Behavioral and demographic responses of mule deer to energy development on winter range

Behavioral and demographic responses of mule deer to energy development on winter range

Anthropogenic habitat modification is a major driver of global biodiversity loss. In North America, one of the primary sources of habitat modification over the last 2 decades has been exploration for and production of oil and natural gas (hydrocarbon development), which has led to demographic and behavioral impacts to numerous wildlife species. Developing effective measures to mitigate these impacts has become a critical task for wildlife managers and conservation practitioners. However, this task has been hindered by the difficulties involved in identifying and isolating factors driving population responses. Current research on responses of wildlife to development predominantly quantifies behavior, but it is not always clear how these responses scale to demography and population dynamics. Concomitant assessments of behavior and population‐level processes are needed to gain the mechanistic understanding required to develop effective mitigation approaches. We simultaneously assessed the demographic and behavioral responses of a mule deer population to natural gas development on winter range in the Piceance Basin of Colorado, USA, from 2008 to 2015. Notably, this was the period when development declined from high levels of active drilling to only production phase activity (i.e., no drilling). We focused our data collection on 2 contiguous mule deer winter range study areas that experienced starkly different levels of hydrocarbon development within the Piceance Basin.

Northrup, J. M., C. R. Anderson Jr, B. D. Gerber, and G. Wittemyer. 2021. Behavioral and Demographic Responses of Mule Deer to Energy Development on Winter Range. Wildlife Monographs 208:1–37. https://doi.org/10.1002/wmon.1060

Northrup, Joseph M.

Anderson Jr, Charles R.

Gerber, Brian D.

Wittemyer, George

Bayesian hierarchical model

Colorado

Global positioning system radio‐collar

Mark‐resight

Natural gas development

Odocoileus hemionus

Population demography

Resource selection function

Risk‐disturbance hypothesis

Spatial ecology

Survival

37 pages

2021-01-15

Article

application/pdf

English; French (abstract only)

Wildlife Monographs