James D. Murdoch

I am delighted to have joined the Gund Institute for Environment as a Fellow. The Gund Institute is based at the University of Vermont and brings scholars and leaders together to accelerate research, uncover solutions and tackle the world's most pressing environmental issues. I look forward to contributing to this vibrant community.

Congratulations to Skye Pearman-Gillman on the acceptance of her paper that explored how wildlife distributions are expected to change in the northeastern United States. The article focused on 10 species and explored changes under a variety of scenarios developed by the New England Landscape Futures Project. Article details: Pearman-Gillman, S., M. Duveneck, J. Murdoch, and T. Donovan. In press. Drivers and consequences of alternative landscape futures on wildlife distributions in New England, USA. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

I am thrilled to announce a new project that will involve evaluating rabies vaccination strategies for wildlife in partnership with USDA APHIS Wildlife Services National Rabies Management Program, National Wildlife Research Center, and the Vermont Wildlife Services operational program. The project will help inform wildlife disease management decisions, especially along the urban-suburban interface, and is set to begin this summer.

Cody Aylward spearheaded a new analysis of marten gene flow at multiple spatial scales in the northeastern US. Delighted to announce that the paper has been published in the journal Heredity. The article made the cover of the journal! Here are details: Aylward, C., J. Murdoch, C. W. Kilpatrick. 2020. Multiscale landscape genetics of American marten at their southern range periphery. Heredity.

Congratulations to Skye Pearman-Gillman for her new paper on wildlife distributions in the northeastern United States. The paper details distribution models developed for 10 harvested species such as deer, bear, moose, and turkey, based on expert elicitation techniques. Pearman-Gillman, S., J. Katz, R. Mickey, J. Murdoch, and T. Donovan. 2020. Predicting wildlife distribution patterns in New England USA based on expert elicitation techniques. Global Ecology and Conservation 21:e00853.

We recently received a grant from the Vermont Agency of Transportation to evaluate and rank road crossing structures in terms of their value for wildlife and landscape connectivity in Vermont. The grant is in partnership with The Nature Conservancy Vermont and the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department. The team includes James Brady and Chris Slesar, our project champions from VTRANS, Paul Marangelo from TNC, Jens Hilke from VFWD, and Caitlin Drasher from UVM (graduate student). We look forward to working with VTRANS and helping inform their approaches to road and wildlife management!

Thrilled to announce that our Conservation Biology textbook is out! The book has been over two years in the making. Cardinale, B., R. Primack, J. Murdoch. 2019. Conservation biology, 1st edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom.

Thrilled to have been awarded a Gund Catalyst Award to develop a framework for a sustainable cashmere certification program with colleagues Jon Erickson and Pablo Bose from the University of Vermont and Ganchimeg Wingard at the Denver Zoo. The project will be developing an interdisciplinary framework that includes elements of wildlife biology, economics, and culture to support a sustainable cashmere system in Mongolia. It will draw on nearly two decades of work in Ikh Nart Nature Reserve.