College of Agriculture & Natural Resources Department of Fisheries and Wildlife

Areas of Expertise

Mammalian ecology and conservation, sustainable use of wildlife, human-wildlife interactions, international conservation, translational ecology

Education

• Ph.D., Wildlife Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks
• M.S., Natural Resources (Wildlife Emphasis), University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
• B.S. Wildlife/Biology, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

Research Interests

• Carnivore ecology and predator-prey relations
• Wildlife responses to human disturbances
• Improving human-wildlife coexistence through conflict resolution
• Management of harvested wildlife populations
• Integrating wildlife science with policy and practice

Books

Do Linh San, E., J.J. Sato, J.L. Belant, and M.J. Somers, editors. 2022. Small carnivore evolution, ecology, behaviour and conservation.  Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK. 624 pp.

Selected Publications

Belant, JL, A Bennett, KF Kellner, and M Manchas-Cisneros. 2024. Ecosystem services provided by wildlife harvests. BioScience 74:352-354.

Belant, JL, A Bennett, KF Kellner, and M Manchas-Cisneros. 2024. Wildlife harvests can advance food security and the food systems agenda. Nature Food 5:1-2.

Boudreau, MR, MG Gantchoff, L Conlee, C Anderson, NR Bowersock, JL Belant, RB Iglay. 2024. Informing a harvest framework using sex-specific harvest vulnerability for a recovering large carnivore population. Journal of Wildlife Management 88:e22508.

Stiegler, J, et al. 2024. Sensitivities of mammals to capture and tagging: faster recovery in human-disturbed landscapes. Nature Communications 15:8079.

van den Bosch, M, DE Beyer, Jr, JD Erb, MG Gantchoff, KF Kellner, DM MacFarland, BR Patterson, JL Price Tack, BJ Roell, and JL Belant. 2024. Temporal dynamics in gray wolf space use suggest stabilizing range in the Great Lakes region, USA. Biological Conservation 291:110489.

Zubiria Perez, A., K.F. Kellner, D.M. MacFarland, J.L. Price Tack, D.B. Ruid, G.E. Stauffer, and J.L. Belant. 2024. Effects of lethal management on gray wolf pack persistence and reproduction in Wisconsin, USA, 2012–2014. Scientific Reports 14:9895.

Kellner, K.F., A.D. Smith, J.A. Royle, M. Kéry, I.J. Fiske, J.L. Belant, R.B. Chandler. 2023. The unmarked R package: twelve years of advances in wildlife occurrence and abundance modeling. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 14:1408-1415.

Puckett, E.E., et al. 2023. Genetic architecture and evolution of color variation in American black bears. Current Biology 33:86-97.

Tucker, M.A., et al. 2023. Changes in human presence during COVID-19 lockdowns alter the spatial behavior of terrestrial mammals. Science 380:1059-1064.

van den Bosch M, Beyer DE Jr, Gantchoff MG, Kellner KF, MacFarland DM, Norton DC, Patterson BR, Price Tack JL, Roell BJ, Belant JL. 2022. Identifying potential gray wolf habitat and connectivity in the eastern USA. Biological Conservation 273:109708.

Do Linh San E, Sato JJ, Belant JL, Somers MJ. 2022. Small carnivores: evolution, ecology, behavior, and conservation. Wiley-Blackwell, New Jersey, USA.

Gantchoff MG, Conlee L, Boudreau MR, Iglay RB, Anderson C, Belant JL. 2022. Spatially-explicit population modeling to predict large carnivore recovery and expansion. Ecological Modeling 470:110033. 

Kellner KF, Fowler NL, Petroelje TR, Kautz TM, Beyer DE Jr, Belant JL. 2022. Ubms: an R package for fitting hierarchical occupancy and N-mixture abundance models in a Bayesian framework. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 13:577–584.