Wolves, elk, and bison: reestablishing the landscape of fear

This paper introduced and named the landscape of fear concept, arguing that prey perceive their habitat as a spatially varying map of predation risk that shapes where and how they forage. Using elk and bison responses to returning wolves in Yellowstone, Laundre, Hernandez and Altendorf quantified shifts in vigilance and habitat use as functions of perceived risk. Although focused on wolves, the framework became a central organizing idea for puma-ungulate and other felid systems, where ambush predators create steep, fine-grained risk gradients. The concept reframed predation as more than direct killing: fear itself redistributes prey, alters grazing pressure and can drive behaviorally mediated trophic cascades across landscapes.