Beier Lab of Conservation Biology & Wildlife Ecology
Every project in this lab promotes wildlife conservation.
Many of our projects focus directly on supporting
conservation decisions. For instance, we are pioneering science-based
approaches to design wildlife linkages(www.corridordesign.org),
and are collaborating with government and non-government agencies in
Arizona, California, and other Western states to implement
these designs. We are developing new procedures to design corridors robust
to climate change, and to rigorously estimate resistance of landscape
features to gene flow. We work with West
African villages and chiefs to manage wildlife sanctuaries, and are
providing one of the first rigorous, honest assessments of a community-based
conservation project.
Other projects focus mostly on understanding how the world
works. For example, we are investigating whether (and under what conditions)
forest birds eat enough leaf-chewing insects to benefit forest trees.
Evidence for bird-driven "trophic cascades" are scant, and thus the study is
scientifically exciting. But even this relatively "pure science" project is
relevant to documenting the ecosystem service provided by forest
birds; such services are emerging as one of the most potent reasons to
conserve biodiversity. Similarly, we study how small rodents transmit plague
to Gunnison's prairie dogs. These results contribute to scientific
understanding of the ecology of disease and simultaneously address one of
the main factors (plague) that has brought Gunnison's to a fraction of their
former abundance.
Please use the links at the left or below to learn about our current
research projects and conservation activities.
