DOI: 10.5061/dryad.x3ffbg7tc
title: Data from: Harvest of transboundary gray wolves from Yellowstone National Park is largely additive

description: Large carnivores are globally threatened due to habitat fragmentation and
 loss, prey depletion, and human exploitation. Human exploitation includes
 both legal and illegal hunting and trapping. Protected areas can create
 refugia from hunting and trapping, however, hunting can still threaten
 wide-ranging large carnivores when they leave these areas. Large carnivore
 reintroductions to protected areas are often motivated to restore
 ecological processes, including wolf reintroduction to Yellowstone
 National Park (YNP). Determining if harvest is compensatory or additive is
 essential for informed conservation strategies, as it influences the
 overall impact on wolf populations and their ecosystems. If the harvest
 was compensatory, then increasing harvest pressure outside YNP should not
 decrease overall survival for transboundary wolves. Alternatively, if
 increasing harvest was additive, then increasing harvest pressure outside
 YNP should decrease overall survival for transboundary wolves. We tested
 the effects of variable harvest pressure following delisting on the
 survival of YNP gray wolves (Canis lupus) from 1995 to 2022. We defined
 three harvest levels: no harvest, harvest with limited quotas, and
 unlimited harvest. We used Cox-proportional hazards models and cumulative
 incidence functions to estimate survival rates, factors affecting
 survival, and cause-specific mortality between these three harvest periods
 to test predictions of the additive mortality hypothesis. Most wolves that
 primarily lived in YNP were harvested adjacent to the park border.
 Cox-proportional hazards models revealed that mortality was highest during
 years of unlimited harvest during winter outside YNP. Cause-specific
 mortality analyses showed that natural mortality from other wolves and
 harvest were the two leading causes of death, but that harvest mortality
 had additive effects on wolf mortality. Wolf survival decreased with
 increased harvest mortality, while natural mortality remained relatively
 unchanged. High rates of additive harvest mortality of wolves could
 negatively impact wolf survival in YNP. Harvest mortality of transboundary
 wolves is additive possibly due to source-sink dynamics of uneven spatial
 susceptibility of wolves to harvest mortality across protected area
 borders, as well as effects of harvest on complex social dynamics of
 wolves in YNP. Transboundary management of large carnivores is
 challenging, yet cooperation between agencies is vital for wolf management
 in and around Yellowstone National Park. Our results support the use of
 small quota zones surrounding protected areas, that minimize transboundary
 mortality impacts on large carnivores living primarily inside protected
 areas.
description: # Harvest of Transboundary Gray Wolves from Yellowstone National Park is
 Largely Additive
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.x3ffbg7tc](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.x3ffbg7tc) These data are the files needed to reproduce results in Cassidy et al. (2024), including survival modeling and cumulative incidence function results. ## Description of the data and file structure Biological Year: biological year starting on September 1 and ending on August 31 of the following year Wolf Count: the number of Yellowstone National Park resident wolves on December 31 Wolf ID: unique wolf ID number Color: coat color of wolf, only black or gray Date: date of capture, GPS location, VHF visual location, or mortality Mortality Cause: cause of mortality (details of mortality causes can be found in the manuscript) Entry Type: type of entry (Capture = capture of wolf, GPS = location from GPS collar [one random per day], Mortality = death of wolf, VHF = location from VHF signal with visual confirmation of location by staff) In Park?: dummy-coded variable if a wolf is in or out of Yellowstone National Park (1 = out park, 0 = in park ) Harvest Level: dummy-coded variable indicating the harvest level occurring in the states outside Yellowstone National Park (2 = quoated harvest, 1 = unlimited harvest, 0 =  no harvest) Age Class: dummy-coded variable of age class (2 = old adult [&gt;6 years old], 1 = adult [2-5 years old], 0 =  pup or yearling [&lt;2 years old]) Season: (Summer = February 1-August 31, Winter = September 1-January 31) Predicted Elk Count (10^-3): annual predicted elk abundance from a discrete time Gompertz state-space model (Tallian et al. 2017) Covariate Interactions: Covariate interactions were created by combining Harvest Level and Season, as well as Harvest Level and In Park. Missing data code: NA