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Kimberly E Szcodronski

State fish and wildlife agencies are required to submit a State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP) every 10 years to be eligible for grants through the State Wildlife Grant Program. With the next round of revisions due in 2025, the U.S. Geological Survey North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center is evaluating how to best support states with further integrating climate-informed planning in their SWAPs. Here, we summarize how states in the North Central region, which includes Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming, addressed adaptation planning in their 2015 SWAPs. We review climate adaptation considerations in required SWAP elements one through five, including species, habitats,...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
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A total of 200 soil samples were collected in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in Grand Teton National Park and the National Elk Refuge in July 2019 for chronic wasting disease (CWD) monitoring purposes. To collect samples from locations where ungulates are most likely to be shedding or encountering CWD, we targeted elk collar data locations, known migration routes of mule deer and elk, and areas where yearly elk supplemental feeding generally occurs on the National Elk Refuge. We sampled 10 transects in Grand Teton National Park and 10 transects in the National Elk Refuge, each 1,000 meters in length. We collected soil samples every 100 meters along the transect for a total of 10 samples per transect. Terra Core...
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Climate Science and Adaptation Planning Support for State Wildlife Action Plans (SWAPs) in the North Central Region
State Wildlife Action Plans are intended to provide proactive planning and guidance for the management of rare or imperiled species, including Species of Greatest Conservation Need. States must update their State Wildlife Action Plans every 10 years, but planners often lack the capacity or resources to integrate climate change into their planning. Revised State Wildlife Action Plans for most states in the North Central region are due by 2025. Providing support and building capacity for climate-informed State Wildlife Action Plans will be most useful now, before revisions are underway in most states. To increase the capacity for state wildlife agencies, this project identified areas expected to be resilient against...
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Elk movement and predicted number of brucellosis-induced abortion events in the southern Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (1993-2015)
Using data from 288 adult and yearling female elk that were captured on 22 winter supplemental elk feedgrounds in Wyoming and monitored with GPS collars from 2007 - 2015, we fit Step Selection Functions (SSFs) during the spring abortion season and then implemented a master equation approach to translate SSFs into predictions of daily elk distribution for five plausible winter weather scenarios (from a heavy snow, to an extreme winter drought year). We predicted elk abortion events by combining elk distributions with empirical estimates of daily abortion rates, spatially varying elk seroprevalence, and elk population counts. Here we provide 1) the adult and yearling female elk GPS collar data used to fit SSFs, 2)...
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We investigated the time to removal of bovine fetal materials, meant to simulate elk abortion materials, by scavengers in southwest Montana at 233 sites in February – June 2017 and 2018. Scavengers are likely to reduce the transmission risk of brucellosis, a bacterial disease that can lead to reproductive failure in infected elk, by consuming and removing infectious fetal materials from the landscape. Sites were monitored using remote, motion-detecting cameras until the fetal materials were consumed or removed by scavengers. Here we provide: 1) the time to removal of fetal materials by scavengers, 2) scavenger and ungulate activity at the remote camera sites, and 3) descriptions of the 13 study locations in southwest...
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