Biodiversité

Le Royaume-Uni serait l’un des pays les plus dépourvus de nature sauvage au monde. Le maire de Londres vient tout juste d’annoncer qu’un couple de castors sera bientôt réintroduit dans l’ouest de la ville. Mais quelles sont les chances de succès de ce genre d’opérations de rewilding ? Des chercheurs nous apportent quelques réponses.

The ongoing recovery of terrestrial large carnivores in North America and Europe is accompanied by intense controversy. On the one hand, reestablishment of large carnivores entails a recovery of their most important ecological role, predation. On the other hand, societies are struggling to relearn how to live with apex predators that kill livestock, compete for game species, and occasionally injure or kill people. Those responsible for managing these species and mitigating conflict often lack fundamental information due to a long-standing challenge in ecology: How do we draw robust population-level inferences for elusive animals spread over immense areas? Here we showcase the application of an effective tool for spatially explicit tracking and forecasting of wildlife population dynamics at scales that are relevant to management and conservation.