OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY

Global Trophic Cascades News

David Macdonald celebrates a coalition of conservationists that has drawn attention to the urgency of saving the world¹s mega-fauna

Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, January 26, 2017: A group of us, many of whom have been working together over our professional lifetimes, was led by Professor Bill Ripple in writing an article entitled ‘Saving the World’s Terrestrial Megafauna’.

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A New Report Says We're Hunting the World's Mammals to Death. What Can Be Done?

Smithsonian.com, November 2, 2016: “The large mammals are much more threatened than the small ones,” says William Ripple, a professor of ecology at Oregon State University and lead author of the study. “This is likely because there is more meat on large mammals.”

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Eating The World’s Mammals To Extinction

The Huffington Post, November 2, 2016: “Unsustainable hunting for consumption and trade of wild meat, also known as bushmeat, by humans represents a significant extinction threat to wild terrestrial mammal populations,” said the study, led by William Ripple, an ecology professor at Oregon State University

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People are hunting primates, bats, and other mammals to extinction

Science, October 18, 2016: William Ripple, the lead author, became aware of the issue a few years ago while studying Africa’s starving lions, who couldn’t find enough prey to feed themselves. It turned out that the large carnivores were competing with humans for bushmeat like gazelles, says Ripple, an ecologist at Oregon State University in Corvallis.

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Overhunting poses extinction risk

The Gazette Times, October 18, 2016: Hunting is pushing hundreds of mammal species ever closer to extinction, according to an international study led by Oregon State University ecologist William Ripple. In the first global assessment of its kind, Ripple and his fellow researchers analyzed data on more than 1,100 terrestrial mammals already listed as threatened by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

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Bushmeat hunting threatens mammal populations and ecosystems, poses food security threat

EurekAlert! October 18, 2016: An international team led by William Ripple, distinguished professor of ecology at Oregon State University, analyzed data on the IUCN Red List to reach their findings, which were published today in Royal Society Open Science, a professional journal.

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How OSU’s Dr. Ripple Has Helped Rewrite the Laws on Predators

The Corvallis Advocate, October 5, 2016: Ripple, now a Distinguished Professor and well known researcher, was just doing what comes naturally when he is curious. We call this the Ripple Effect. What exactly is the Ripple Effect you may wonder? In short it is the insatiable quest to unravel the mysteries of the natural world that is triggered when Ripple gets intrigued.

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Making a Mass Anti-Extinction Movement

Pacific Standard, August 9, 2016: With the preceding list as preamble, 43 scientists — mostly ecologists and biologists — took to the pages of the journal BioScience in late July with an audacious appeal: “We must not go quietly into this impoverished future.” The group, led by Oregon State University professor William Ripple, penned a manifesto of sorts to protest the imminent extinction of large carnivores and herbivores the world over.

The World’s Top Predators Are Dining From Dwindling Menus

National Geographic, August 2, 2016: William J. Ripple is an ecologist at Oregon State University who has been studying gray wolves, cougars, and other top predators for decades. Last year, he and his colleagues reviewed the status of the planet’s 31 largest carnivores—a list that includes lions, tigers, and bears, but also sea otters, dingoes, and lynxes. They found that 24 of these animals are in decline, and 17 have been confined to less than half of their original ranges.

Conservationists Warn Endangered Species Will Vanish Forever Unless We Act Now

The Huffington Post, July 27, 2016

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