Thomas Newsome and William Ripple

Thomas Newsome is a Lecturer (Academic Fellow) at The University of Sydney. I hold a courtesy faculty position within the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society at Oregon State University, and an Affiliate Assistant Professorship within the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at The University of Washington. My research addresses how species respond to human-induced changes to the landscape. I am particularly interested in how humans and top predators shape and drive ecosystem processes. My doctoral research focused on the ecology and behaviour of the dingo in the Tanami Desert of central Australia. As a Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar I investigated the ecological role of grey wolves and other large carnivores. In 2018 I established the Global Ecology Lab at The University of Sydney. William Ripple is a Professor and Director of the Trophic Cascades Program at Oregon State University. Research Interests: Wolf, ungulate, aspen ecology; trophic cascades; mesopredators; plant/animal interactions; ecology of fear; wildlife habitat analysis; landscape ecology; biodiversity; historical ecology; conservation biology; riparian ecology. Current/Recent Programs: The Leopold Project - The goal of Leopold Project is to continue the work Aldo Leopold started on topics that intersect forestry and wildlife science and ecosystems especially predators, ungulates, and forests. The Aspen Project - An interactive web page designed to examine the decline of Quaking Aspen throughout the western United States. This site has had 13,000 hits since 1998. The Lewis and Clark Project - Wildlife along the Lewis & Clark Trail studying human wildlife associations as a study in historical ecology. The Wolves in Nature Project - The purpose here is to investigate the role of a top predator, the gray wolf (Canis Lupus), in structuring ecological communities. Species Range Contractions - The purpose of this study is to compare historic and current ranges of both carnivores and ungulates, identify large-scale patterns in species ranges and determine the degree of human influence on species range changes.