Gray wolves help keep North America’s deer populations in check, and by doing so, may provide an added benefit for people: curbing deer-vehicle collisions. In Wisconsin counties where wolf populations returned, the number of such collisions dropped in each area by 24 percent on average, scientists report online May 24 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Economist Jennifer Raynor and colleagues analyzed data on wolf populations, deer populations and deer-vehicle collisions for 63 counties in Wisconsin from 1988 to 2010. In the 29 counties that had wolves, the predators thinning deer populations contributed about a 6 percent reduction in deer-vehicle collisions. The rest of the decrease,
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