Applied ecologists in a landscape of fear

Abstract

Fear is a powerful response to danger, and a strong driver of evolution. The "landscape of fear" concept has helped ecologists to describe how animals’ perception of predation risk alters their spatial (e.g. Laundré, Hernández, & Altendorf, 2001; Ripple and Beschta, 2004) and temporal (Gaynor, Hojnowski, Carter, & Brashares, 2018) distribution, leading to ecological resources being under-utilized, populations being restricted, and ecosystem processes themselves being altered (Laundré, Hernández, & Ripple, 2010). Interestingly, the recent rise in political populism (see, e.g. the recent analysis by the Guardian, which is based on a robust methodology reviewed by political scientists; Guardian, 2018a, 2018b) and nationalism (Bieber, 2018; Financial Times, 2018) across the world has led to an unwelcome and analogous situation for ecologists themselves, with the real or perceived fear of state action limiting, and in some cases, threatening the activities of researchers, educators and environmental practitioners.