WildLift

An Open-source Tool to Guide Decisions for Wildlife Conservation

Linux build status codecov

WildLift can be used to quantitatively compare the costs and demographic benefits of recovery actions for an iconic threatened species, woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou). While we use caribou as a case study, our approach to developing this management tool is transferable to other threatened taxa.

The tool consists of a generalized matrix population model that is parametrized based on information from the published literature or ongoing experiments. Users can input population parameters (e.g., population size and survival rates) or choose from pre-set caribou subpopulations to estimate changes to populations from implementing recovery actions.

The tool estimates the trade-offs associated with seven alternative recovery actions:

  • Linear Feature Restoration,
  • Linear Feature Deactivation,
  • Maternal Penning,
  • Conservation Breeding,
  • Predator Exclosure,
  • Wolf Reduction, and
  • Moose Reduction.

Multiple recovery actions are compared allowing users to combine demographic augmentation (maternal penning, predator exclosure, and conservation breeding) with predator and primary prey reductions.

Try the Shiny app or run locally as WildLift::run_app().

Citation

Nagy-Reis, M., Dickie, M., Sólymos, P., Gilbert, S., DeMars, C., Serrouya, R., and Boutin, S., 2020. WildLift: An open-source tool to guide decisions for wildlife conservation. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 8:564508. DOI 10.3389/fevo.2020.564508

Installation

remotes::install_github("ABbiodiversity/WildLift")

See user visible changes in the NEWS file.

Usage

library(WildLift)
#> Loading required package: popbio
#> WildLift 0.3.0    2020-09-07

## Predefined settings
(s1 <- wildlift_settings("mat.pen"))
#> Caribou settings - pen type: mat.pen 
#> 
#>  - c.surv.wild   :0.163
#>  - c.surv.capt   :0.598
#>  - f.surv.wild   :0.853
#>  - f.surv.capt   :0.903
#>  - f.preg.wild   :0.92
#>  - f.preg.capt   :0.92
#>  - pen.cap       :35
#>  - pen.cost.setup:500
#>  - pen.cost.proj :80
#>  - pen.cost.maint:300
#>  - pen.cost.capt :250
#>  - pen.cost.pred :0
(s2 <- wildlift_settings("pred.excl"))
#> Caribou settings - pen type: pred.excl 
#> 
#>  - c.surv.wild   :0.163
#>  - c.surv.capt   :0.72
#>  - f.surv.wild   :0.853
#>  - f.surv.capt   :0.95
#>  - f.preg.wild   :0.92
#>  - f.preg.capt   :0.92
#>  - pen.cap       :35
#>  - pen.cost.setup:1868
#>  - pen.cost.proj :80
#>  - pen.cost.maint:600
#>  - pen.cost.capt :200
#>  - pen.cost.pred :80

## Modifying predefined settings
wildlift_settings("mat.pen", c.surv.capt=0.65, pen.cap=30)
#> Caribou settings - pen type: mat.pen 
#> 
#>  - c.surv.wild   :0.163
#>  - c.surv.capt   :0.65
#>  - f.surv.wild   :0.853
#>  - f.surv.capt   :0.903
#>  - f.preg.wild   :0.92
#>  - f.preg.capt   :0.92
#>  - pen.cap       :30
#>  - pen.cost.setup:500
#>  - pen.cost.proj :80
#>  - pen.cost.maint:300
#>  - pen.cost.capt :250
#>  - pen.cost.pred :0

## Forecast based on settings for 75% females penned
f1 <- wildlift_forecast(s1, fpen.prop = 0.75)
f2 <- wildlift_forecast(s2, fpen.prop = 0.75)

## Most important results summarized
summary(f1)
#> Caribou forecast - pen type: mat.pen 
#> 
#>  - tmax     :20
#>  - pop.start:100
#>  - fpen.prop:0.75
#> 
#>  - npens      :3
#>  - lam.pen    :1.03
#>  - lam.nopen  :0.914
#>  - Nend.nopen :17
#>  - Nend.pen   :195
#>  - Nend.diff  :178
#>  - Cost.total :30.5
#>  - Cost.percap:0.171
summary(f2)
#> Caribou forecast - pen type: pred.excl 
#> 
#>  - tmax     :20
#>  - pop.start:100
#>  - fpen.prop:0.75
#> 
#>  - npens      :7
#>  - lam.pen    :1.09
#>  - lam.nopen  :0.914
#>  - Nend.nopen :17
#>  - Nend.pen   :556
#>  - Nend.diff  :539
#>  - Cost.total :87
#>  - Cost.percap:0.161

## Plot the results
plot(f2)
lines(f1, col = 2)
legend("topleft", col = c(1,1,2), lty = c(2,1,1),
    legend = c("No pen", "Mat pen", "Pred excl"))

Getting Help or Reporting an Issue

To report bugs/issues/feature requests, please file an issue.

How to Contribute

If you would like to contribute to the package, please see our CONTRIBUTING guidelines.

Please note that this project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By participating in this project you agree to abide by its terms.