Editorial: Welcome to Wildlife Letters

Abstract

Wildlife is one of the most universally identifiable and characteristic components of the living world and plays important roles in sustaining natural communities and ecosystems. However, wildlife is challenged by an increasingly numerous human population and crowded planet that is undergoing rapid anthropogenic global change. The Anthropocene is upon us, and the extent of declines in natural species and the need for intervention for the continued existence of many wildlife species grows steadily. Increasingly, there is public discussion of rewilding, de-extinction, and genetic modification of living species, and climate change biologists present evidence for systems with a set of climate conditions that will not exist anywhere in the future (so-called “no-analog communities”). These diverse challenges and changes, and a core belief that the best science is international, drove us to create Wildlife Letters. We also believe that management and conservation papers should be available to everyone through open-access publication and that the publication process should be rapid. An important part of this is that conservation and management practitioners need access to up-to-date research, which is facilitated by open-access publications and by papers providing practitioner points that highlight information of particular relevance to managers, restoration biologists, and conservation practitioners. By forming a new journal, we also aim to break free from some of the societal (institutional, etc.) constraints on, and current thinking about, what ideas are accepted, by creating a more international, inclusive, and equitable view of wildlife ecology and management. A small part of this is for Wildlife Letters to be inclusive of the types of organisms that are considered wildlife, including fish and invertebrates of conservation concern. There are many fish and insect journals, for example, but there is also a purpose to having an exchange of ideas with terrestrial vertebrate wildlife biologists such as what might occur through reading papers in a wildlife journal. We, therefore, encourage fish and invertebrate biologists to consider publishing papers in Wildlife Letters. Our journal has the added bonus that open-access publication of accepted articles is free of charge until the end of 2025. We hope that both authors and readers will be drawn to the journal because it publishes high-quality wildlife science, which has been rigorously, and fairly, peer-reviewed by experts. Below we introduce the kinds of papers Wildlife Letters seeks to publish, the importance to wildlife science of new theory and technology developments, and draw your attention to the ability of the journal to publish Special Features and Special Issues addressing important topics. Research published in the journal should contribute to sustainable wildlife management or conservation by improving our ability to understand and respond to current and emerging challenges from global anthropogenic change. The journal is aimed at researchers, managers, educators, and policymakers in wildlife science and related disciplines, and publishes timely, accessible, and substantial research. Beyond wild animals or their impacts on natural ecosystems, the journal publishes ideas, theories, and techniques relevant to wildlife biology and management. Articles may also be about non-domestic captive animals studied for conservation purposes. Articles should be of broad interest and contain substantial findings about the conservation and management of wildlife species or an understanding of wildlife species' responses to global change and anthropogenic impacts on wildlife. The breadth of interest implies that articles should have generality beyond a local area and that the findings should be relevant to, and interesting to, other wildlife biologists. Non-replicated veterinary case studies of one or a few animals are unlikely to be general enough for publication in the journal. Generality can be gained by testing or developing general ideas, in relation to broad topic areas, or by geographic or taxonomic breadth. Substantial findings implies that there is a new method or findings that is/are not published elsewhere. Articles may also include interdisciplinary topics in ecology, conservation, and management, such as from social sciences, economics, or anthropology, and can be empirical or theoretical. Wildlife Letters accepts manuscript submissions which fit the following article types: Letter, Method, Concept Analysis, and Review. If you are uncertain about the suitability of your manuscript for publication in Wildlife Letters, article types, or manuscript preparation, please look through the Author Guidelines on the journal website or feel free to reach out to us by email. Wildlife science is based on multiple disciplines, and new ideas and theories come from many subject areas. Artificial intelligence, next-generation (and beyond) genomics techniques, advances in data science, social–ecological systems, environmental DNA (eDNA) methods, network methods, the importance of individual variation, movement ecology, and metacommunities; these are just a few of the rapidly developing areas in wildlife science. New insights are often gained through the integration of existing topic areas, for instance, landscape ecology and the ecology of fear gave us landscapes of fear, and borrowing optimality ideas from economics gave ecology optimal foraging theory. The journal, therefore, includes Concept Analysis papers that encourage the development and application of new ideas and theories. Targeted wildlife management and research can benefit from advances in technology, especially in topics such as wildlife and habitat monitoring and management. Advances include improved applications of camera traps, remote sensing (e.g., satellite imagery), tracking technology (GPS collars, etc.), cameras attached to animals, and unmanned aerial vehicles. In addition, noninvasive genetic monitoring, including environmental DNA and fecal DNA, are used by researchers more and more commonly. Footprint identification, sound monitoring, and image identification based on the use of Artificial Intelligence are also studied by many teams in the current era of wildlife science. However, improved scientific and cost-effective surveys and monitoring protocols are still urgently needed for many endangered taxa. There are many possible applications, for instance, human–wildlife conflict could benefit from the development of early warning systems to aid large carnivore conservation. Wildlife disease detection and management tools are also undergoing rapid progress because of our increasing realization of the importance of zoonotic disease transmission. The synergies between wildlife conservation and climate change mitigation through carbon storage can support climate-smart integrated land-use policies and leverage innovative funding sources to address gaps in conservation finance and enhance community stewardship, well-being, and economic status. These examples all benefit from new methods, and offer opportunities for new syntheses and conceptual analyses. Wildlife Letters endeavors to highlight exciting new theories and technology developments, and to publish them rapidly, to serve the needs of researchers, managers, educators, and policymakers, and achieving sustainable harmonized human–wildlife coexistence. Wildlife Letters has the ability to publish themed collections of papers, either as Special Features within an issue or as entire Special Issues. These collections should be based on topics of broad general interest within wildlife science and/or to wildlife management practitioners. They need to include diverse authors who are leaders in the subject and not come from just a single or a few research groups. Frequently, such collections of papers come from symposia or sessions at international meetings, and authors are asked to write papers at the time the meeting is organized or at other times during meetings or informal conversations. We, therefore, invite the organizers of such meetings or those wishing to propose a Special Feature or Special Issue to contact us with a description of the topic, lists of potential authors and their institutions, and to list a few key papers that are the motivation for the topic. We wish to encourage features and issues about wildlife practice, essentially about what works in wildlife science. For instance, a Special Feature/Issue might present a synthesis of the results (e.g., species benefits and costs, equity implications) of applications of management techniques (e.g., wildlife corridors or bridges, use of dogs for livestock protection, marine areas closed to fishing) either in general or in a particular system studied in a comprehensive way. The results would need to be of broad interest or potential application, or informative to a broad audience in some other way through presenting evidence-based and peer-reviewed science that aids wildlife conservation, recovery, and management. Thank you for being a part of Wildlife Letters. We look forward to working together and using the journal as a tool to promote wildlife science and its application to conservation and wildlife management. Guangshun Jiang is a Professor at the College of Wildlife and Protected Areas, Northeast Forestry University (NEFU), and is Executive Director of the Feline Research Center of National Forestry and Grassland Administration. His research focuses on landscapes, nutrition, behavior, genetics, and anthropogenic change as drivers of wildlife dynamics and conservation. Marcel Holyoak is a Professor and Ecologist at The University of California at Davis. His research addresses the importance of spatial dynamics to ecological populations and communities, and the maintenance of biodiversity in the face of global change. He is trained in biostatistics, theoretical ecology, experimental design, and natural history.