Author Guidelines and FAQ

To ensure your submission is complete and meets the journal's formatting requirements, and to ensure that you are aware of all author expectations, please check that you have addressed the following questions before you make your submission.

Is your cover letter complete and effective?

You will need to submit a cover letter using the journal's cover letter form to accompany your manuscript submission. For consistency, please respond to the questions exactly as displayed in the form rather than reconstructing the document. The cover letter should be treated as an intentional component of your submission and is required for all categories of submissions. An effective cover letter explains the relevance of your work while including important information for the editors.

Is your manuscript prepared for double-anonymous peer review?

A double-anonymous review facilitates fair review processes to increase equity in scholarly publishing. Information identifying the authors or their affiliations should not be located anywhere in the article document, including on the title page, headers, or footers. Because the manuscript should not have any identifying author information, it is critical to include all author names in the online manuscript submission form AND in the mandatory cover letter, as these will be the only locations the editors can access author information. The reviewers will not know whose paper they are reviewing.

Is your manuscript formatted to journal guidelines?

Consistent document formatting helps the reviewers and editors to assess submissions. Your manuscript should include:

• Continuous line numbers AND page numbers throughout the document.
• Continuous article sections rather than page breaks (i.e., do not start the next section on a new page, including after the abstract and key words).
• Double-spaced (2.0) line formatting, with the first line of each paragraph indented.
• 12-point font and 1-inch margins on all sides.
• All sections and information pertaining to your submission category, including the title, abstract, key words, introduction, study area, methods, results, discussion, management implications, acknowledgments, and literature cited, unless instructed otherwise by the editors.
• Embedded color figures, tables, and captions placed together at the end of the document, not where they are referenced in the text. These components must not exceed the document margins and must have a text size and clarity that is readable.
• Supplemental files attached to the submission form, if needed. Supplemental files can include appendices, supplemental figures or tables that would not be published in the article, datasets, surveys, or other content directly relevant to understand the research. Combine supplemental materials into one document for ease of access for reviewers and editors.

Are your citations complete, consistent, and correct?

Manuscripts with excessive citation errors or inconsistencies between the literature cited section and in-text citations can distract editors and reviewers from the research. Before you submit your manuscript, be sure:

• All references in your literature cited are mentioned in the text.
• All in-text citations (except for unpublished data, if any) are included in the literature cited.
• The spelling of author names and accent marks are correct and consistent between the literature cited and in the text.
• All author names are included in the literature cited (i.e., include all author names in a citation; do not use […] to indicate that there are more authors).
• The publication year is correct and consistent between the literature cited and in the text.
• The access date (month, date, and year) is provided for all website citations.
• In-text citations are formatted according to journal guidelines. Correct example: (Conover and Vail 2014, Linz et al. 2017, Frey et al. 2022, Vail 2022, Frey 2023).

Please address the following questions about your revision materials before uploading your revision.

How did your decision email instruct you to upload a revision?

Unless otherwise instructed in your decision email from the editor-in-chief, please upload your submission as a revision, not as a new submission. You can do this by going into your existing submission and clicking on "revise submission." If the decision email explicitly instructed you to submit your revision as a new submission that would go through a new review process, then follow the online submission process as you did with your initial submission.

Is your revision cover letter complete and effective?

When you upload a revision, you will need to include a detailed revision cover letter. The cover letter needs to explain the changes that you did or did not make based on feedback from reviewers and editors. Only one document can be uploaded as the cover letter. Thus, if you have additional documents of information (such as a track change document, etc.), please combine all information into one document with the written letter portion as the first page. Upload your cover letter as a Word document or PDF. Upload a clean copy (i.e., no track changes showing your edits) as a Word document in the revision upload section of your submission in the online portal.

Did your decision email specify a track change document from the editor?

The editor-in-chief will sometimes attach a document with track change edits as a link at the absolute bottom of the decision email. This location is set by the manuscript system and is easy for authors to miss. Be sure to check this area to access the track change document if one is mentioned within the decision email message. This is a different document and location than where you access your review feedback. If you are uncertain or need assistance accessing a track change document, contact the editorial office directly at .

Are your citations still complete, consistent, and correct?

Citations are often added or omitted during the revision stage. Please ensure that all references in the literature cited are mentioned in the text, and vice versa. Ensure that author names and publication dates are correct and consistent between the literature cited section and the text.

Additionally, format your references to journal guidelines to the best of your ability. This speeds up time to publication if your revision is accepted. Following are examples of typical citation formatting according to journal editorial guidelines:

Journal article

Scasta, J. D., J. D. Hennig, and J. L. Beck. 2018. Framing contemporary U.S. wild horse and burro management processes in a dynamic ecological, sociological, and political environment. Human–Wildlife Interactions 12:31–45.

Book

Linz, G. M., M. L. Avery, and R. A. Dolbeer. 2017. Ecology and management of blackbirds (Icteridae) in North America. CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida, USA.

Chapter in a book

Martin, J. A., T. J. Conkling, J. L. Belant, K. M. Biondi, B. F. Blackwell, T. L. DeVault, E. Fernández-Juricic, P. M. Schmidt, and T. W. Seamans. 2013. Wildlife conservation and alternative land uses at airports. Pages 117–128 in T. L. DeVault, B. F. Blackwell, and J. L. Belant, editors. Wildlife in airport environments: preventing animal–aircraft collisions through science-based management. The Wildlife Society and Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

Government or technical publication

Homan, H. J., R. J. Johnson, J. R. Thiele, and G. M. Linz. 2017. European starlings. Wildlife Damage Management Technical Series, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services National Wildlife Research Center, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA.

Conference proceedings

DeVault, T. L., J. Kubel, O. E. Rhodes, Jr., and R. A. Dolbeer. 2009. Habitat and bird communities at small airports in the midwestern USA. Proceedings of the Wildlife Damage Management Conference 13:137–145.

Herrero, S. 1989. The role of learning in some fatal grizzly bear attacks on people. Pages 9–14 in M. Bromly, editor. Bear–people conflicts. Proceedings of a Symposium on Management Strategies, Northwest Territories Department of Renewable Resources, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada.

Website

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). 2020. Advisory Circular (AC) 150/5200-33C-Hazardous wildlife attractants on or near airports. Federal Aviation Administration, Washington, D.C., USA, <https://www.faa/gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/150- 5200-33C.pdf>. Accessed August 3, 2022.

General notes on editorial style

• All names after the first author have the initial(s) followed by the last name.
• Include periods and a space between initials.
• The publication year should not be set in parentheses.
• Only the first word and proper nouns in a title should be capitalized. All else, including the first word after a colon (:) should be lowercase.
• Use an en-dash (–) and not a hyphen (-) in page number ranges.
• Include city, state/province, and country with publisher information.
• Include page title; organization's city, state/province, and country; and access date of month, day, and year for website citations.