Treesearch

Merriam’s turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo merriami) historically occurred in ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) and Gambel’s oak (Quercus gambelli) forests in the southwestern U.S. They have been successfully transplanted into a wide array of habitats outside their original range. Some introduced populations are more robust than those within the original range. Annual survival fluctuates widely, ranging from 30 to 76 percent for adults. Survival of subadult hens is typically lower than adults. Predation is the primary mortality factor and coyotes are the most common predator. Percent of females...

The U.S. landscape has undergone substantial changes since Europeans first arrived. Many land use changes are attributable to human activity. Historical data concerning these changes are frequently limited and often difficult to develop. Modeling historical land use changes may be neccessary. We develop annual population series from first European settlement to 1999 for all 50 states and Washington D.C. for use in modeling land use trends. Extensive research went into developing the historical data. Linear interpolation was used to complete the series after critically evaluating the...

The Seventh World Wilderness Congress met in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in 2001. The symposium on science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values was one of several symposia held in conjunction with the Congress. The papers contained in this proceedings were presented at this symposium and cover seven topics: state-of-knowledge on protected areas issues in South Africa; traditional and ecological values of nature; wilderness systems and approaches to protection; protection of coastal/marine and river/lake wilderness; spiritual benefits, religious beliefs, and new...

Measures of understory burning activity in and around FIA plots in northeastern Florida were not significantly associated with reduced burning probability in the extreme fire season of 1998. In this unusual year, burn probability was greatest on ordinarily wetter sites, especially baldcypress stands, and positively associated with understory vegetation. Moderate amounts of lightning also were associated with greater burning probability. Factors associated with reduced burn probability included road density and nearby requests for site preparation or seed tree burns, perhaps a proxy for...

Bloodroot, Sanguinaria canadensis L. (Papaveraceae), is a common spring flowering herb in the deciduous forests of eastern North America. It is disjunctly distributed in the northeastern Black Hills of South Dakota. There are 22 known occurrences of bloodroot on Black Hills National Forest in hardwood forests, shrub thickets, and floodplain habitats of limited distribution. Bloodroot occurrences in the Black Hills are associated with beaver (Castor canadensis) dams, beaver-created floodplains, forested terraces, drainage bottoms, and north-facing footslopes. The species is considered...

Wildland road removal is a common practice across the U.S. and in some parts of Canada. The main types of road removal include ripping, stream crossing restoration, and full recontour. Road removal creates a short-term disturbance that may temporarily increase sediment loss. However, research and long-term monitoring have shown that road removal both reduces erosion rates and the risk of road-induced landslides. Research is needed to determine whether road removal is effective at restoring ecosystem processes and wildlife habitat. We propose several research questions and the types of...

Effective conservation efforts for at-risk species require knowledge of the locations of existing populations. Species presence can be estimated directly by conducting field-sampling surveys or alternatively by developing predictive models. Direct surveys can be expensive and inefficient, particularly for rare and difficult- to-sample species, and models of species presence may produce biased predictions. We present a Bayesian approach that combines sampling and model-based inferences for estimating species presence. The accuracy and cost-effectiveness of this approach were compared to...

Bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus) is a species of conservation concern-listed as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act-throughout its native range in the western United States. The authors were assembled by the Clark Fork River Aquatic Implementation Team, composed of biologists representing Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (MFWP); Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG); and Avista Corporation, to provide a conservation genetics perspective and to assist those managers charged with stewardship of the bull trout populations occupying the Lake Pend Oreille (ID)-lower Clark Fork...

We quantified Mg:Ca, Mn:Ca, Sr:Ca, and Ba:Ca molar ratios from an area representing the summer 2000 growth season on otoliths and scales from 1-year-old westslope cutthroat trout Oncorhyncus clarki lewisi collected from three streams in the Coeur d'Alene River, Idaho, system. We also quantified Mg:Ca, Sr:Ca, and Ba:Ca molar ratios in the water during summer 2000 and used regressions to model the assimilation of the various ratios into the otoliths and scales. Otolith and scale chemistries were linearly related to the Sr:Ca and Ba:Ca ratios in the water. The partition coefficients for the...

Hankin and Reeves' (1988) approach to estimating fish abundance in small streams has been applied in stream fish studies across North America. However, their population estimator relies on two key assumptions: (1) removal estimates are equal to the true numbers of fish, and (2) removal estimates are highly correlated with snorkel counts within a subset of sampled stream units. Violations of these assumptions may produce suspect results. To determine possible sources of the assumption violations, I used data on the abundance of steelhead Oncorhynchus mykiss from Hankin and Reeves' (1988) in...