UC Berkeley

Wildlife management and conservation action are fundamentally shaped by human values. Policy decisions, management objectives, and desired outcomes reflect societal judgments about the importance of sustaining wildlife on shared landscapes. Effective conservation therefore requires a clear understanding of how wildlife both contribute to and detract from human well-being, along with practical approaches for translating these values into concrete management actions. This task is inherently complex and large scale: public values are diverse, often conflicting, and linked to wildlife populations that move across large areas and jurisdictional boundaries. My dissertation addresses a central question: how can human values for wildlife be systematically integrated into conservation practice across complex landscapes? I examine this question in the context of migratory wildlife conservation in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), which embodies many of the challenges and opportunities that accompany large-scale conservation efforts.In Chapter 1, I examine the range and dimensions of migratory wildlife’s contributions to human well-being in the GYE, with particular attention to the role of migration in creating these landscapes of values.Highly mobile and migratory wildlife are ecologically, culturally, and economically important because they provide ecosystem services that provide value to humans and ecosystem disservices that detract from human well-being across heterogenous landscapes. Migratory ungulates (hoofed mammals) are particularly influential because of their large body size, seasonal movement across vast distances, and ties to human society. Ungulate migrations are widely declining in the face of habitat alteration, and initiatives across the globe seek to conserve them. However, migratory herds can generate significant costs or disservices for landowners and communities, complicating management and conservation. We demonstrate how a comprehensive assessment of the ecosystem services and disservices (ESDs) provided by mobile wildlife can enable conservation policy that facilitates co-existence across multi-use landscapes0F0F0F . Our mixed-methods approach applies the widely recognized Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) ESD categories as a framework to combine formal scientific knowledge spanning multiple disciplines with experiential knowledge gathered from local stakeholders through interviews. We apply this methodology in the context of the GYE, which harbors long-distance migrations of six ungulate species that move between public protected areas and private working lands. We discuss how stakeholder knowledge corroborates or contradicts scientific literature and characterize stakeholder groups and their perspectives. We suggest that formal assessments of ESDs within their ecological and socioeconomic contexts could mobilize resources for conservation, increase returns on conservation spending, and support conflict resolution amongst groups seeking to manage wildlife for different objectives.In Chapter 2, I focus on a novel value for wildlife identified in Chapter 1 and examine how it translates into management within an emerging policy context:Scavenged wildlife resources are a unique type of common pool wildlife resource that are collected without killing or capturing the animal, and their collection is understudied and potentially underregulated relative to their conservation significance. The separability of these resources from the living population of animals that produce them can complicate efforts to link collection to future resource availability and develop management strategies. Furthermore, these resources are gaining popularity as online markets cater to a growing global demand for niche animal products. A notable example is naturally shed antlers from wild herds collected by “shed hunters” for both personal and commercial use. In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), home to the largest migratory cervid populations in the continental United States, shed hunting's growing popularity has created a potential common-pool resource dilemma. We surveyed shed hunters before and after a key policy change in Wyoming. Our results reveal diverse recreational and commercial values for antler collection. We also show that resource users are experiencing externalities from increased congestion and indicate strong overall support for active management, though participants differ in their preferred approaches. Exploration of the social dynamics reveals multiple types of scavenged resource user groups giving rise to a complex management environment. In considering future management in the GYE shed hunting context, we emphasize the importance of the separability of the resource from the animal. Specifically, approaches like seasons designed to reduce overlap of resource use and wildlife during key periods can support recreational opportunities while reducing disturbances to wildlife.In the final chapter, I examine how land tenure shapes wildlife habitat selection, linking the preceding understanding of human-wildlife interactions and relationships to their spatial expression across the landscape:Expanding conservation beyond protected areas requires flexible strategies that accommodate diverse land tenure, especially for mobile species navigating mixed-ownership landscapes. Because conservation is implemented through property-based systems, land parcels represent the fundamental units of decision-making. However, the ecological relevance of land tenure attributes remains underexplored, despite their potential to represent physical conditions shaping wildlife habitat selection and movement. We tested whether land tenure variables capture meaningful variation in habitat use by extending habitat selection analyses (HSAs) to explicitly incorporate land ownership and parcel characteristics. We applied this approach using GPS telemetry from 127 female elk (Cervus canadensis) monitored from 2007–2022 in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Using integrated step-selection analysis, we examined elk responses to multiple dimensions of land tenure—including ownership, parcel type, and parcel size—across four seasons while accounting for individual-level variation. Even after controlling for environmental conditions, elk consistently differentiated between private and public land, with strongly seasonal responses that included shifts between selection and avoidance of private land. At the population level, elk selected small residential parcels during summer and fall but avoided them in winter and spring, with substantial variation among individuals. Individual variation in habitat selection was most pronounced in summer and fall but converged in winter and spring, likely because harsher environmental conditions constrained behavioral flexibility. Our results demonstrate that land tenure and parcel attributes capture otherwise unobserved dimensions of land use that shape habitat selection. More broadly, they provide empirical support for integrating land tenure into HSAs to improve identification and prioritization of conservation opportunities in mixed-ownership landscapes.