The “tug of war” facing urban wildlife: When to forage on human foods?

An urban squirrel feasting on its bird feeder treasures.

By Jerod A. Merkle

Human dominated landscapes can provide a food haven for certain species. Think squirrels and pigeons, animals many of us see almost every day. These species have adapted so well to human infrastructure and its seemingly endless bounty, that they can live their entire lives within cities with millions of people.

Of course, there are other species that also capitalize on foods available in urban areas.  But they do so with much less visibility.  In fact, they spend much of their time in more natural areas, only venturing into urban areas to feed.  In this case, think of animals such as raccoons, coyotes, and bears. Although the act of moving from wildlands into urban areas is for the most part driven by food, our understanding of how animals make these decisions is still not complete.  Understanding how and why these behaviors develop can help direct efforts to minimize human-wildlife conflicts.

The ecology of dams and dam removal: a socio-ecological history of the Elwha (Part 4)

I am pleased to introduce a guest piece by Peter Brewitt, PhD Candidate University of California Santa Cruz and blogger at http://damremoval.wordpress.com. In his PhD research, Peter is working on the politics and ecology of two of the dams mentioned in this series. Thanks to Peter for the quick turnaround on this article – please thank him by checking out his work at the above links.

-Nate and the ECE

The ecology of dams and dam removal: a socio-ecological history of the Elwha (Part 4)

By Peter Brewitt

The Elwha River used to be 45 miles long. It flowed north out of Washington’s Olympic Mountains, from glaciers to taiga to lowlands and into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It was far enough west to pick up the moisture rolling in off the Pacific ocean, far enough east to avoid getting scoured out like the rainforest rivers on the west side of the Olympic Peninsula. And… it was full of salmon.

Why I published in PLoS ONE. And why I probably won’t again for awhile.

By Andrew Tredennick

One morning as I was working on revisions for a paper I had submitted to PLoS ONE, this popped up on my Twitter feed,

I've now heard from several tenured or near-tenure profs that publishing in @plosone was career suicide. Thanks a lot Open Access

— Ethan Perlstein (@eperlste) January 21, 2013

and I immediately felt defeated. Had I chosen poorly when deciding to submit to PLoS ONE? Or, are those people that view PLoS ONE as “career suicide” just old-school professors who, for some weird reason, think papers don’t get reviewed at PLoS ONE? And, does that even matter, since I’ll need those same old-school professors to want to hire me in a couple years? Needless to say, my motivation for finishing the revisions waned.

The ecology of dams and dam removal: Condit Dam on the Lower Salmon River, WA (Part 3)

The White Salmon River watershed and surrounding vicinity. Borrowed from friendsofthewhitesalmon.org

By Nate Hough-Snee

Near Washington State’s Mt. Adams, a small river begins, flowing south into the Pacific Northwest’s largest wild Salmon production facility, the Columbia River. This river begins in steep headwaters on one of the Pacific Northwest’s lesser volcanoes and runs 44 miles through forests ranging from the subalpine to second-growth plantations, draining roughly 400 square miles.

Fight for your papers?

By Kristin Marshall

So, you just finished writing a paper on a really cool project. Finally.  And you’ve gotten your co-authors to sign off on it.  Finally.  And it only took 15 drafts. Amazing. Now what? Where should you send it?  The blogosphere has been humming with discussion on where to submit your papers in the past couple months.  Check out Jeremy Fox’s advice over at Dynamic Ecology, or Ethan White’s at Jabberwocky Ecology, or our very own Nate Hough-Snee’s right here.

Rather than add my general philosophy to that discussion, I am going to give a concrete example of one of my papers and its trajectory from first submission to publication. Specifically, the paper I recently blogged about on Yellowstone willows that appeared in ProcB.