Management practices and landscape impacts of energy development can cause changes in animal behavior, distribution, and space use. Understanding how anthropogenic structures and disturbance affects wildlife is pertinent to management.� Although disturbance has been recognized as an important factor affecting wild turkey populations, little research has been conducted to quantify the effects of energy development (oil and gas) and management practices (prescribed fire) on wild turkey space use and movement. Effects of energy development may include the direct loss of habitat by the instillation of well pads (and removal of roost trees) and indirect loss of habitat due to changes in space use because of sound or vehicle traffic. To better understand how of Rio Grande Wild Turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo intermedia; hereafter turkey)�respond to management practices and energy development, we placed backpack-style GPS transmitters on 30 female turkeys and deployed 15 traffic counters throughout Packsaddle Wildlife Management Area in western Oklahoma. Each of the transmitters recorded 7 daytime locations (every 2 hours from 0800-2000) and one nighttime location (0200) daily. �These GPS locations along with a spatial map of the study area were used to create home ranges and selection functions to determine if turkey locations are related to distance to oil and gas wells, distance to roads, and level of vehicle traffic. In addition, we mapped and combined prescribed fire into three time since fire categories (<1 year, 1-2 years, >2 years) to determine if turkey locations are related to time since fire.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.