Publications & Presentations

Publications

Binder, W., Ruprecht, J., Rabe, J., Metz, M.C., Hutchinson, R., Stahler, D.R., Levi, T. 2026. Diets, dominance hierarchies, and kleptoparasitism drive asymmetrical interactions between wolves and cougars. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 123(6):e2511397123. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2511397123.	This paper used 9 years of contemporaneous GPS data from wolves and cougars to directly test hypotheses about their interactions. Wolves are strongly attracted to cougar kills, disproportionately encounter elk relative to deer, and disproportionately encounter kills while cougars are still present which is indicative of kleptoparasitism. Additionally, wolves kill cougars at nontrivial rates, and cougars have responded by selecting for escape terrain to mitigate risk.
Brown, C.L., Nielson, R.M., Clark, D., Kennedy, R., Loonam, K., Rowland, M.M. and Wisdom, M.J., 2025. Drought-linked resource limitations on the body condition of a large ungulate. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 13, p.1584866.	This paper used twenty years of data on female elk in northeastern Oregon to show that summer precipitation boosted body fat in all groups, while growing-season drought reduced it in lactating females — an effect worsened at higher elk densities. Later green-up also helped lactating elk, likely by better matching forage to calving demands. The authors expect declining elk condition if Pacific Northwest droughts intensify.
Bruskotter, J.T., Carter, N.H., Berl, R., Hinton, J., Murphy, J., Mark Elbroch, L. and Vucetich, J.A., 2025. Bridging social and ecological science to create spatially explicit models of human-caused mortality of carnivores. Ambio, pp.1-12.	This paper proposed a systems-based conceptual framework for understanding the antecedents of human-caused mortalities of wildlife that is grounded in theory from the social and behavioral sciences. We contend that improvements in understanding the spatial variation in human-caused mortalities would rise from more explicit attention to the various antecedent processes that precede each mortality type.
Bruskotter, Jeremy T., John A. Vucetich, Lisa Naughton-Treves, José Vicente López-Bao, Benjamin Ghasemi, Nicole D. Sintov, Tara L. Teel, Neil H. Carter, L. Mark Elbroch, and Adrian Treves. 2026. Toward a Synthetic Theory of Tolerance for Carnivores: Learning from a Half-Century of Research on Attitudes Toward Wolves, Conservation 6, no. 2: 42. https://doi.org/10.3390/conservation6020042
Eriksson, C.E., Bianco, M., Ruprecht, J., Clark, D.A., Levi, T. 2026. Individual identification of prey in carnivore scats. Molecular Ecology Resources 26, no. 5: e70164. https://doi.org/10.1111/1755-0998.70164
Eriksson, C.E., Shipley, L., Clark, D.A., Levi, T. 2026. Comparing accuracy and biases of DNA metabarcoding, hybridization capture, and metagenomic sequencing for quantifying herbivore diets. Molecular Ecology Resources 26, no. 5: e70175. https://doi.org/10.1111/1755-0998.70175.
Ghasemi, B., Vucetich, J., Bruskotter, J., Elbroch, M., Slagle, K. (In Review) Evaluating reasons to restore cougars: An experimental approach.	This paper found that messages that combined ecological benefits and moral responsibility were the most effective at increasing public support for cougar reintroduction. Information focused solely on coexistence and risk reduction tended to decrease support, suggesting such messages can backfire when presented in isolation. Third, the effectiveness of messages varied by political orientation: liberals responded positively to both benefit- and justice-based appeals, moderates supported integrated messages, while conservatives were largely resistant except when exposed to combined moral and instrumental frames.
Ghasemi, B., Wilson, R.S., Elbroch, M., Vucetich, J.A., Carter, N.H., Moehrenschlager, A., Perry, S., Hinton, J.W., & Bruskotter, J.T., 2025. Restoring the wild east: predicting public support for cougar and red wolf comebacks in the Eastern United States. Biological Conservation 313 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2025.111532	This paper utilized social survey data of residents across the Eastern US regarding their support for the restoration of cougars and red wolves. We found that perceived personal and societal benefits were positively associated with restoration support for both species, while perceived societal risks negatively influence support. Furthermore, we found that perceived control over risks was associated with lower risk perceptions and increased restoration support.
Loonam, K., Brown, C., Clark, D., Rowland, M.M., Wisdom, M., Levi, T. In revision. The effects of predator recovery and climate change on the long-term demography of a large herbivore. Journal of Animal Ecology
Merz, L., Bergmann, N. T., Brown, C. L., Martin, J. V., Wardropper, C. B., Bruskotter, J. T., & Carter, N. H. (2025). State-level variation drives wolf management in the northwestern United States. Environmental Research: Ecology, 4(1), 015008. https://doi.org/10.1088/2752-664X/adafad	This paper used a 13-year dataset on gray wolves in the northwestern United States (Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon) to analyze how social, demographic, and environmental variables influence lethal removal of wolves at the county and state levels. We found that state-level differences are a major driver of lethal removal decisions at the county level. The percentage of federally owned and protected lands was also positively correlated with lethal removal.
Merz, L. M., von Hohenberg, B. C., Bergmann, N. T., Bruskotter, J. T., & Carter, N. H. (2025). Elusive effects of legalized wolf hunting on human-wolf interactions. Science Advances, 11(34), eadu8945. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adu8945	This paper used ~15 years of data to analyze impacts of gray wolf hunting on livestock predation by wolves and government removal of wolves in four northwestern states–(Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon–while controlling for social and environmental variables. We found that public wolf hunting had a small negative effect on livestock predation but had no effect on government lethal removal of wolves in the same or subsequent years.
Ruprecht, J., Forrester, T. D., Brown, C. L., Mengak, L. F., Wisdom, M. J., Clark, D. A., Levi, T. 2026. Drought and growing season phenology over 35 years modulates species interactions among domestic and wild herbivores. Journal of Animal Ecology, 1365-2656.70273.	This paper refutes the grazing optimization hypothesis and suggests elk are not attracted to areas previously grazed by cattle. Instead, elk avoided cattle throughout the entire growing season and at multiple scales. Elk were 2.9 times more likely to make movements to locations without cattle versus locations with 1 cow–calf pair/hectare, 23% less likely to use a pasture with cattle present, and 27% less likely to use one grazed by cattle earlier in the season, compared to an ungrazed pasture. After controlling for current season grazing status, elk were 30% less likely to use a pasture if it was grazed the previous year. Resource availability, influenced by growing season phenology and drought, mediated the magnitude of avoidance of cattle by elk. In the periods of most severe drought, elk reduced their avoidance of cattle ostensibly to seek out the remaining palatable forage regardless of cattle presence.
Sheneman, L. 2026. NanoDetector: An edge AI device and species classifier for satellite-connected wildlife monitoring [Computer software]. GitHub. https://github.com/sheneman/NanoDetector	NanoDetector shows that edge inference, not wider uplinks, unlocks real-time wildlife monitoring in remote areas. By running detection on-device and transmitting only structured results over satellite, the system makes near-real-time monitoring feasible where cellular is absent. The power-handshake protocol enables unattended seasonal battery deployment, and the open-source design with reproducible model provenance lowers the bar for other teams to build or adapt the system, supporting more widely distributed and cost-effective wildlife monitoring networks.
Sheneman, L. 2026. NanoDetector (YOLOv5m, Version 1) [Machine learning model]. Hugging Face. https://huggingface.co/sheneman/NanoDetector	NanoDetector achieves mAP@0.5 of 0.968 on validation and 0.959 on test after adjusting for a reporting artifact: two singleton classes drag the published test mAP down to 0.872. Mountain lion, elk, deer, and bear all exceed 0.98 mAP@0.5. Trained on 1.4 million images from five camera-trap corpora, inference runs in 4.0 ms per image. Key limitations: human recall is 0.693 (only 199 human instances in test), so the system delegates person detection to MegaDetector. Moose recall is 0.770. Three classes are entirely unvalidated. Because camera-trap imagery is autocorrelated, reported metrics should be treated as upper bounds for novel sites.
Wardropper, C.B., and N.T. Bergmann. “Cattle Grazing and Climate Change Adaptation: Local Environmental Knowledge and Public Lands Management in the US West.” Resolving the Climate Crisis: US Social Scientists Speak Out, edited by Kristin Haltinner and Dilshani Sarathchandra, Routledge, 2024, pp. 217–227.	This book chapter argues that integrating ranchers’ experiential, localized knowledge regarding water and forage with federal grazing policies is crucial for effective climate adaptation in the American West. Their research highlights a conflict between rigid, calendar-based administrative timelines and the need for flexible, responsive management to address sudden climate threats like drought. The findings suggest that co-management, which blends scientific projections with local insights, offers a more sustainable path than top-down mandates.
Wardropper, C.B., R.A. Graves, J. Brandt, M. Burnham, N. Carter, R.L. Hale, V. Hillis, M.A. Williamson. 2024. Private land conservation towards large landscape goals: Role of relational values, property rights orientations, and perceived efficacy in ranchers’ actions. People and Nature. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10628	This paper surveyed 681 ranchers in eastern Idaho and western Montana. Adoption varied widely by practice — 92% for invasive plant removal, 21% for conifer removal. Relational values, property rights views, and perceived efficacy mattered most for less-common practices like riparian fencing, while public land dependence had little explanatory power. Resident ranchers and those with higher incomes adopted more.
Wilmers, C.C., Levi, T., Prugh, L.R., Ruprecht, J. and Stahler, D.R., 2025. The Ecological Impacts of Large-Carnivore Recovery in North America. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 56(1), pp.337-363. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-102722-021139

Conference Presentations

Mengak, L., Ruprecht, J., Brown, C., Levi, T., Wardropper, C. (Feb 2025). Ranching and Wildlife in Shared Spaces: Balancing the needs of ranchers and wildlife in a changing landscape [Conference presentation]. Oregon Chapter of The Wildlife Society, Salem, OR.

Ruprecht, Brown, Mengak, Levi (Feb 2025). Drought mediates interactions between wild and domestic large herbivores [Conference presentation]. Oregon Chapter of The Wildlife Society, Salem, OR.

Mengak, L., Ruprecht, J., Brown, C., Levi, T. (Oct 2024). Dropping Clues: Unraveling Resource Utilization Dynamics of Elk and Cattle in Rangelands Using DNA Metabarcoding [Conference presentation]. The Wildlife Society Annual Meeting, Baltimore, MD.

Martin, J., Bergmann, N, and Anderson, R. (April 2024) Contested non/belonging in the American West: wolves, elk, ranchers, and the state [Conference presentation]. Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting, Honolulu, HI.

Mengak, L., Levi, T., and Wardropper, C. (Feb 2024) Wildlife and Humans in Shared Landscapes (WHISL): Examining social-ecological threats in rangeland ecosystems. [Conference presentation]. Oregon Chapter of The Wildlife Society, Hood River, OR.

Merz, L., Clemm von Hohenberg, Bruskotter, J., and Carter, N (2024). Testing conservation assumptions about wolf management in the northwestern US [Conference presentation]. Ecological Society of America, Long Beach, CA.

Brown, C. (Oct 2023). Opportunities in AI for Camera Traps and Wildlife Management [Conference Presentation]. Computer Vision Symposium, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID.

Sheneman, L. (Oct 2023). Travels from the Edge to the Core: Resources to Accelerate your Research with AI [Conference Presentation]. Computer Vision Symposium, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID.

Wardropper, C.B., R.A. Graves, J. Brandt, M. Burnham, N. Carter, R.L. Hale, V. Hillis, M.A. Williamson. (June 2023). Drivers of conservation adoption on private lands in the western United States: Implications for large landscape conservation [Conference presentation]. International Association for Society and Natural Resources Conference, Portland, ME.

Merz, L., Bruskotter, J., Carter, N.H. (May 2023). What drives the lethal removal of wolves? [Conference presentation]. Pathways Conference: Managing Wildlife in an Era of Mutualism, Fort Collins, CO.

Bergmann, N., Wardropper, C., Bruskotter, J., and J. Martin. (February 2023). The Emotional Political Ecologies of Managing Wolf-Livestock Conflict in the Pacific Northwest [Conference presentation]. Society for Range Management, Boise, ID.

Bergmann, N. and Wardropper, C. (November 2022). Managing Rangeland-Wildlife Systems in an Era of Drought and Wolf Recolonization: Qualitative Insights From the Pacific Northwest [Conference presentation]. The Wildlife Society, Spokane, WA.