Public perspectives and media reporting of wolf reintroduction in Colorado.

In the state of Colorado, a citizen ballot initiative to reintroduce gray wolves (Canis lupus) is eliciting polarization and conflict among multiple stakeholder and interest groups. Given this complex social landscape, we examined the social context surrounding wolf reintroduction in Colorado as of 2019. We used an online survey of 734 Coloradans representative in terms of age and gender, and we sampled from different regions across the state, to examine public beliefs and attitudes related to wolf reintroduction and various wolf management options. We also conducted a content analysis of media coverage on potential wolf reintroduction in 10 major daily Colorado newspapers from January 2019, when the signature-gathering effort for the wolf reintroduction initiative began, through the end of January 2020, when the initiative was officially added to the ballot. Our findings suggest a high degree of social tolerance or desire for wolf reintroduction in Colorado across geographies, stakeholder groups, and demographics. However, we also find that a portion of the public believes that wolves would negatively impact their livelihoods, primarily because of concerns over the safety of people and pets, loss of hunting opportunities, and potential wolf predation on livestock. These concerns-particularly those related to livestock losses-are strongly reflected in the media. We find that media coverage has focused only on a few of the many perceived positive and negative impacts of wolf reintroduction identified among the public. Our findings highlight the need to account for this diversity of perspectives in future decisions and to conduct public outreach regarding likely impacts of wolf reintroduction.

Paternal line effects of early experiences persist across three generations in rhesus macaques.

The effects of early stress may not be limited to the exposed generation, but are sometimes passed on to subsequent generations. Such non-genetic transgenerational inheritance is a potentially important developmental and evolutionary force. We compared the transgenerational effects of maternal and paternal line early stress on anxiety- and health-related traits in three non-exposed generations (F1, F2 and F3) of semi-naturalistically raised rhesus macaques. As infants, F0 macaques were exposed to nursery rearing (NR) or semi-naturalistic social conditions (CONTROL). Three hundred forty non-exposed F1-F3 descendants were CONTROL reared and physiological and behavioral measures were collected during standardized assessment at 3-4 months of age. Paternal line NR was significantly associated with greater nervousness in F1-F3 and lower immune cell counts in F1-F2. Maternal-line NR effects were not observed. This study suggests that acquired stress-related traits may be "inherited" across generations in primates, through complex social or germ-line mechanisms.