Aldo Leopold (1933) stated that wildlife populations are limited by a complex association of limiting factors. Among these limiting factors he distinguishes between welfare and decimating factors, or those that benefit a population by being present or absent, respectively. Among others, he notes that wildlife management practices have trended to control for food, cover and special factors (e.g. water). The relative impact of water on wildlife populations has become a controversial topic for many wildlife managers. Up until recently, the Farm Service Agency granted additional Environmental Benefit Index (EBI) points to landowners who installed artificial wildlife water developments (guzzlers) on lands enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). The primary goal of these developments was aimed at benefiting economically important target species, such as ring-necked pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) and northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus). However, the Kansas Natural Resource Conservation Service has acknowledged a lack of information relative to what impact these developments have on wildlife populations, and has ceased to grant EBI points for guzzlers. Our project used occupancy-modeling techniques to evaluate the impact guzzlers as well as other various habitat features (i.e., veg structure, percent cover, surrounding land cover, etc.) have on mesocarnivore and target species occupancies within CRP fields across Western Kansas.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.