Terrestrial Mammals

Maintaining a current understanding of ecological conditions is fundamental to the National Park Service in meeting its mission to preserve park resources in an unimpaired state for future generations. Ecological monitoring establishes reference conditions, which over time help to define the normal limits of natural variation, determine standards for comparing future changes, and identify the need...

Citizen scientists can now help dig into San Diego's urban wildlife mysteries. Join WERC ecologists as they track wild badgers and explore the connectivity of Southern California's natural landscapes.

National parks and other protected areas are key components of the wildlife conservation landscape. The goal of wildlife managers in national parks is to preserve the ecological integrity and authenticity of natural systems for future generations. Wildlife populations of national parks, however, are in continuous flux as a result of changing land uses outside their boundaries, climate variability...

This research theme informs adaptive management and siting decsions in relation to bats at wind and solar power-generation facilities.

Special status species and habitats are often sentinels of accelerated ecosystem change and, by definition, are priorities for protection, restoration, or focused management.

WERC's Dr. Amy Vandergast and colleagues merge genetic data with mapping and modeling tools to inform biodiversity conservation efforts. They define evolutionary significant units within species, reveal evolutionary mechanisms responsible for diversification, and identify regions with high genetic diversity for protection.

The primary goal of this bat research program is to develop projects that increase our understanding of basic ecology and natural history of western bat species, while simultaneously providing needed data to inform conservation measures and management decisions in the West. Dr. Brian Halstead, together with Gabriel Reyes, studies the habitat and resource selection, movement ecology, demography...

Dr. Kathleen Longshore’s goal is to understand how predator/prey relationships, disease and human-caused disturbance work separately and synergistically to impact bighorn sheep populations under variable ecological stress. Information from this project will provide managers with an understanding of specific and regional impacting factors that contribute to impact variation in population trends.

The terrestrial biota of the Central Pacific is primarily defined by its degree of isolation. At the center lies the Hawaiian Archipelago, which is more than 3,200 km from any continental land mass. After tens of millions of years of evolutionary isolation from all mammals except bats, islands of the Central Pacific were quite suddenly besieged by a number of alien rodents, carnivores and both...

The Hawaiian Hoary Bat ( Lasiurus semotus) is the only extant land mammal native to the Hawaiian archipelago. It is listed as endangered due to apparent population declines, and a lack of knowledge concerning its distribution, abundance, and habitat needs. Agencies and landowners in Hawai‘i seek to assist in the creation of sustainable uses for managed lands while also protecting bat populations...

The rapid expansion of wind energy nationwide is an important step toward reducing dependence on non-renewable sources of power. However, the magnitude of the wildlife impacts at wind energy facilities is a newly recognized threat, and the cumulative long-term impacts to various bat species are of increasing concern. It is estimated that more than 450,000 bat fatalities now occur each year at wind...

Mammalian predation is a major factor influencing waterfowl productivity in the Prairie Pothole Region. Rates of predation of waterfowl nests differ by predator species, so understanding landscape or spatial patterns in predator density are desired by many natural resource managers. Spatial predictions for the occurrence and relative abundance of predators would allow natural resource managers to...