Predators like the timber rattlesnake are often the most hated and persecuted wildlife, says William Ripple, a distinguished ecology professor at Oregon State University. This is alarming to scientists, given new research that suggests predators are not only vital to healthy natural environments, but to humanity itself.
Betts and Christopher Wolf, an Oregon State Ph.D. student in forest ecosystems and statistics along with six co-authors, used forest data assembled by Matthew Hansen at the University of Maryland and categories of extinction risk for 19,432 verterbate species, the so-called Red List, maintained by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
BBC News, July 15, 2017: Reintroduction of carnivores into areas where they once roamed is vital in conservation, say scientists. This relies on human willingness to share the landscape with the likes of the wolf. The research, published in Royal Society Open Science, was carried out by Christopher Wolf and William Ripple of Oregon State University.
New Scientist, July 12, 2017: Chris Wolf and William Ripple at Oregon State University looked at historical accounts of large carnivores and maps of their preferred habitat around AD 1500, and found that they are now present in just a third of the land area they occupied back then. Of the 25 species analysed, all weighing more than 15 kilograms, 15 had lost more than half their range. Publication: Range contractions of the world’s large carnivores
Australian Popular Science, May 31, 2017: To be sure, “any significant dietary shifts from animal to high-protein plant based foods will obviously take a considerable amount of time, likely on the scale of years to a few decades,” said William Ripple, a coauthor of the study and distinguished professor of ecology at Oregon State University.
ScienceDaily, May 23, 2017: "It will be interesting to see the influence of large predators on smaller predators in other parts of the world, especially the role of the big cats such as jaguars, leopards, lions and tigers," said co-author William Ripple of Oregon State University.
In Yellowstone, the wolves quickly reclaimed their spot as top predator. Ecologist William Ripple of Oregon State University has been studying the wolves since their return.
Professor William Ripple, Co-author and Oregon State University Professor concluded: 'The Megafauna Conservation Index is an important first step to transparency – some of the poorest countries in the world are making the biggest investments in a global asset and should be congratulated, whereas some of the richest nations just aren’t doing enough.' Publication details.
Bill Ripple is co-author on a new publication out in BioScience, titled "A New Dog". To find out how gray wolves might be affected by eating more people food, Thomas Newsome, an evolutionary biologist at the Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, and his colleagues examined studies of what’s happened to other large carnivores that live close to people.
