People And Predators

Carnivores provide innumerable ecological benefits and play a unique role in preserving and maintaining ecosystem services and function, but at the same time they can create serious problems for human populations. A key question for conservation biologists and wildlife managers is how to manage the world's carnivore populations to conserve this important natural resource while mitigating harmful impacts on humans. In People and Predators, leading scientists and researchers offer case studies of human-carnivore conflicts in a variety of landscapes, including rural, urban, and political. The book covers a diverse range of taxa, geographic regions, and conflict scenarios, with each chapter dealing with a specific facet of human-carnivore interactions and offering practical, concrete approaches to resolving the conflict under consideration. Chapters provide background on particular problems and describe how challenges have been met or what research or tools are still needed to resolve the conflicts. People and Predators will helps readers to better understand issues of carnivore conservation in the 21st century, and provides practical tools for resolving many of the problems that stand between us and a future in which carnivores fulfill their historic ecological roles.

Human populations & carnivores generally have a strained relationship, which presents problems for conservationists. This book looks at aspects of human-carnivore interaction across a range of landscapes & environments.

Inuit hunting traditions are rich in perceptions, practices and stories relating to animals and human beings. The authors examine key figures such as the raven, an animal that has a central place in Inuit culture as a creator and a trickster, and qupirruit, a category consisting of insects and other small life forms. After these non-social and inedible animals, they discuss the dog, the companion of the hunter, and the fellow hunter, the bear, considered to resemble a human being. A discussion of the renewal of whale hunting accompanies the chapters about animals considered ‘prey par excellence’: the caribou, the seals and the whale, symbol of the whole. By giving precedence to Inuit categories such as ‘inua’ (owner) and ‘tarniq’ (shade) over European concepts such as ‘spirit ‘and ‘soul’, the book compares and contrasts human beings and animals to provide a better understanding of human-animal relationships in a hunting society.

Most physiological and behavioral mechanisms that comprise the stress response come from laboratory experiments using domesticated animals. This book summarizes work to understand stress in natural contexts.

Keeping up with the American elite can be tiring. This is the layman's guide to how the wealthy maintain control.

Wise argues that contestations between Native and non-Native people over hunting, labor, and the livestock industry drove the development of predator eradication programs in Montana and Alberta from the 1880s onward. The history of these anti-predator programs was significant not only for their ecological effects, but also for their enduring cultural legacies of colonialism in the Northern Rockies.

The story of a grizzly bear named Millie: her life, death, and cubs, and what they reveal about the changing character of the American West. An "ode to wildness and wilderness" (Outside Magazine), Down from the Mountain tells the story of one grizzly in the changing Montana landscape. Millie was cunning, a fiercely protective mother to her cubs. But raising those cubs in the mountains was hard, as the climate warmed and people crowded the valleys. There were obvious dangers, like poachers, and subtle ones, like the corn field that drew her into sure trouble. That trouble is where award-winning writer, farmer, and conservationist Bryce Andrews's story intersects with Millie’s. In this "welcome and impressive work" he shows how this drama is "the core of a major problem in the rural American West—the disagreement between large predatory animals and invasive modern settlers”—an entangled collision where the shrinking wilds force human and bear into ever closer proximity (Barry Lopez). “Andrews’s wonderful Down from the Mountain is deeply informed by personal experience and made all the stronger by his compassion and measured thoughts . . . Welcome and impressive work.”—Barry Lopez

Most of us only half-listen to the public service announcements about safety in the home. We lock our doors at night, but do little else to change habits that may make us the next victims of the dangerous individuals who are always on the watch for their next opportunity. This updated paperback edition takes readers through the mindset of predatory criminals - their motives, various plans of attack, and way of thinking - and then teaches simple lifestyle techniques that will help reduce the risk of becoming victimized. Featuring a new chapter on how the Internet and social media has radically changed how some predators operate, criminal behavior specialists Greg Cooper and Mike King provide expert analysis based on real-life cases, in addition to moving insights from victims and criminals themselves. The authors make the point that the people who commit these crimes aren't much different from the predators of the wild, preying on the weak and unsuspecting. What makes these individuals more dangerous than their instinctive wildlife counterparts, however, is that they consciously choose to inflict their will on the more vulnerable members of their own species. To protect our loved ones and ourselves requires that we truly educate ourselves about the predators who live in our society and then take appropriate action. This excellent, in-depth study will help readers lead safer lives.