Non-native rusa deer ( Cervus timorensis ) were introduced to the 380-ha Wild Duck Island, an important flatback turtle nesting site in Broad Sound Islands National Park, Queensland, Australia, in the mid-2000s. Initial attempts to remove the population through ground and aerial culling (2007–2017) were unsuccessful. A more comprehensive eradication program commenced in 2018, employing aerial culling. In late 2019, a grid of 4...

Non-native deer are becoming increasingly common in peri-urban landscapes, where they pose a risk to the health and wellbeing of people. Professional vehicle-based shooting is commonly used to control deer populations in these complex landscapes, but the effectiveness and cost of this method have seldom been evaluated. We analyzed the effectiveness and cost of using professional vehicle-based shooting to reduce the abundance a...

Given the rate of biodiversity loss, there is an urgent need to understand community-level responses to extirpation events, with two prevailing hypotheses. On one hand, the loss of an apex predator leads to an increase in primary prey species, triggering a trophic cascade of other changes within the community, while density compensation and ecological release can occur because of reduced competition for resources and absence o...