Episode 17 - Dr. Adrien Treves - Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Grizzly Times speaks with Dr. Adrian Treves, an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Madison in Wisconsin! Adrian’s research focuses on finding a balance between human needs and those of large carnivores. In his latest paper, he and his colleagues pointed out the shoddiness of research design being used today to justify killing of carnivores. Drawing from lessons learned from the bio-medical research community, authors applied a “gold standard” for scientific inference, in order to evaluate lethal and nonlethal efforts to reduce human and livestock conflicts. They found that no research done in the last 40 years met this rigorous test, and few met even the more relaxed “silver standard.” The majority of recent studies of lethal methods found no effect, or a counter productive effect of increased livestock loss from carnivore killing. This led to the authors to recommend a moratorium or a suspension of lethal methods until "gold standard" experiments are completed.