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https://global.oup.com/academic/product/negotiating-coexistence-9780192859419?cc=ch&lang=en&

Researchers in Minnesota found that blueberry seeds passed through wolves germinated more often (96% vs 69%) and faster (half sprouted by day 19 vs day 26) than seeds from uneaten berries. Since wolves travel far and fast, the authors argue they are likely effective long-distance seed dispersers. The sample was small, though: five scats, and gut-passage time wasn’t measured.

Intra- and interspecific relationships of alpine ungulates reorganise along a wolf recolonisation gradient

Interviews with 292 villagers around Golestan National Park, Iran, found that attitudes toward leopards, wolves and bears depend mostly on people’s beliefs about these animals, not on livestock losses. The authors conclude that reducing damage alone won’t build coexistence; conservation also needs to engage local beliefs, social norms and expectations of wildlife management.

On Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, areas with a high presence of pumas had 76% fewer deer-vehicle collisions than areas where pumas were scarcer. The effect came from fear rather than predation: pumas pushed deer into more remote areas with fewer roads and shifted their activity toward daytime. The study is a strong example of carnivores providing direct safety and economic benefits to people

Assessing the methodological feasibility of conditioned food aversion to reduce wolf depredation in free-ranging livestock systems

Researchers interviewed 37 residents of southwestern Washington, where a wolf pack settled in 2022 after an 80-year absence. They found that tolerance of wolves depends not only on individual attitudes but on local power relations, economic pressures and cultural history, and that intolerance is hard to undo once it takes hold. Engaging communities early in wolf recovery can help build trust and tolerance.

This viewpoint argues that AI in ecology is only as good as the data behind it. Much ecological data is closed, paywalled or skewed toward certain regions and species, and AI can spread those gaps at scale. The authors call for data that is as open as possible and as protected as necessary, clear documentation of training data and models, funding to fill data gaps, and fair credit for the communities that produce the data.

Using 52 years of data from Grimsö in south-central Sweden, this study looked at what drives red fox numbers and how that affects hares and grouse. Fox litters rose and fell with vole abundance throughout, but dropped during a mange epidemic and again once lynx and wolves had both returned. Contrary to the classic “mesopredator release” idea, fewer foxes did not mean more hares and grouse: these declined too after lynx and wolves came back, likely because the big predators also hunt them. The return of apex predators reshapes the food web in more complex ways than simply suppressing foxes.

This study analyzed the public wolf hunting and trapping seasons held in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan in 2012–2014 and 2021, after wolves were temporarily delisted. Hunters and trappers mostly met or narrowly exceeded harvest targets, and the harvest did not appear to affect long-term wolf abundance; killing was higher on weekends and in areas with more natural cover. The study also examined links to livestock depredation, but the journal site blocked access and I couldn’t read what it found on that point, which is probably the most relevant part for your work.

This study tracked how wolves, lynx and people together affect deer browsing on young trees in a Central European forest, comparing browsing before and after wolves settled. Browsing was lower in the core of wolf territories and in areas with more human recreation, even though deer weren’t less abundant there. By contrast, browsing was higher where lynx were more active and where wolf kills were concentrated. In other words, wolves seem to change where and how deer feed (a “landscape of fear” effect), helping forest regeneration, while human activity has a similar effect