A new paper in the February issue of Bioscience by Daniel Licht et al. proposes that recovery of wolves and other top predators
to natural areas may be an important ecosystem restoration tool, even if the areas are too small in themselves to support viable wolf populations over the long term. The authors propose a shift in focus from a “wolf recovery” to an “ecosystem recovery” paradigm in these contexts.
Related to this topic, a new paper by myself and colleagues in the journal Conservation Biology explores whether the Endangered Species Act contains a mandate for restoration of geographically well-distributed, rather than minimally-viable, populations of formerly wide-ranging species such as wolves.