This project will focus on analysis of 10 years of GPS telemetry data for 60 grizzly bears across the threatened and fragmented trans-border grizzly bear subpopulations in the Cabinet, Yaak, Purcell, and Selkirk Mountain (Proctor et al. 2012) with a goal to identify areas of high quality core habitat and understand the ecological characteristics that underpin habitat use. We will use Resource Selection Function habitat-use models for partitioned by sex and in each of 3 seasons to capture the variation of bear habitat use. We will also work to integrate our results to inform wildlife and land managers on where to concentrate their management efforts by season to promote population health and resilience in both the US and Canada. We will also extend the ongoing trend monitoring effort through radio collaring females into the Canadian Yahk and Selkirks to monitor the effectiveness of the cumulative conservation efforts in these ecosystems.
FY20142014 Objectives:
Habitat modeling: Our main objective is to identify areas of high quality habitat and understand the ecological characteristics that combine to create those habitats through development of sex, season, and mountain range-specific Resource Selection Function (RSF) habitat-use models.
The ultimate objective is to secure and improve important core habitat and reconnect several fragmented threatened grizzly bear subpopulations (Cabinets, Yaak, and S Selkirks) to large healthy populations in southern BC, Canada and the U.S. northern Rocky Mountains. By understanding and managing the larger system of core and linkage habitats we can provide and manage both for use by grizzly bears and other wildlife increasing their resiliency and ability to adapt to climate change.
Trend monitoring radio collaring: Our objective is to radio collar at least 3 females and provide the resulting data to the USFWS ongoing trend monitoring program.
