Progress 07/01/10 to 09/30/11
Outputs
OUTPUTS: During the funded period, this ongoing project resulted in several activities and products. Namely, we conducted three field research seasons (July-September 2010, January-March 2011, July-September 2011), during which we live-trapped and monitored the survival and movements of 227 snowshoe hares (Lepus americanus) on six 20-ha study sites in north-central Washington (Loomis State Forest, Okanogan National Forest). Our field research also entailed extensive forest habitat analysis (e.g., understory and canopy cover measurement) at all six study sites and hare kill sites. Thus far, our work has produced data on the abundance of hares at each site for each season, the movements and fates of 111 individual hares equipped with mortality-sensitive radio-collars, and the surrounding forest features and responsible predators for 36 depredations. The results of our research have been disseminated to our agency partners (Forest Service, Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR), Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), US Fish and Wildlife Service) at meetings of the Washington Lynx Working Group. Furthermore, we have initiated an outreach and education program under this project titled "Project HARE - Helping to Align Research and Education." This program entails a partnership with Omak Middle School, a minority serving institution, whereby an eighth grade teacher - Nick Polelier - spent time with us in the field (September 2011) and then used what he learned to augment his teaching in the classroom. Another field visit by this teacher is planned for the winter of 2012. PARTICIPANTS: In addition to the PI (Aaron Wirsing), project participants included a School of Environmental and Forest Sciences graduate student (Laurel Peelle, MSc), whose professional development was facilitated by the funded work, and partners from four collaborating agencies: Robert Naney (Forest Service), Gary Koehler (Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife), Scott Fisher (Washington Department of Natural Resources), Greg Kurz (US Fish and Wildlife Service). TARGET AUDIENCES: Our target audiences are (1) the academic community, which has a general interest in the influence of fragmentation and matrix quality on predator-prey interactions, (2) our agency partners (USDA Forest Service, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Washington Department of Natural Resources, US Fish and Wildlife Service), which have an interest in managing Washington's boreal forests such that they promote snowshoe hare abundance and, consequently, lynx persistence, and (3) middle school science students in Washington (beginning with those at Omak Middle School), who we hope will benefit from and be inspired by our research on hare-predator interactions. As an effort to reach this third target audience, we have initiated Project HARE (detailed in the progress section of this report). PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: The research funded by the McIntire-Stennis award is part of a larger effort to understand snowshoe hare-predator relationships in the context of landscape change. Originally, the money was to be spent on global positioning system (GPS) collars, which we planned to use to assess fine-scale movement patterns of instrumented hares. Shortly before making the purchase, however, we discovered that GPS collar technology was not quite ready for use with hares. Thus, we shifted the McIntire-Stennis funds toward the purchase of very high frequency (VHF) collars with mortality-sensitivity to track patterns of hare survival in relation to forest features and landscape (forest) structure. All of the collars we purchased with the McIntire-Stennis funds have been deployed, the survival data the collars furnished will be published and used to guide forest management practices designed to benefit hares and lynx (their main predator), and our results will be published in the peer-reviewed literature. Although the McIntire-Stennis funds were redirected, in other words, they were nevertheless used to meet overall project objectives. No other major changes were effected during the course of the funded period.
Impacts
Analysis of the research conducted with the help of the McIntire-Stennis award is ongoing. Our findings thus far have resulted in a profound change in knowledge about the influence of forest matrix quality on snowshoe hare survival. Specifically, we have discovered that reduced matrix quality (a lack of forest understory cover in the area surrounding a forest stand, or patch, used by hares) in fragmented landscapes enhances hare mortality in forest remnants. Hares on three 20-ha study sites with an open (low-quality) matrix suffered markedly higher predation rates than conspecifics at three sites where matrix quality is high (i.e., the matrix offers dense cover similar to that in the remnant it encompasses). The mortality-sensitive collars purchased with McIntire-Stennis funds were absolutely crucial to gaining this new insight. We are also learning that elevation and snow conditions appear to effect where Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis) hunt as summer transitions to winter in relation to two competing mesocarnivores (bobcats, Lynx rufus, and coyotes, Canis latrans). Specifically, all three carnivores overlap while hunting competitively for hares in the summer (as evidenced by kill site locations with known culprits), but only lynx are able to regularly kill hares at high elevation sites where snow accumulation in winter is heaviest in winter. We plan on publishing our findings in peer-reviewed journals.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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