Population reduction by hunting helps control human-wildlife conflicts for a species that is a conservation success story.

ABSTRACT: Among the world's large Carnivores, American black bears (Ursus americanus) are the foremost conservation success story. Populations have been expanding across North America because the species is adaptable and tolerant of living near people, and because management agencies in the U.S. and Canada controlled hunting and other human-sources of mortality. As a result, human-black bear conflicts (damage to property, general nuisance, threat to human safety) have dramatically increased in some areas, making it urgently important to develop and deploy a variety of mitigation tools. Previous studies claimed that legal hunting did not directly reduce conflicts, but they did not evaluate whether hunting controlled conflicts via management of population size. Here, we compared temporal patterns of p

SUBMITTER: Garshelis DL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7418986 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature