remains genuinely difficult, requiring scientists to balance species-level needs against the economic realities of communities living alongside wildlife.

Works

165,907

Total citations

2,911,955

Keywords

Occupancy RatesAnimal MovementTrophic CascadesHabitat SelectionPopulation DynamicsHuman-Wildlife Conflict