Causes of death and competition 

-Causes of death

Predation: Ravens have few predators - eagles, hawks, owls, and human hunters. Humans are their main predator.

Sexual Competition: Their courtship rituals are extremely diverse acrobatic flight performances, delivering gifts of food all through the process to any potential mates in the vicinity. The display gets even better as competing males enter the fray. The females then choose a male that can provide the best chance for survival of their young. 

Disease: Ravens are carriers of West Nile virus (WNV), a potentially fatal disease to humans. Mosquitoes spread WNV from infected birds to people. Ravens themselves are susceptible to WNV, and human outbreaks have been attributed to corvid outbreaks in the same location.

Other causes: They are at risk for being hit by vehicles due to be road-kill scavengers as they are opportunistic foragers. 

-Competition

Inter-species – Within the species: they will fight for food and scraps if food is a little tighter, especially if they haven’t reached sexual maturity yet and they are in bigger groups. 

Intra-species – With other species: ravens will fight with crows and owls for food, and will attack anything that gets too close to their nest that they think pose a threat. Their young are preyed on by coyotes, large hawks, eagles, owls, martens and other ravens may attack nestlings. Adults are good at defending their young and will chase predators away.

What do they compete over: They will compete over food and to keep their young fledgelings alive. 

Affect of invasive species: Asian carp and Feral pigs don’t affect them in a bad way. There is no invasive species that harms the ravens, but the ones that can supply meat or berries will be foraged for food. 

-IUCN Rating

What is the rating?: Least Concern

Population: More than 16 million ravens worldwide. 

Population Trend: Their population is increasing. There is research that demonstrates positive annual population growth rates ranging from 0.2–9.4%.

-Impact of Humans

What impacts have occurred: In the western United States, ravens are exploiting the expanding human enterprise, which provides them with unintended subsidies of food, water, and breeding locations, allowing ravens to expand their range and increase in population density and resulting in raven depredation threatening species of conservation. There is so many ravens that they are labeled as Native Invasive Species. 

Potential Future impacts: Ravens like colder climates so if climate change is getting worse and there is less colder areas for ravens then their population may decline. Their population may also increase as well because of the fact that people are always spreading out and creating more food opportunities for ravens and places for them to live. 

How long have humans been interacting with species: Relations between humans, ravens and other animals 30,000 years ago. Wild animals entered into diverse relationships with humans long before the first settlements were established in the Neolithic period around 10,000 years ago. They were attracted to our settlements as there was food that they could forage for. 

Efforts being made to minimize impacts: they are so overpopulated that they are labeled native invasive species. Id say at this point in time we’ll have to keep an eye on their population, but they definitely aren’t at risk due to the fact that their natural worldwide population should be around 300,000, and they are currently sitting at a population of 16 million.