LAND: Comparing, contrasting and integrating large carnivore predation and hunter harvest into sustainable ecosystem management

This project aims to bring together data from a range of ongoing projects on the ecology of large carnivores and wild ungulates and the sociology of human interest groups to focus on a set of topics that cut across the different species. These are the top ics of human harvest and carnivore predation - which between them embrace both the major interaction between these species groups (predation) and the main management instrument directed at their populations (harvest). Although both have the same proximate effect (increased mortality) there are potentially major differences in both the ecological and evolutionary effects and their perception by interest groups. There are also many fundamental differences between harvesting ungulates and harvesting carnivor es. Understanding how these processes work and interact is vital to achieve sustainable management of an ecosystem in which the species groups interact so strongly. We shall also try and utilise the available data to develop a rnage of user-friendly model s that are suitable for managers to use when trying to make decisons about how to manage increasingly complex multi-trophic systems. The social science component will focus on how hunters percieve themselves as predators and hwo they relate to predators a s compared to ungulates. This has clear implications for the potential of managing large carnivores within the same management structures as large herbivores. Finally, we shall explore the potential lessons that Scandinavian wildlife management has for th e global scale application of conservation biology. These goals will be achieved by linking a large multi-disciplinary team from 4 Norwegian institutes with an international network (Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Croatia, France & Quebec) that will contribute data from different systems as well as cutting edge analytical experience.