Author Archives: Nathan Lyle

There is no scientific or biological justification to hunt or trap wolves for sport. In 2016, legislators ignored scientific evidence and the will of Michigan voters to pass a law authorizing a trophy hunting and commercial trapping season on our … read more

Comprehensive knowledge of ambush behavior requires an understanding of where a predator expects prey to be, which is generally unknowable because ambush predators often hunt mobile prey that exhibit complex, irregular, or inconspicuous movements. Wolves (Canis lupus) are primarily cursorial … read more

Disturbance and habitat modification by humans can alter animal movement, leading to negative impacts on fitness, survival and population viability. However, the ubiquity and nature of these impacts across diverse taxa has not been quantified. We compiled 208 studies on … read more

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 … read more

Grey wolves pass an olfactory version of the mirror test for self-recognition. Since the 1970s, scientists have employed the mirror test as an assay of self-awareness. If an animal or child recognizes themselves in a mirror — for instance, touching … read more

The effects of harvest on cooperatively breeding species are often more complex than simply subtracting the number of animals that died from the group count. Changes in demographic rates, particularly dispersal, could offset some effects of harvest mortality in groups … read more