Fish and Wildlife

Below are ongoing or completed research projects related to wildlife at the New Mexico Landscapes Field Station.

Greater sage-grouse ( Centrocercus urophasianus) management relies on the identification and protection of core habitat for the species. Core areas are often centered on leks where the potential impacts of anthropogenic development and other disturbances can be evaluated based on buffer distances around active leks. While buffer distances have been quantified for some regions, sage-grouse space...

Researchers within the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and Colorado State University (CSU) worked with BLM and State Wildlife Agencies to develop a hierarchical population monitoring framework for managing greater sage-grouse ( Centrocercus urophasianus) populations and the sagebrush ecosystems that they depend upon for survival and reproduction. This hierarchical population monitoring strategy now...

Resource management decisions need to be informed by up-to-date, quality science and data. However there is sometimes an overwhelming number of scientific publications for managers to consider in their decisions. This project provides concise summaries of recent, peer-reviewed science and data products about different resources and topics of management concern, integrated into a searchable tool.

In partnership with the Bureau of Land Management and Colorado Parks and Wildlife, scientists from USGS Fort Collins Science Center and Western Ecological Research Center are applying a hierarchical monitoring framework to Gunnison sage-grouse ( Centrocercus minimus) to evaluate population trends and inform adaptive management.

USGS researchers are conducting a comprehensive study of wild horse and livestock records across the greater sage-grouse range to investigate impacts on vegetation and wildlife (specifically, sage-grouse and songbirds). Researchers will use these results to evaluate Appropriate Management Levels for wild horse and burros, and projections of vegetation productivity under changing conditions.

Wildfires are increasingly destroying wildlife habitat in sagebrush ( Artemisia species) ecosystems, and managers need approaches to scope the pace and degree to which post-fire restoration actions can re-create habitat in dynamic landscapes. Sagebrush recovery takes a long time, and it can be difficult to anticipate restoration outcomes over large, diverse landscapes that have experienced decades...

Increased wildfire-induced loss of sagebrush in North American shrublands are outpacing natural recovery and leading to substantial habitat loss for sagebrush-obligate species like sage-grouse. Transplanting sagebrush ( Artemisia species) is a possible strategy for revegetating burned areas, but little is known about sage-grouse or other wildlife responses to restoration strategies.

Disturbances, management, and changing environmental conditions have reshaped the sagebrush biome within the western United States. As a result, sagebrush cover and configuration have varied over space and time, influencing ecological processes and species' use of the landscape. Characterizing changes in sagebrush ecosystem connectivity over time will help us understand the effects of those...

Coproduction is a highly collaborative approach to conducting science that focuses on producing actionable products that are used to inform natural resource management decisions. This project will develop an informational toolkit to facilitate coproduction between resource managers and science providers in the context of federal public land management.

Wildlife management boundaries frequently lack biological context, such as information on habitat resource availability and wildlife movements. To address this, we developed multiple levels of biologically relevant and hierarchically nested greater sage-grouse ( Centrocercus urophasianus) population units that could facilitate management and conservation of populations and habitats.

Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service, and University of Arizona are studying the distribution of grassland bird communities across the western Great Plains to anticipate how species distributions may respond to a changing landscape.