While his work is varied, Hill says sustainable wildlife harvest and navigating human-wildlife conflict are common threads that unite all his research. And these threads closely align with the goals and vision of the Boone and Crockett Club.

“The fellowship offers broad support for me to investigate conservation-related research questions with novel data types,” Hill says. “I was excited for the opportunity to join an organization that conducts applied wildlife research combined with outreach and advocacy efforts.”

Providing Fresh Perspectives

Much of Hill’s current research is in its early stages but is poised to provide practical insight for wildlife managers. For example, Hill uses publicly available species use and trade data from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to examine how human use of mammals affects the animals’ conservation status. The IUCN documents various data for different species—from how they’re used by people to population trends. Using that data and mathematical modeling, he examines whether sport hunting affects conservation status and is a viable way to manage wildlife for over 1,000 mammal species worldwide.

While results have yet to be published, initial analysis shows that sport-hunted mammal species have improved conservation status compared to those not hunted for food, says Jerrold Belant, Hill’s supervisor and the Boone and Crockett Chair in Wildlife Conservation at Michigan State. One plausible reason is that entities like governments and nonprofits invest in managing those species, and sport hunting, by design, is intended to be sustainable.

Belant says Hill brings a global perspective to the team’s work, helping to answer hotly debated topics through rigorous scientific testing. “He is able to place what is happening in North America in a global context. In our increasingly global society, the need for that only increases, and Jacob is doing a great job of contextualizing that.”

Supporting Broad Research Goals

As a Boone and Crockett Fellow, Hill’s breadth of work is supported by the Club, enabling him to investigate a wide range of topics related to global wildlife harvest and conservation. He uses various research methods ranging from traditional field-based studies to more modern meta-analyses—helping scientists and managers look at familiar conservation challenges with fresh eyes.

For example, the IUCN data Hill studies have been in the public domain for some time, and Hill’s research analyzes new aspects of the data not previously published in scientific journals. “The fellowship offers broad support for me to investigate conservation-related research questions with novel data types,” Hill says. “I was excited for the opportunity to join an organization that conducts applied wildlife research combined with outreach and advocacy efforts.”

Predicting Livestock Depredation 

Hill’s work also focuses closer to home—predicting wolf depredation on livestock across the Great Lakes. Using publicly-available landscape data, he creates prediction maps to determine where depredation is likely to occur. Wolves are currently recolonizing the Great Lakes region, and the project aims to help reduce human-wildlife conflict while meeting wolf recovery goals. 

Wolves have big appetites, and Hill's research can help predict where they might prey on livestock in the Great Lakes region. 

“A lot of other studies incorporate data on wolves—like how many wolves are there. But that’s hard to do,” he says. That data isn’t always publicly available. It’s also expensive and challenging to obtain. Second, while wolf populations are expanding across the Great Lakes, they aren’t yet present in many areas—so wolf data might not even exist.

Using standalone landscape data is a novel approach that allows Hill to predict depredation in areas where wolves haven’t recolonized but are likely to do so. It also allows him to predict wolf depredation across a wider area without collecting wolf data, saving time and money.

So far, Hill’s approach is proving to be just as accurate as studies that include wolf data, though the research still needs to be completed. The approach could also expand to other purposes, like tracking or predicting the spread of invasive species.

From Seas to Forests 

When he began his undergraduate education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Hill was interested in science but undecided about a major. “I found this internship that was outside, working with sea turtles. It sounded fun, and I did it and really enjoyed it. The work was very rewarding because we were studying animals in a way that would allow us to manage them into the future more effectively,” Hill says. "Once I did that internship, I was sold on doing wildlife ecology, which led me to where I am now.”
 
After graduation, Hill worked with sea turtles in Florida, Costa Rica, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. His master’s at Purdue University examined the diet and population structure of hawksbill sea turtles.

A hawksbill sea turtle 

Hill’s Ph.D. at Mississippi State University brought a new focus on terrestrial ecosystems. He was looking to expand and take on new challenges, and shifting gears allowed him to examine different species, ecosystems, and scientific processes. Hill studied scavenging dynamics among vertebrate scavengers—the competition for carrion between vultures and other animals like raccoons, coyotes, alligators, and more. This is also where he first met Belant.
 
After graduation, Hill headed to a postdoc at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. There, he studied how vulture roosting patterns impact aircraft collisions at a marine airfield. During a second postdoc at the University of Georgia Savannah River Ecology Lab, Hill worked with raccoons and opossums in rabies management in partnership with the USDA’s National Rabies Management Program.
 
Belant says such diverse experiences make Hill a stronger scientist. “I think the diversity of knowledge and skills brings value in his ability to do science. He has such a broad skill and knowledge set,” Belant says. “He can draw from diverse experiences and disciplines and integrate them, making his work better than it otherwise would be.”