XLI CICLO | Droghei Sarah

I’m an ecobiologist specializing in wildlife conservation and management. Since my graduation, I have dedicated my research to large carnivores, with a master’s thesis on wolf habitat selection.
Further collaborations led me to study wolf diet and hunting strategies in Canada and den selection in Scandinavia. I am currently a PhD candidate studying large carnivore recolonization processes, with a primary focus on brown bears. My research adopts a multidisciplinary approach, integrating movement ecology and stress physiology to investigate how anthropogenic disturbance influences animal behaviour, spatial ecology, and physiological responses. More broadly, I am interested in understanding how wildlife can persist and recover in increasingly human-modified environments to support evidence-based conservation and management strategies.

Large carnivores are key components of ecosystems, but their recovery and recolonization in human-dominated landscapes increasingly expose them to anthropogenic disturbance, potentially affecting their behaviour, spatial ecology, and physiology. Understanding how these species adapt to human pressures is essential for developing effective conservation strategies. My PhD project focuses on the recolonization of large carnivores, using the brown bear (Ursus arctos) as a model species. The research adopts a multidisciplinary approach integrating movement ecology and stress physiology. In particular, the project investigates how human disturbance influences bear movement patterns and space use, as well as the physiological stress response mediated by glucocorticoid production and fitness.
By linking behavioural and physiological responses to environmental and anthropogenic factors, this research aims to improve our understanding of how large carnivores persist and expand in human-modified landscapes.