WILDLIFE HABITAT ECOLOGY LAB

MISSION

Our mission is to provide science-based research, instruction, and extension that supports ecologically and economically sustainable wildlife conservation and management in working landscapes.

THE LAB

RESEARCH

Our research addresses questions regarding space use and demography of free-ranging animals in response to habitat manipulation and human land use.

TEACHING

Lance McNew teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in wildlife and rangeland ecology and management.

PEOPLE

Profiles of current and past Wildlife Habitat Ecology Lab members.

Our study systems are diverse and include animals with a wide range of life histories and ecosystems that differ in seasonality and patterns of resource availability. We use both experimental and observational approaches and employ a variety of techniques including mark-recapture, radio-telemetry, surveys, stable isotopes, and quantitative modeling to answer questions about wildlife-habitat relationships.

A major focus of our research and teaching programs is working with animal and range scientists to develop novel management strategies that benefit both wildlife and producers.

“One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of a March thaw, is the spring.”
― Aldo Leopold

"Nothing could be more lonely and nothing more beautiful than the view at nightfall across the prairies to these huge hill masses, when the lengthening shadows had at last merged into one and the faint after-glow of the red sunset filled the west."
- Theodore Roosevelt

“The nation behaves well if it treats its natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired, in value.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

WHEL in the News

WHEL at the 2022 MSU Spring Student Research Celebration

Interview with Jared Beaver: Influencing livestock losses from coyote predation