What's new // loss of predators in Canada’s Gulf Islands
Since non-Indigenous settlement, both top predators and fire have been functionally eradicated from Coastal Douglas-fir ecological communities while populations of both invasive and native deer species have been ballooning throughout the range.
A Raincoast researcher and his university collaborators document how raccoons respond to the threatening sounds of large carnivores, and how this “landscape of fear” affects the health of ecosystems.
Raincoast PhD candidate, Justin Suraci and colleagues publish study from BC’s Gulf Islands on the role of fear in maintaining healthy ecosystems.
The fear that top predators such as cougars, wolves and other large carnivores inspire in other animals cascades down the food chain and is critical to maintaining a healthy ecosystem.
A new study by Raincoast scientists and collaborators demonstrates that the fear top predators inspire can have cascading effects down the food chain critical to maintaining healthy ecosystems.
Healthy ecosystems require a full suite of species distributed across a hierarchy of levels on the food chain. If a link is removed, changes in the numbers and types of species will follow.