Scholarship & Research
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Item Smart wildlife monitoring: evaluating a camera trap enabled with artificial intelligence(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Agriculture, 2024) Kaltenbach, Taylor Louise Gregory; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Jared T. Beaver; Jeffrey C. Mosley (co-chair)Wildlife-livestock conflicts, including depredation, disease transmission, and resource competition, present significant challenges to both the ecological and economic aspects of ranching operations. These conflicts can undermine the sustainability of ranching operations as well as the conservation of wildlife in working landscapes. Leveraging timely and precise data on wildlife activity, distribution, and their interactions with livestock are crucial for enhancing ongoing conflict mitigation efforts and to help sustain wildlife on working landscapes. I evaluated the potential of an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled camera trap to limit false positive images and provide real-time monitoring of wildlife presence while reducing data overload. In Study 1, I compared the performance of a prototype, edge AI-enabled camera trap (Grizzly Systems) with 2 traditional, non-AI camera traps (Browning and Reconyx) at 8 sites across 3 ranches in south-central Montana, USA, from mid-June through mid-September 2023. I also evaluated the influence of site-specific environmental conditions, including air temperature, wind speed, cloud cover, and vegetation type on camera trap performance. The Grizzly Systems camera trap captured fewer false positive images but exhibited a higher rate of missed detections compared to the Browning and Reconyx camera trap models. Across all 3 camera trap models, the probability of positive detections declined with warmer air temperatures and greater wind speeds. In addition, warmer air temperatures positively influenced missed detections by Reconyx and Grizzly Systems camera trap models, but warmer air temperatures negatively influenced missed detections by Browning camera traps. In Study 2, I compared the performance of a cellular-connected AI-enabled Grizzly Systems camera trap, equipped with an automated image processing and notification reduction workflow, to a traditional, non-AI, cellular-connected Reconyx camera trap at 2 sites in south-central Montana, USA from mid-April to mid-June 2023. The AI-enabled, cellular-connected Grizzly Systems camera trap successfully sent real-time notifications of wildlife presence and transmitted significantly fewer false positive images than the cellular-connected Reconyx camera trap. However, the Grizzly Systems camera trap sent substantially fewer notifications of positive detections than the Reconyx camera trap, which are likely attributed to missed detections by the Grizzly Systems camera trap.Item Evaluating bear management areas in Yellowstone National Park(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2022) Loggers, Elise Ahlenslager; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Andrea Litt; This is a manuscript style paper that includes co-authored chapters.A growing body of research suggests large predators change their behavior near humans in ways that parallel how prey respond to predators; when outdoor recreation increases, avoiding humans becomes more difficult. Restricting human access to reduce detrimental effects of human-wildlife interactions can be an attractive management tool, however, rarely is the efficacy of such measures assessed. In 1982, Yellowstone National Park began instituting short-term, annual restrictions to areas of the backcountry containing important food resources for grizzly bears (Ursus arctos). These areas -- Bear Management Areas (BMAs) -- were intended to reduce human-caused disturbance of foraging bears and improve visitor safety. We sought to assess whether grizzly bears: 1) preferred BMAs with access restrictions more than other areas in YNP and 2) changed their response to sporadic (trail) and predictable (campsite) recreation sites depending on BMA access restrictions. We modeled resource selection of grizzly bears with step-selection functions, based on GPS locations from male and female bears collected from 2000 to 2020. Our analyses demonstrated that grizzly bears differentially selected BMAs, compared to areas outside BMAs, and that selection changed with sex and season. Bears likely prefer BMAs for the resources they contain more than to avoid people as only males changed their selection of BMAs based on access restrictions. Males avoided hiking trails during the day, but preferred trails at night. Females changed their selection of trails depending on human access restrictions and avoided trails in unrestricted BMAs. Combined with previous work, results suggest bears capitalize on the environment to avoid human presence, often with sex-specific strategies. For sporadic recreation, males temporally avoid the perceived risk of people whereas females spatially avoid the perceived risk of people. Although lower-intensity activities often are thought of as compatible with conservation, such recreation may be cryptic, but important, drivers of behavioral change in wildlife.Item High net worth ownership regimes in critical conservation areas: implications for resource governance(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2020) Epstein, Kathleen Elizabeth; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Julia Hobson Haggerty; Julia H. Haggerty and Hannah Gosnell were co-authors of the article, 'Super-rich landowners in social-ecological systems: opportunities in affective political ecology and life course perspectives' in the journal 'Geoforum' which is contained within this dissertation.; Julia Hobson Haggerty and Hannah Gosnell were co-authors of the article, 'With, not for, money: ranch management trajectories of the super-rich in greater Yellowstone' submitted to the journal 'Annals of the American Association of Geographers' which is contained within this dissertation.; Dissertation contains a article of which Kathleen Elizabeth Epstein is not the main author.Despite the expanding financial power of the global super-rich and their expansive control over natural resources as proprietors of an increasing number of large agricultural properties, geographers have only just begun to assess the influences of wealthy landowners on systems of environmental management. In this dissertation, I examine a set of ownership dynamics related to the acquisition of ranchland properties by high net worth (HNW) individuals in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, a charismatic conservation area in the Northern Rockies, USA. The dissertation deploys a mixed methods approach informed by social-ecological systems theory and insights from the literature on political ecology of the American West to assess HNW ownership regimes at the landscape and property scales from the perspective of an iconic regional resource institution: state-led elk management. The work follows a central conceptual logic related to the evolution of HNW land management, namely that ranch owners and properties interact with local ecologies, social actors, and resource institutions in ways that influence land use strategies and practices over time and space. At the landscape scale, patterns of land-use intensification (e.g., increased use of irrigation) have converged with growing diversification (e.g., increased residential development), to make elk management more complex, as elk encounter a range of push and pull factors across a shifting and diverse landscape of land-use values and practices. A defining characteristic of the trajectory for ranches of the super-rich is that HNW landowners ranch with, as opposed to for, money, though multiple social-ecological factors (markets, property lines, legal institutions, and unpredictable rangeland socio-ecologies) also shape HNW landowners' abilities to realize management goals and visions. Where HNW ownership regimes intersect with shifts in the political and moral economy, conflicts related to public access to wildlife on private lands have emerged. In this context, the work of wildlife managers requires adaptive strategies as wildlife management has become more about managing people - and the psychosocial outcomes of conflict - than managing wildlife. Ultimately, this research argues that the challenges HNW ownership regimes pose for resource governance require strategic engagement with the broader structures of wealth concentration and resource control that have enabled them.