551 items found
Type: Fact Sheet
Subjects: Wildlife diseases
Hemorrhagic disease
Hemorrhagic disease
Type:Fact Sheet
Subject:Wildlife diseases
Hemorrhagic disease
Hemorrhagic disease
Description:Fact sheet covering species affected in Colorado, what to look for, cause and transmission, and public health considerations.
Type: Article
Subjects: Mule deer
Habitat management
Habitat management
Type:Article
Subject:Mule deer
Habitat management
Habitat management
Description:The relationships between habitat, body condition, life history characteristics, and fitness components of ungulates are interwoven and of interest to researchers as they strive to understand the impacts of a changing environment. With the increased availability of portable ultrasound machines and the refinement of hormonal assays, assessment of ungulate body condition has become an accessible monitoring strategy. We employed body condition scoring, estimation of % ingesta-free body fat (%IFBF), assessment of free thyroid hormones (FT4 and FT3), and assessment of pregnancy, as metrics to determine if landscape-level habitat treatments affected body condition of adult (≥1.5 years old) female mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus). All body condition related metrics were measured on 2 neighboring study areas — a reference area that had received no habitat treatments and a treatment study area that had received mechanical removal of pinyon pine (Pinyus edulis) - Utah juniper (Juniperus osteosperma) forest, chemical control of weeds, and reseeding with preferred mule deer browse species. A consistent trend of higher %IFBF was observed in the treatment study area than in the reference study area , although variation of estimates was larger than hypothesized. A similar pattern was observed with higher thyroid hormones concentrations being observed in the treatment study area, but large amounts of variation within concentration estimates were also observed. The consistent pattern of higher body condition related estimates in our treatment study area provides evidence that large mammalian species are sensitive to landscape change, although variation within estimates underlie the challenge in detecting population level impacts stemming from environmental change. [show more]
Type: Article
Subjects: Hierarchical model
Resource selection model
Spatial statistics
Telemetry data
Trajectories
Resource selection model
Spatial statistics
Telemetry data
Trajectories
Type:Article
Subject:Hierarchical model
Resource selection model
Spatial statistics
Telemetry data
Trajectories
Resource selection model
Spatial statistics
Telemetry data
Trajectories
Description:New methods for modeling animal movement based on telemetry data are developed regularly. With advances in telemetry capabilities, animal movement models are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Despite a need for population-level inference, animal movement models are still predominantly developed for individual-level inference. Most efforts to upscale the inference to the population level are either post hoc or complicated enough that only the developer can implement the model. Hierarchical Bayesian models provide an ideal platform for the development of population-level animal movement models but can be challenging to fit due to computational limitations or extensive tuning required. We propose a two-stage procedure for fitting hierarchical animal movement models to telemetry data. The two-stage approach is statistically rigorous and allows one to fit individual-level movement models separately, then resample them using a secondary MCMC algorithm. The primary advantages of the two-stage approach are that the first stage is easily parallelizable and the second stage is completely unsupervised, allowing for an automated fitting procedure in many cases. We demonstrate the two-stage procedure with two applications of animal movement models. The first application involves a spatial point process approach to modeling telemetry data, and the second involves a more complicated continuous-time discrete-space animal movement model. We fit these models to simulated data and real telemetry data arising from a population of monitored Canada lynx in Colorado, USA. [show more]
Type: Fact Sheet
Subjects: Highly pathogenic avian influenza virus
Birds
Fact sheet
Birds
Fact sheet
Type:Fact Sheet
Subject:Highly pathogenic avian influenza virus
Birds
Fact sheet
Birds
Fact sheet
Description:Highly pathogenic avian influenza virus was confirmed in wild geese in Northeastern Colorado on March 24, 2022. Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) is working with the Colorado Department of Agriculture, the United States Department of Agriculture, and other agencies to monitor and respond to additional cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza. [show more]
Type: Article
Subjects: Swift fox
<em>Vulpes velox</em>
Resource utilization function
Conservation translocation
Reintroduction
<em>Vulpes velox</em>
Resource utilization function
Conservation translocation
Reintroduction
Type:Article
Subject:Swift fox
<em>Vulpes velox</em>
Resource utilization function
Conservation translocation
Reintroduction
<em>Vulpes velox</em>
Resource utilization function
Conservation translocation
Reintroduction
Description:Swift foxes (Vulpes velox) are endemic to the Great Plains of North America, but were extirpated from the northern portion of their range by the mid-1900s. Despite several reintroductions to the Northern Great Plains, there remains a ~350 km range gap between the swift fox population along the Montana and Canada border and that in northeastern Wyoming and northwestern South Dakota. A better understanding of what resources swift foxes use along the Montana and Canada border region will assist managers to facilitate connectivity among populations. From 2016 to 2018, we estimated the home range size and evaluated resource use within the home ranges of 22 swift foxes equipped with Global Positioning System tracking collars in northeastern Montana. Swift fox home ranges in our study were some of the largest ever recorded, averaging (± SE) 42.0 km2 ± 4.7. Our results indicate that both environmental and anthropogenic factors influenced resource use. At the population level, resource use increased by 3.3% for every 5.0% increase in percent grasslands. Relative probability of use decreased by 7.9% and 7.4% for every kilometer away from unpaved roads and gas well sites, respectively, and decreased by 3.0% and 11.3% for every one-unit increase in topographic roughness and every 0.05 increase in normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), respectively. Our study suggests that, to reestablish connectivity among swift fox populations in Montana, managers should aim to maintain large corridors of contiguous grasslands at a landscape scale, a process that likely will require having to work with multiple property owners. [show more]
Type: Article
Subjects: Wildland urban interface
<em>Puma concolor</em>
Mountain lion
Viral spread
Host-pathogen interaction
<em>Puma concolor</em>
Mountain lion
Viral spread
Host-pathogen interaction
Type:Article
Subject:Wildland urban interface
<em>Puma concolor</em>
Mountain lion
Viral spread
Host-pathogen interaction
<em>Puma concolor</em>
Mountain lion
Viral spread
Host-pathogen interaction
Description:Urban expansion can fundamentally alter wildlife movement and gene flow, but how urbanization alters pathogen spread is poorly understood. Here, we combine high resolution host and viral genomic data with landscape variables to examine the context of viral spread in puma (Puma concolor) from two contrasting regions: one bounded by the wildland urban interface (WUI) and one unbounded with minimal anthropogenic development (UB). We found landscape variables and host gene flow explained significant amounts of variation of feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) spread in the WUI, but not in the unbounded region. The most important predictors of viral spread also differed; host spatial proximity, host relatedness, and mountain ranges played a role in FIV spread in the WUI, whereas roads might have facilitated viral spread in the unbounded region. Our research demonstrates how anthropogenic landscapes can alter pathogen spread, providing a more nuanced understanding of host-pathogen relationships to inform disease ecology in free-ranging species. [show more]
Type: Text
Subjects: Gray wolf
Type:Text
Subject:Gray wolf
Description:Information from Colorado Parks & Wildlife on how to identify a gray wolf and submit a Wolf Sighting Form. [show more]
Type: Article
Subjects: Black bear
Denning chronology
Hibernation
Human-bear conflict
Residential development
Denning chronology
Hibernation
Human-bear conflict
Residential development
Type:Article
Subject:Black bear
Denning chronology
Hibernation
Human-bear conflict
Residential development
Denning chronology
Hibernation
Human-bear conflict
Residential development
Description:
- Expanding human development and climate change are dramatically altering habi-tat conditions for wildlife. While the initial response of wildlife to changing environ-mental conditions is typically a shift in behaviour, little is known about the effects of these stressors on hibernation behaviour, an important life- history trait that can subsequently affect animal physiology, demography, interspecific interactions and human-wildlife interactions. Given future trajectories of land use and climate change, it is important that wildlife professionals understand how animals that hi-bernate are adapting to altered landscape conditions so that management activities can be appropriately tailored.
- We investigated the influence of human development and weather on hibernation in black bears (Ursus americanus), a species of high management concern, whose behaviour is strongly tied to natural food availability, anthropogenic foods around development and variation in annual weather conditions. Using GPS collar data from 131 den events of adult female bears (n= 51), we employed fine- scale, animal- specific habitat information to evaluate the relative and cumulative influence of natural food availability, anthropogenic food and weather on the start, duration and end of hibernation.
- We found that weather and food availability (both natural and human) additively shaped black bear hibernation behaviour. Of the habitat variables we examined, warmer temperatures were most strongly associated with denning chronology, re-ducing the duration of hibernation and expediting emergence in the spring. Bears appeared to respond to natural and anthropogenic foods similarly, as more natural foods, and greater use of human foods around development, both postponed hi-bernation in the fall and decreased its duration.
- Synthesis and applications. Warmer temperatures and use of anthropogenic food subsides additively reduced black bear hibernation, suggesting that future changes in climate and land use may further alter bear behaviour and increase the length of their active season. We speculate that longer active periods for bears will result in subsequent increases in human–bear conflicts and human-caused bear mortalities. These metrics are commonly used by wildlife agencies to index trends in bear pop-ulations, but have the potential to be misleading when bear behaviour dynamically adapts to changing environmental conditions, and should be substituted with relia-ble demographic methods.
Type: Article
Subjects: Animal behaviour
Conservation biology
Stable isotope analysis
Conservation biology
Stable isotope analysis
Type:Article
Subject:Animal behaviour
Conservation biology
Stable isotope analysis
Conservation biology
Stable isotope analysis
Description:There is growing recognition that developed landscapes are important systems in which to promote ecological complexity and conservation. Yet, little is known about processes regulating these novel ecosystems, or behaviours employed by species adapting to them. We evaluated the isotopic niche of an apex carnivore, the cougar (Puma concolor), over broad spatiotemporal scales and in a region characterized by rapid landscape change. We detected a shift in resource use, from near complete specialization on native herbivores in wildlands to greater use of exotic and invasive species by cougars in contemporary urban interfaces. We show that 25 years ago, cougars inhabiting these same urban interfaces possessed diets that were intermediate. Thus, niche expansion followed human expansion over both time and space, indicating that an important top predator is interacting with prey in novel ways. Thus, though human-dominated landscapes can provide sufficient resources for apex carnivores, they do not necessarily preserve their ecological relationships. [show more]