The essential guide to understanding how nutrition shapes wild herbivore populations and why it should be a focus of wildlife management.Every landscape tells a nutritional story, and the dynamics of wild herbivore populations depend on how well animals can find, use, and compete for the resources they need to survive and thrive. Herbivores must contend with highly dynamic and diverse forage resources, making countless decisions daily about what and where to eat across seasonal ranges of hundreds or even thousands of square kilometers and how to balance nutritional needs with other limiting factors. Hence, nutritional influences are multifaceted and complex, greatly challenging efforts to understand and effectively manage them across the vast and diverse landscapes in North America.Bringing together decades of research and practical expertise, 40 leading researchers in nutritional ecology from Canada and the United States demonstrate why understanding influences of nutrition is essential for conserving herbivores and managing the landscapes they inhabit. While previous books have focused primarily on foraging theory, digestive physiology, and animal nutrition, Nutritional Ecology in Conservation and Management of Large Herbivores in North America showcases the advances of the last several decades in understanding how nutrition impacts herbivore populations. It connects nutritional ecology to the real-world challenges facing wildlife biologists and land managers by introducing strategies for assessing nutritional landscapes and applying these insights to wildlife monitoring, management, and conservation.Nutritional Ecology in Conservation and Management of Large Herbivores in North America offers a comprehensive synthesis of this rapidly expanding field while translating scientific advances into practical guidance. An indispensable resource for wildlife biologists, conservation practitioners, graduate students, and land managers, it offers the knowledge needed to better understand, protect, and sustain herbivore populations in an era of accelerating environmental change.
