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

Item Metadata

Dublin Core

Title

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

Description

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.

Bibliographic Citation

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

Creator

Northrup, Joseph M.
Anderson Jr, Charles R.
Gerber, Brian D.
Wittemyer, George

Subject

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

Extent

37 pages

Date Created

2021-01-15

Type

Article

Format

application/pdf

Language

English; French (abstract only)

Is Part Of

Wildlife Monographs

Collection

Citation

Northrup, Joseph M. et al., “Behavioral and demographic responses of mule deer to energy development on winter range,” CPW Digital Collections, accessed March 29, 2024, https://cpw.cvlcollections.org/items/show/50.