Mammals

FORT researchers provide sound science to support the Department of Interior in its efforts to preserve American heritage, streamline species listing decisions and promote species recovery, manage wild horses and burros using efficient, cost-effective tools, and sustain hunting and fishing on public lands. This research is developed in partnership with resource managers from local, State, Federal...

Bats are essential contributing members of healthy, functioning ecosystems. They perform numerous ecosystem services like insect pest control and plant pollination, and provide enormous economic benefits through ecotourism, medical research, and novel biotechnologies. North American bats face unprecedented threats including habitat loss and fragmentation, white-nose syndrome, and wind energy...

Science information is fundamental to understanding how proposed actions on public lands may impact the environment. However, agencies often have limited time to compile and synthesize existing science. We are working with land management agencies to develop a new type of science product— structured science syntheses—for facilitating the use of science information in public lands decisions.

The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, as amended, states that, "It is the policy of Congress that wild free-roaming horses and burros shall be protected from capture, branding, harassment, or death; and to accomplish this they are to be considered in the area where presently found, as an integral part of the natural system of the public lands (PL 92-195, Sec. 1331, Congressional...

The GSIL is a state-of-the-art facility located on the Denver Federal Center that specializes in the measurement of light stable isotope — Hydrogen (H), Carbon (C), Nitrogen (N), Oxygen (O), and Sulfur (S) — compositions and other chemical and biomarker analytes in matrices relevant to the Earth sciences. Chemical and isotopic tracers offer novel insights into ecosystem biogeochemistry, food webs...

Wildlife nutrition is an essential element of fitness, and contextualizing resource use within the broader framework of local and regional food webs is paramount to species health, function, and management.

Environmental stressors that impact habitat and wildlife species include: abiotic factors (for example, land use, temperature); soil, air, and water quality (for example, eutrophication, contaminants); and disturbance (for example, fire, drought, hurricanes, species invasions). Understanding how these stressors impact ecosystems is critical to conservation and management.

Researchers at USGS are using historical wild horse survey and monitoring records to conduct a study of horse density across sagebrush ecosystems of the western United States. Researchers will develop generalized density maps for the species that will enhance concurrent evaluations into the ecological effects of wild horse populations.

Diseases are challenging to manage in wild ungulate populations, particularly when there are many ways the disease can spread. Wildlife management agencies often need to take action to control disease spread, but it is unclear which actions are most effective in constraining disease because the importance of different spread mechanisms is not fully understood. This project will aid state wildlife...

Sagebrush ecosystems represent one of the most imperiled systems in North America and face continued and widespread degradation due to multiple factors including invasive species and increased human development. Effective sagebrush management must consider how to best conserve and restore habitats to stem the decline of species that rely on them, especially given limited conservation resources. To...

Planning and managing outdoor recreation on public land and water entails a series of choices, many of which are economic in nature. Economics is useful for informing a wide range of decision-making processes in the context of outdoor recreation management, including why people choose to engage in recreation and where, how people substitute between different types of recreation activities and...

This research effort is an interagency partnership between U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to model the social-ecological system that encompasses chronic wasting disease management in the United States. Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a fatal, neurologically degenerative disease that impacts many cervid species in North America (e.g., elk, moose, mule deer, and white...