december 10, 2021
Carnivore Cultures: what are they and why might they matter for conservation?
Dr. Joseph Bump
Associate Professor, University of Minnesota
Abstract
Animal cultures expand the criteria considered for conservation policy. Yet, the evidence for animal cultures is dominated by studies on primates, birds, and cetaceans. Animal cultures likely exist for many other species, especially carnivores, a group that is typically of high conservation value. I'll discuss how carnivory as a life-history trait may favor the development of consistent differences in behavior between groups or populations in a species that are a consequence of social learning and are not behaviors directly caused by environmental or genetic differences, i.e. culture. I'll highlight policies pertaining to conservation practices such as i) restoration and rewilding, ii) human-carnivore conflict mitigation, and iii) facilitation of population connectivity and persistence that can likely benefit from the consideration of carnivore cultures.
Biosketch
Bump holds the Gordon W. Gullion Endowed Chair in Wildlife Research and Education and is Director of Graduate Studies for the Conservation Science Program at the University of Minnesota. Bump’s focus is on the functional role wildlife species play—alive and dead—in ecosystems and how that applies to biodiversity conservation. He mostly focuses on large mammals and currently leads research projects in Voyageurs, Isle Royale, and Yellowstone National Parks, across Minnesota, and in Switzerland, Kenya, and India. Bump’s curiosity in the natural world began with a childhood spent mucking around the Hudson River and Tivoli Bays in ‘upstate’ New York. He earned most of his college tuition by catching salmon as a commercial set net fisherman on the northside of Kodiak Island, Alaska, which was a formative experience in the natural world. Undergraduate field courses at the University of Michigan’s Biological Station confirmed Bump’s interest in animal ecology and he finished a biology degree in just a little over four years.