Quantifying habitat use is vital to understanding animal ecology. Herein, we contrast classification‐based (i.e., animal locations are placed into habitat categories for subsequent analyses) and distance‐based (i.e., distance between animal locations and habitat features are used in subsequent analyses) approaches for analyzing habitat use data. Compositional analysis (CA) and a distance‐based analysis (DA) were used to quantify habitat selection of Northern Bobwhite (Colinus virginianus). We qualitatively compared the outcome of these different procedures to illustrate advantages of the DA approach. The DA approach identified edges as an important habitat feature, and location error did not alter conclusions from DA. In contrast, CA did not detect the importance of edge, and presence of location errors altered conclusions. Moreover, modeling the distribution of location error did not effectively reduce sensitivity to error within CA. Distance‐based approaches to habitat analyses are not restricted to linear or point habitat features, require no explicit error handling, and permit extraction of more information from the data than classification‐based analyses alone. Corresponding Editor: J. M. Fryxell

Food resources and predation play important roles in determining small mammal population dynamics. These factors also can interact as individuals und

Declining large carnivore populations, increased habitat fragmentation, declining interests in fur trapping, and other anthropogenic factors can all lead to increased mesopredator populations and these may negatively impact biodiversity. Lethal mesopredator control potentially mitigates some of these effects but can be controversial, largely because impacts on mesopredator populations have not been evaluated. Estimating these impacts may reduce controversies while increasing our understanding of when lethal control may be beneficial. Therefore, we analyzed published mesopredator removal data to determine if mesopredator removal rates changed over time. Removals of medium,(e.g., raccoons (Procyon lotor) or red foxes (Vulpes vulpes), and large, i.e., bobcats (Lynx rufus) or coyotes (Canis latrans), mesopredators were consistent from year to year and over the duration of study (i.e., number removed during the first and last years of studies were similar). In contrast, removals of small mesopredators, e.g., weasels (Mustela spp.) or spotted skunks (Spilogale putorius), declined over the duration of study. Study area size, number of species targeted for removal, and duration of removal effort were poor predictors of removal rates. Our analyses suggest that: (1) control, as typically implemented, is unlikely to cause negative long-term impacts on populations of medium and large mesopredators but may negatively impact small mesopredators, (2) if mesopredator control benefits prey, recurring removals will generally be needed to maintain benefits, and (3) timing of removals will be important to achieve management goals. We suggest that mesopredator control efforts are frequently spatially structured harvests from continuously distributed populations. This may explain (1) why removal of small mesopredators declined over time; whereas, medium and large mesopredator removals remained consistent, and (2) why some prey failed to respond to mesopredator control efforts.