Building tangible, replicable, and inclusive environmental solutions

Kendall Calhoun, former postdoc in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management is the lead author on a new study in Science Advances that finds human-wildlife conflicts increased during drought. DSE postdoc Amy Van Scoyoc and faculty advisor Justin Brashares contributed to this research.

DSE and the Karuk Wildlife Team are thrilled to share new research in Ecology and Evolution that validates the importance of implementing local Indigenous knowledge in studies on biodiversity and population changes over time. Our paper provides groundbreaking analysis on how the Wildlife Team’s traditional knowledge, research, and citizen-science efforts support elk restoration and presents a potential model for Indigenous-led conservation efforts worldwide.

Our ability to predict how any given species will respond to the environmental changes that are happening in our world - like extreme temperatures and drought - hinges on a fundamental ecological assumption: the niche conservatism hypothesis. This hypothesis posits that a species' ecological niche, or the set of environmental conditions where individuals can survive and reproduce, remains stable over space and time. But is that assumption too simplistic?