The western United States has experienced large-scale degradation due to land use and land cover changes, invasion of annual grasses, and expansion of woody plants into grass and shrublands and the resultant altered fire regimes. These landscape-scale changes have coincided with declining mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) populations, making habitat loss...
These data were obtained from GPS radio collared mule deer from 2015-2017 in the John Day Basin. The dataets includes location data for used vs available predictor variable information for time since fire, juniper canopy cover, NDVI, and vegetation community for winter, summer:migratory, summer:resident seasonal ranges. The datasets were used...
Columbian black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus) are important economically, ecologically, and culturally as an indigenous species in western Oregon. Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) observed declines in black-tailed deer populations since the late 1980’s and attributes these declines to reduction in quality and availability of habitat, following the...
It is critical for wildlife managers to understand the population dynamics of a harvested species, particularly for ungulates, which are a valuable wildlife resource. Due to concerns that mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) populations in Oregon were declining, more comprehensive data on population vital rates and the factors potentially affecting them...
Mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) populations in south-central Oregon are near their lowest levels since census efforts began in 1961. I investigated fawn survival, cause-specific mortality, and factors contributing to mortality from 2010 – 2012 to identify potential causes for the decline. I also explored pre-parturition and parturition site characteristics.
I...
Ungulate behavior has been studied extensively but direct observation of free-ranging animals over long periods of time and large geographic areas is often prohibitively difficult. Improved technology, such as GPS collars fitted with motion-sensitive activity monitors, provides researchers with a potential tool to remotely collect fine scale activity and location...
In contrast with other Odocoileus species, Columbian black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus) population dynamics are not well understood throughout the species’ range. Concerns over apparent long-term population declines have prompted efforts to fill basic knowledge gaps including estimates of vital rates (fecundity, recruitment and survival) and cause-specific mortality. The Oregon...
Millions of acres of rangeland in the western U.S. is shared habitat by elk (Cervus canadensis), mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), and cattle (Bos taurus). Potential competition between these ungulates for the same forage species can be understood from their diet composition. I used DNA metabarcoding methods with trnL primers to...
The assessment of habitat quality for wild populations requires evaluation of vital rates associated with the use of that habitat. Factors associated with bottom-up (forage) or top-down (predation) regulation and the relative contribution of these processes on ungulate populations are difficult to quantify, especially for a cryptic, but widely distributed...
This research sought to explore the implications of different tenure regimes for both
landscape-level ecological processes and the overall resilience of a social-ecological
system in Central Oregon. The purchase by an investor of former industrial timberlands
known as the Bull Springs tract raised the specter of dispersed residential development on...
