• Permanent settlements, transportation dramatically change where wildlife can survive

• Humans move around a lot of species to areas they were never found before

• Technological advances – allow us to harvest more wildlife

• Pollution from human activities directly and indirectly (climate change) influences wildlife

Wildlife in the Modern World

Where we’ve been so far . . .

• Habitat loss, fragmentation, and degradation

• Biological invasions• Overexploitation• Climate change

Where we’re going the rest of the way . . .

• Protecting wildlife

– Protected Areas, Protected Species, role of zoos, and so on

• Conservation ethics• So you want to be a wildlife

researcher?• Requests??

A little bit on Protected Areas:

• How do we protect wildlife from human pressures?

• How do we establish lasting protection?

• What might undermine our efforts?

Historical overview of protected areas

• use by traditional cultures• national protected areas

– 1st in world: Yellowstone (1864) and Yosemite (1872)

• primary motivation– landscapes

• contemporary motivation– protect biodiversity

• current state: 19 million km2 on land (12.7%)

Definition: protected area (IUCN)

• “an area of land and/or sea especially dedicated to the protection and maintenance of biological diversity, and of natural and associated cultural resources, and managed through legal or other effective means”

• management intent varies– strict protection ↔ sustainable extraction

U.S. Protected Areas

• National Park• National Forest• BLM managed • Wilderness area• National Wildlife Refuge

Purposes of protected areas

• protect focal sp. / spp.• protect biodiversity (spp. richness,

endemism)• protect large, functioning ecosystems

BUT… how do we go about prioritizing?

•Urbanization

•Trends

•Wildlife responses (types: avoiders,adapters,exploiters)

•Diversity patterns

•Cougars in the urban world

•Pale Male : NYC RTH

•Urban Ecology

•What is it?

•Smart growth/urban planning

•Examples of urban ecology research

•Bats!

Major Topics to review for 2nd mid-term

•Migration

•What is it

•Types

•How they do it

•Ways we study it

•Examples and conservation concerns

•Invasive Species

•What they are, why a concern, what we can do

•Background rates for invasion and extinction vs modern day rates

•How they happen (vectors, and characteristics of a good invader)

•Examples of invaders and impacts they can have

•Evolution

•What it is, natural selection, examples, implications for wildlife conservation

•Climate change

•What it is, how different relative to background levels

•How we study it

•Impacts on wildlife

•Range change

•Demography

•Phenology

•Community assembly and species interactions

•Snow Leopard research and conservation efforts