Recent SAFS alumna Susan Harris spent 10 weeks at UW’s Friday Harbor Labs on San Juan island studying zoology and botany. UW Today featured a profile on Susan’s experience.
North Pacific ‘blob’ stirs up fisheries management
A warm water mass in the Pacific Ocean is impacting forage species and stirring up more conversations about the need for ecosystem-based fisheries management. SAFS Professor Tim Essington weighs in.
Brian Leo MS Final Exam
Brian will be presenting this thesis entitled:
The cat’s out of the bag – Revealing the behavior of invasive predators to inform management decisions.
WHEN: Monday, August 10th at 2:30 PM
WHERE: FSH 203
WHERE: FSH 203
FACULTY ADVISER: James Anderson
All are welcome to attend.
Brittany Jones MS Final Exam
Brittany will be presenting her thesis entitled:
Implications of climate change for strategic conservation and restoration of tidal wetlands
WHEN: Thursday, August 13 at 10:00 AM
WHERE: FSH 203
FACULTY ADVISER: Charles Simenstad
All are welcome to attend.
Erik Schoen PhD Final Exam
Erik will be presenting his dissertation entitled:
Linking the individual-level foraging interactions of piscivores to food-web dynamics in pelagic systems
WHEN: Thursday, July 30th at 1:00 PM
WHERE: FSH 203
FACULTY ADVISER: David Beauchamp
All are welcome to attend.
Joe Bizzarro Final Exam
Joe Bizzarro will be presenting his dissertation entitled:
Comparative resource utilization of eastern North Pacific skates (Rajiformes: Rajidae) with applications for ecosystem-based fisheries management
WHEN: Tuesday, August 4th at 2:00PM
WHERE: FSH 102
FACULTY ADVISER: Adam Summers
All are welcome to attend.
Mark Sorel Final Exam
Mark Sorel will be presenting his thesis entitled:
Food web implications of anadromous salmonid reintroduction in three reservoirs on the North Fork Lewis River, Washington
WHEN: Thursday, July 2nd at 1:00PM
WHERE: FSH 203
FACULTY ADVISER: Dave Beauchamp
All are welcome to attend.
Conservation challenges of predator recovery
A new article, titled “Conservation challenges of predator recovery”, has been accepted for publication into Conservation Letters: A journal for the Society for Conservation Biology. This article is a result of the collaboration of SAFS post-doc Kristin Marshall, SMEA Professor Ryan Kelly, NOAA scientist and SAFS affiliate faculty Eric Ward, and NOAA scientists Jameal Samhouri and Adrian Stier.
Abstract
Predators are critical components of ecosystems. Globally, conservation efforts have targeted depleted populations of top predators for legal protection, and in many cases, this protection has helped their recoveries. Where the recovery of individual species is the goal, these efforts can be seen as largely successful. From an ecosystem perspective, however, predator recovery can introduce significant new conservation and legal challenges. We highlight three types of conflicts created by a single-species focus: (1) recovering predator populations that increase competition with humans for the same prey, (2) new tradeoffs that emerge when protected predators consume protected prey, and (3) multiple predator populations that compete for the same limited prey. We use two food webs with parallel conservation challenges, the Northeast Pacific Ocean and the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, to demonstrate legal/policy conflicts and the policy levers that exist to ameliorate conflicts. In some cases, scientific uncertainty about the ecological interaction hinders progress towards resolving conflicts. In others, available policy options are insufficient. In all cases, management decisions must be made in the face of an unknown future. We suggest a framework that incorporates multispecies science, policy tools, and tradeoff analyses into management.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/conl.12186/abstract