Performing Department
School Of Natural Resources
Non Technical Summary
Assessing how animals use their surroundings and how they respond numerically has been a central objective of wildlife conservation for the past six decades. Common aims are to determine what habitats are most important, how animals move through the landscape, and to relate space use patterns to management activities and environmental conditions. In all cases, space use research focuses on the choices made by wildlife. Physiological stress is one important factor that might impact space use patterns we observe of wildlife. Despite the utility of such studies, field and analytical techniques for assessing wildlife space use patterns and demographic responses have not kept pace with technological advancements or conservation needs. For management actions to be effective, we must develop new and robust techniques and rigorously evaluate the assumptions and biases in techniques that quantify space use patterns and develop approaches for linking space use patterns with population demographics. We must also develop techniques that make use of commonly collected data, such as harvest data routinely collected by management agencies.The relationship between space use and demographics is important by answering the question: what are the consequences of the observed space use patterns on a species performance? We will use state-of-the-art modeling techniques and field methods (e.g., GPS collars) to address these questions. This research will allow for a better understanding of how forest management actions affect the space use, demographics, and stress of vertebrate populations. This research will integrate field, analytical, and laboratory methods. Research will be published in leading journals in wildlife management and ecology and disseminated widely through presentations in addition to publications.
Animal Health Component
0%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
50%
Applied
50%
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
1. Evaluate, develop, and apply analytical techniques to assess wildlife demographics using data commonly collected by management agencies.2. Simulate management activities and disturbance across relevant forested landscapes (e.g. the Ozark Highlands) under several forest management scenarios (e.g., current land management plans that feature ecosystem restoration, traditional regulated timber management, no management)to evaluate wildlife response to these activities. The role of climate change will also be considered as appropriate.3. Determine the effects of even-aged, uneven-aged, and no-harvest forest management on the species composition and relative abundance of amphibian, reptile, and small mammal communities within landscapes on MOFEP sites.4. Assess how species such as reintroduced elk respond to novel forested landscapes. This includes an assessment of movements, demographics, and stress.
Project Methods
OBJECTIVE 1The collection of age-at-harvest data is a routine activity of most state wildlife management agencies. For many wildlife agencies an assessment of annual harvest is made using hunter check stations or telephone checking (e.g., telecheck). In addition to total harvest, data on sex and age of harvested animals are routinely collected. These harvest data are often the only wide-scale data available on an annual basis to assess the efficacy of harvest regulations, wildlife response to management activities, and status and trends of the populations. Despite the value of such data, many of the early deterministic reconstruction methods used in vital rate estimation have substantial bias and make unrealistic assumptions (Millspaugh et al. 2009). In contrast to these early deterministic reconstruction methods, modern population reconstruction techniques have several notable advantages such as a flexible framework which can include auxiliary data (e.g., radiotelemetry, Broms et al. 2009), estimation of confidence intervals on demographic parameters, and simultaneous estimation of multiple demographic parameters such as natural survival, abundance, and harvest probabilities (Skalski et al. 2005). Additionally, these modern methods allow for inclusion of readily available age-at-harvest and hunter effort information routinely collected by management agencies. Thus, age-at-harvest data can be collected at spatial scales too broad for traditional and intensive inventory techniques such as mark-recapture. Last, the approach can identify important data gaps that could be filled by additional field studies. Therefore, these methods are appropriate within an adaptive management framework because additional data can continue to improve the realism of statistical models and provide more accurate and precise estimates of vital rates.OBJECTIVE 2Land management in the Ozarks Highlands has undergone a transition on public lands from a focus on tradition even aged forest management to more diverse objectives that highlight ecosystem restoration. The new land management plan for the Mark Twain National Forest has a strong focus on restoration of fire-adapted communities such as woodlands, savannas, and glades because of potential benefits to fire management and biological diversity. Many state-owned lands have similar objectives while private lands are mostly managed for timber or grazing. This change in management has come about because of a desire to restore ecosystems to a historical condition, the potential benefits to biological diversity (including wildlife populations) and a reduction in the risk of severe wildfires. We propose to develop landscape and wildlife population models to evaluate the long term and large scale effects of these practices. We will also integrate climate change as appropriate.OBJECTIVE 3We will conduct this research on study sites that comprise the MOFEP, a landscape-scale experiment administered by the Missouri Department of Conservation (Brookshire and Shifley 1997). The study area includes nine study sites, ranging in size from 312 to 514 ha, located in a region that is 84% forested. The study sites are located in Carter, Reynolds, and Shannon counties in the Ozark hills of south-central Missouri (91?01' to 91?13' W and 37?00' to 37?12'N). Pre-1880, these forests were dominated by continuous short-leaf pine (Pinus echinata) communities, but intensive harvesting during 1880 to 1920, followed by repeated burning and grazing altered the landscape to produce the mature upland oak-hickory and oak-pine communities found there today. In the Ozarks, white oak (Quercus alba) shares the canopy with other species of oaks, including post oak (Q. stellata), black oak (Q. velutina), scarlet oak (Q. coccinea), and with short-leaf pine and mockernut hickory (Carya tomentosa). Prior to MOFEP, trees in these sites had not been cut since 1950, and most overstory trees were 50 to 70 years old.OBJECTIVE 4:The Eastern subspecies of elk (Cervus elaphus canadensis) once ranged throughout Missouri but was extinct by 1900. Numerous states in Eastern North America have successfully restored free-ranging elk populations, including Kentucky, Arkansas, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. The Missouri Conservation Commission approved an elk restoration in Missouri in October 2010. A total of 108 elk were translocated from Southeastern Kentucky to Peck Ranch Conservation Area in the Missouri Ozarks from 2011-2013. A cooperative research project was initiated between the University of Missouri and the Missouri Department of Conservation to gather baseline data on the initial phase of the elk restoration. This study will conclude in July 2015. Thus, I propose to continue this research and extend it to different areas relevant to management. Although the research has provided valuable information on the status of the newly introduced elk population, most of the results, especially the demographic data are from elk potentially influenced by the translocation process (capture, holding in captivity for months, handling for disease testing, and moving into a new environment). Based on other restored elk herds, we expect very different elk demographics than what was observed during the first several years of the restoration.