Indigenous Knowledge (IK) is the collective term to represent the many place‐based knowledges accumulated across generations within myriad specific cultural contexts. Despite its millennia‐long and continued application by Indigenous peoples to environmental management, non‐Indigenous “Western” scientific research and management have only recently considered IK. We use detailed and diverse examples to highlight how IK is increasingly incorporated in research programs, enhancing understanding of – and contributing novel insight into – ecology and evolution, as well as physiology and applied ecology (that is, management). The varied contributions of IK stem from long periods of observation, interaction, and experimentation with species, ecosystems, and ecosystem processes. Despite commonalities between IK and science, we outline the ethical duty required by scientists when working with IK holders. Given past and present injustice, respecting self‐determination of Indigenous peoples is a necessary condition to support mutually beneficial research processes and outcomes.

Phenology, the annual timing of naturally recurring events in animals and plants, is exhibiting significant changes in response to climate change. Drastic shifts in the timing of plant activity have been observed in high‐latitude environments in particular, which are exposed to the greatest amount of warming. Taking into consideration the importance of plant growth and seasonal availability for the whole ecosystem, we would hope that ample research is conducted on the impacts of climate change on plant phenology in the Arctic tundra. We provide a geographic and temporal overview of research relating to impacts of climate change on plant phenology and investigate whether the Arctic tundra is receiving the research attention that appears warranted due to the rapid warming and large expected changes in this biome. We conducted a literature search for articles using the Institute for Scientific Information Web of Science and evaluated focus on biomes, and temporal trends for 2000–2015. We found that the tundra was one of the least researched biomes, when compared to all other biomes. Proportional to the land surface the tundra covers, significantly less research in North America has been devoted to this biome than expected, while profusion of research in Europe was as expected. Additionally, we found that in the past sixteen years, despite the increase in the number of articles published relating to climate change and plant phenology, the proportion of the research devoted to the tundra decreased over time. Our findings also indicate that more work is being done on plant phenology and climate change in lower latitudes. We suggest that the results of this analysis are due to three non‐insurmountable obstacles (access, expense, and complexity) and provide practical suggestions for increased investment in climate change and plant phenology research in the otherwise neglected Arctic tundra.

Home ranges have been widely-used as ecological tools, though using home range estimates in decision-support for conservation biology is a relatively new idea. However, trophic levels are rarely taken into consideration when estimating home range. This lapse could present issues when interpreting past studies, especially in policy-based conservation. The objectives of this study were to survey the current literature, to critically analyse published articles with home range analyses, and to compare home range size by species’ trophic level. We predicted that animals residing in higher trophic levels would have significantly larger home ranges than animals occupying lower trophic levels. We found that terrestrial carnivores had larger home ranges than terrestrial herbivores, though terrestrial mesocarnivores had the largest home ranges. We also found that aquatic herbivores had larger home ranges than both aquatic carnivores and aquatic mesocarnivores. Our results are important to consider for planning and management sectors, to avoid the implementation of ineffective conservation policies.

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Local people can act as sentinels for change, especially for wildlife populations not monitored by centralized governments. Responding to concern expressed by the Kitasoo Xai'xais (KX) First Nation over a decline in mountain goat (Oreamnos americanus) sightings, our community‐academic partnership assessed the conservation status of goats in KX territory and beyond in British Columbia by evaluating three independent information sources. Aerial surveys (2019 and 2020) over 542 km2 revealed a low‐density population (mean 0.25, SD 0.12 goats/km2), typical of peripheral coastal range. Interviews with KX Knowledge Holders revealed that sightings from sea level have declined sharply over 40 years, a period during which temperatures have increased and snowpack has decreased. Finally, Kill data (1980–2018) showed that kills/hunter/day initially increased among guided hunters before plateauing, but declined among resident hunters (~70% of hunt days) in both coastal and interior BC. Convergent patterns among datasets suggest that coastal goats declined in abundance and/or reduced use of low‐elevation habitat, disrupting a millennia‐old relationship between KX people and goats, thereby posing a conservation concern. Broadly, our work shows that detecting threats to peripheral populations, and wildlife in general, can be informed and empowered by the knowledge of place‐based peoples and associated decentralized management. Kitasoo Xai'xais First Nation mountain goat research illustrates roles of Indigenous peoples as sentinels of population and ecosystem change.

Species at the periphery of their range are typically limited in density by poor habitat quality. As a result, the central-marginal hypothesis (CMH) predicts a decline in genetic diversity of populations toward the periphery of a species' range. Grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) once ranged throughout most of North America but have been extirpated from nearly half of their former range, mainly in the south. They are considered a species at risk even in Canada's remote North, where they occupy the northernmost edge of the species' continental distribution in a low-productivity tundra environment. With climate change, one of their main prey species in the tundra (caribou), which has always shown yearly fluctuations, is declining, but simultaneously, grizzlies appear to be expanding their range northward in the same tundra environment. Yet, a lack of population density estimates across the North is hindering effective conservation action. The CMH has implications for the viability of peripheral populations, and the links between population fluctuations, potential bottlenecks, and genetic diversity need to be determined to contribute to species' conservation. Using noninvasive genetic sampling from 2012 to 2014 and autosomal DNA genotyping (via microsatellites), we estimated bear density using a spatial capture-recapture framework and analyzed genetic diversity using observed heterozygosity (Ho), allelic richness (AR), and expected heterozygosity (He). We compared our findings to other studies that used comparable methodologies on grizzly bears and a related species (black bears; Ursus americanus). We found densities of grizzly bears that were low for the species but characteristic for the region (5.9 ± 0.4 bears/1000 km 2 ), but with high Ho (0.81 ± 0.05), AR (7 ± 0.78), and He (0.71 ± 0.03), despite a signal of recent bottlenecks. In both species, peripherality was not correlated with Ho but was negatively correlated with density. We suggest that the apparent growth of this expanding population of grizzlies offsets the negative impacts of recent bottlenecks on Ho. Indigenous knowledge provides historical context (on the order of centuries, e.g., arctic large mammal fluctuations, grizzly bear Mirjam Barrueto and Tyler D. Jessen contributed equally to this study.

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