This book assesses Alaskan wolf and bear management programs from scientific and economic perspectives. Relevant factors that should be taken into account when evaluating the utility of such programs are identified. The assessment includes a review of current scientific knowledge about the dynamics and management of large mammalian predator-prey relationships and human harvest of wildlife in northern ecosystems, and an evaluation of the extent to which existing research and management data allow prediction of the outcome of wolf management or control programs and grizzly bear management programs. Included is an evaluation of available economic studies and methodologies for estimating the costs and benefits of predator control programs in Alaska.
- WOLVES, BEARS, AND THEIR PREY IN ALASKA
- Copyright
- Preface
- Contents
- Executive Summary
- PREDATOR CONTROL AND MANAGEMENT: PAST AND PRESENT
- ALASKA'S PEOPLE, BIOMES, AND WILDLIFE SPECIES OF CONCERN
- PREDATOR-PREY INTERACTIONS
- WOLF AND BEAR MANAGEMENT: EXPERIMENTS AND EVALUATIONS
- SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF PREDATOR CONTROL
- CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
- Biological Issues
- Economic Aspects of Predator Management
- 1 Introduction
- BACKGROUND
- History of Wildlife Management in Alaska
- Current Wildlife Management in Alaska
- THE COMMITTEE AND ITS MANDATE
- Biological Aspects
- Economic Aspects
- HOW THE COMMITTEE CARRIED OUT ITS TASK
- ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT
- REFERENCES
- 2 Predator Control and Management: Past and Present
- HISTORY OF PREDATOR CONTROL IN ALASKA
- Predator Management Before European Contact
- The Arrival of Europeans and the Early 20th Century
- Early Wildlife Management
- Statehood
- DECISION-MAKING BY THE ALASKA DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND GAME
- Data Collection and Assessment
- Public Involvement
- Conflict Resolution
- Strategic Planning and Policy-Making
- REFERENCES
- 3 Alaska's People, Biomes, and Wildlife Species of Concern
- INTRODUCTION
- THE PEOPLE OF ALASKA
- BIOMES: CLIMATE, VEGETATION, SOILS, PERMAFROST
- Coastal Temperate Rain Forest and Coast Range Mountains
- Interior Boreal Forest
- Interior Mountains (Montane Habitats)
- Maritime Tundra (Southwestern Alaska and Bering Sea Islands)
- Aleutian Region
- Arctic Tundra
- ECOLOGY OF LARGE MAMMALS IN NORTHERN ECOSYSTEMS
- Wolf Ecology
- Distribution and Density
- Habitat and Diet
- Social Structure and Movements
- Reproduction
- Survival Rates and Causes of Mortality
- Rates of Population Change
- Consequences of Control on Wolf Populations
- Summary
- Bear Ecology
- Distribution and Density
- Habitat and Diet
- Social Structure and Movements
- Reproduction
- Survival Rates and Causes of Mortality
- Dispersal
- Rates of Population Change
- Consequences of Control on Bear Populations
- Summary
- Caribou Ecology
- Social Structure and Movements
- Habitat and Diet
- Summary
- Moose Ecology
- Distribution and Density
- Social Structure and Movements
- Habitat and Diet
- Summary
- Comparative Ecology of Moose and Caribou
- Reproduction, Survival Rates, and Causes of Mortality
- Habitat Quality and Ungulate Population Dynamics
- REFERENCES
- 4 Predator-Prey Interactions
- THEORY OF PREDATOR-PREY INTERACTIONS
- Oscillations and Stable Levels
- Removal of Predators from A Plant-Herbivore-Predator Interaction System
- Alternative Stable States
- Using Regression Analysis to Estimate Growth Rates
- INTEGRATING THEORY AND DATA
- REFERENCES
- 5 Wolf and Bear Management: Experiments and Evaluations
- INTRODUCTION
- AIR-ASSISTED WOLF CONTROL
- East-central Alaska (Delta, GMU 20A)
- Finlayson, Yukon Territory
- Conditions Before Wolf Reduction
- Wolf Reduction
- Response When Wolf Numbers Kept Low
- Response When Wolf Control Stopped
- Southwest Yukon
- Conditions Before Wolf Reduction
- Wolf and Bear Reduction
- Response to Wolf and Bear Reduction
- Aishihik, Yukon Territory
- Conditions Before Wolf Reduction
- Wolf Reduction
- Northern British Columbia
- Conditions Before Wolf Reduction
- Wolf Reduction
- Response to Wolf Reduction
- Québec
- Conditions Before Wolf Control
- Wolf and Bear Reduction
- Response When Wolves and Bear Numbers Were Kept Low
- East-central Alaska (Fortymile, GMU 20E)
- South-central Alaska (Nelchina, GMU 13)
- GROUND-BASED WOLF CONTROL
- Kenai Peninsula, Alaska
- Vancouver Island, British Columbia
- East-central Saskatchewan
- NONLETHAL METHODS TO REDUCE WOLF AND BEAR PREDATION ON UNGULATES
- Diversionary Feeding of Predators
- Evaluation of Diversionary Feeding Experiments
- EVALUATION OF PREDATOR CONTROL EXPERIMENTS
- Problems in Design and Execution
- Problems with Monitoring
- Interpretation
- ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT REQUIRES AN EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH
- MAKING A DECISION TO INITIATE A PREDATOR CONTROL ACTION
- Guidelines for Decision-making
- REFERENCES
- 6 Social and Economic Implications of Predator Control
- INTRODUCTION
- NORTH AMERICAN ATTITUDES TO WOLVES, BEARS, AND PREDATOR MANAGEMENT
- ALASKAN ATTITUDES TOWARD WILDLIFE
- CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR ECONOMIC ASSESSMENT
- Marginal Costs and Opportunity Costs
- Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Accept
- ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF PREDATOR CONTROL ON NON-NATIVE RESIDENTS AND NONRESIDENTS
- Gain from Increased Recreation by Non-Native Residents Involving Prey Species
- Gain from Increased Recreation of Nonresidents Involving Prey Species
- Loss from Reduced Recreation Involving Predators
- Nonuse Values for Non-Native Residents and Nonresidents
- Impact on Non-Native Residents' Personal Income from Employment and Profit
- Costs of Predator Control Program
- ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF PREDATOR CONTROL ON NATIVE AND SUBSISTENCE PEOPLES
- How Rural Residents Are Affected
- Economic Values of Subsistence Use
- Other Social Science Perspectives
- Brown Bear Use in Northwestern Alaska
- Subsistence Resource Use in the Upper Kuskokwim
- Sustainable Use of Wildlife by Alaskans and the Global Environment
- SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC IMPACTS IN RELATION TO DECISION-MAKING ON WOLF CONTROL
- REFERENCES
- 7 Decision-Making
- THE GENERAL DECISION-MAKING FRAMEWORK
- CONSTRAINTS ON WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT DECISION-MAKING IN ALASKA
- Quantity and Quality of Data
- Politically Imposed Constraints on Decision-making
- Constraints Imposed by Patterns of Land Ownership
- INCORPORATING INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE INTO DECISION-MAKING
- MULTI-JURISDICTIONAL MANAGEMENT OF WOLVES, BEARS, AND THEIR MAJORPREY
- REFERENCE
- 8 Conclusions and Recommendations
- INTRODUCTION
- BIOLOGICAL CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
- Conclusion 1: Wolves and bears in combination can limit prey populations
- Conclusion 2: Wolf control has resulted in prey increases only when wolves were greatly reduced over ...
- Conclusion 3: Expectations that managed populations in Alaska will remain stable are not justified
- Conclusion 4: Data on habitat quality are inadequate
- Conclusion 5: Modeling of population dynamics will enhance the use of data already collected and ena ...
- Conclusion 6: Wolves, bears, and their prey are vulnerable to human actions but in different ways
- Conclusion 7: The design of most past experiments and the data collected do not allow firm conclusio ...
- Conclusion 8: Perfect prediction is unattainable.
- Conclusion 9: Many past predator control and management activities have been insufficiently monitored
- SOCIOECONOMIC CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
- Conclusion 10: Benefit-cost analyses of management changes require at least three categories of info ...
- Conclusion 11: Evaluations of Alaska predator control programs have not gathered, analyzed, and asse ...
- Conclusion 12: Social science research in Alaska is needed to support the design and evaluation of predator control ...
- Conclusion 13: Wildlife is, by definition, a public resource
- Conclusion 14: Greater potential for agreement may exist among Alaska's diverse constituency than is generally
assumed
- Conclusion 15: Conflicts over management and control of predators are likely to continue indefinitely
- Conclusion 16: Decentralization of decision-making authority is not a panacea for solving wildlife m ...
- Conclusion 17: Interagency cooperation could improve management, reduce public confusion, and elimin ...
- APPENDIX A Letter from Governor Tony Knowles Requesting Study
- APPENDIX B Biographical Information on Committee Members
- APPENDIX C Wolves and Caribou in GMU 20: Example of Assessing Predator-Prey Dynamics by Testing the ...
Text
Audio
Adobe DRM
Login to your account