Publications

No abstract available

Increasing winter use of steep, high-elevation terrain by backcountry recreationists has elevated concern about disturbance of denning grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). To help identify areas where such conflicts might occur, we developed a spatially explicit model to predict potential denning areas in the GYE. Using a scan area of 630 m around each...

Brucellosis in Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA) bison and elk has been a source of controversy and focus of the Greater Yellowstone Interagency Brucellosis Committee (GYIBC) for years. Brucellosis has been eradicated from cattle in the 3 states of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho and all three states currently are classified as “brucellosis free” with regard to livestock. Yet free-ranging elk...

We describe the genetic divergence among 10 populations of redband trout Oncorhynchus mykiss gairdneri from the upper Columbia River drainage. Resident redband trout from two watersheds in the Kootenai River drainage and hatchery stocks of migratory Kamloops redband trout from Kootenay Lake, British Columbia, were analyzed using allele frequency data from microsatellite and allozyme loci...

Black bear (Ursus americanus) were extirpated from most of their range by the early 1900s by habitat destruction and unregulated hunting. Since then, bear habitat has recovered in many areas, but isolation may prevent natural recolonization. Black bear translocations often have limited success because of high mortality rates and low site fidelity. We tested 2 reintroduction techniques...

No abstract available.

Tracking mortality of the Yellowstone grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) is an essential issue of the recovery process. Problem bears removed by agencies are well documented. Deaths of radiocollared bears are known or, in many cases, can be reliably inferred. Additionally, the public reports an unknown proportion of deaths of uncollared bears. Estimating the number of non-agency...

The decline of amphibian species has emerged as a major global conservation issue in the last decade. Last year, the Department of the Interior (DOI) initiated a major national initiative to detect trends in amphibian populations and research the causes of declines. The program, conducted principally by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), emphasizes lands managed by DOI, but collaboration...

Large millennial-scale fluctuations of the southern margin of the North American Laurentide Ice Sheet occurred during the last deglaciation, when the margin was located between about 43° and 49°N. Fluctuations of the ice margin triggered episodic increases in the flux of freshwater to the North Atlantic by rerouting continental runoff from the Mississippi River drainage to the Hudson or...

The Yellowstone grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) has been expanding its range during the past 2 decades and now occupies historic habitats that had been vacant. A current understanding of the distribution of grizzly bears within the ecosystem is useful in the recovery process and to help guide the state and federal land management agencies and state wildlife agencies of Idaho...

We used radiotelemetry to quantify the movements and habitat use of resident adult Columbia River redband trout Oncorhynchus mykiss gairdneri (hereafter, redband trout) from October to December 1997 in South Fork Callahan Creek, a third‐order tributary to Callahan Creek in the Kootenai River drainage in northwestern Montana. All redband trout (N = 23) were consistently relocated in a...

Counts of uniquely identified individuals in a population offer opportunities to estimate abundance. However, for various reasons such counts may be burdened by heterogeneity in the probability of being detected. Theoretical arguments and empirical evidence demonstrate that the negative binomial distribution (NBD) is a useful characterization for counts from biological populations with