Rural System's

Modern Wild Faunal Resource System Management

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Faunal Space Elements

1. Faunal space includes all conventional habitat factors but also food, cover, change over time, and abiotic factors along with animals themselves (the caribou within the caribou herd - the herd is habitat or faunal space). It include the energy savings of trails, the spaces needed to which coveys of quail can fly when disturbed, and the presence of rainless days during which bats and swallows may forage for flying insects.
2. Area must be considered - the amount and quality, and it can be acquired or lost. It is species specific but management is often for many species on the same area. It needs to be combined in the instant of thought as volume.
3. Home range is a function of animal weight/size and efficiency of collecting needed energy.
4. Like fish in ponds that increase to a predictable level of fish mass (a variety of sizes but constant total), wild native birds in Virginia forests seem to fill annually to a standard level determined by total bird mass. Several small species present can be replaced of substituted for by single birds of a larger species (from observations of Jessee Overcash).
5. GIS is a popular abbreviation for geographic information system(s).
6. The wildlifer moves past overlaying maps to modeling within the pixel (or map cell or raster).
7. Water is critical -- with multiple sources and conservation - drink, eat, cellular, behavioral (restrict panting), conservative (e.g., excrete dry feces).
8. Phenology is the study of biological sequences and timing of phenomena e.g., bud burst, leaf fall, turkey gobbling.
9. Populations exist within a space defined by many factors or "planes". Three dimensional space can easily be comprehended. Four dimentional space can be imagined as the nearby object tumbling through time, the fourth dimension. Other factors can be assumed to replace time and thus the suggested form may be progressing as a function of some changing factor (such as fertilizer being added ... also over time.
10. Designing habitats is difficult and requires cost-effective use of knowledge to achieve stable faunal space needs for each life group.
11. Carrying capacity is a habitat (faunal space) phenomenon expressed in animal units.
12. Carrying capacity has many definitions. Consider the one suggested in Giles (1978).
13. Use (at least) "maximum number of animals an area will support on a sustained basis without destruction of habitat" or "the maximum residual population at which productivity declines to zero."
14. Plant vigor is lost in many plants at 60% use.
15. Land has area but also volume. Analyze area x average height of vegetation as a first approximation for comparisons of richness or density.
16. There are many measures of interspersion, an expression of pattern.
17. Juxtaposition implies both contiguity and an estimate of the quality of a condition for a life group.
18. Spatial diversity can be expressed as patchiness, or variance in distance between units, or Simpson index of areas or distances between centers of polygons.
19. Landscape ecology has relevance to wildlife management to the extent that perceived effects of patchiness and pattern affect population occurrence or abundance.
20. Points and lines in the environment have zones of influence.
21. There are many ways to estimate the mean width of such zones (tracks, observations, radio telemetry, traps)
22. There are many types of cover.
23. "Landscape ecology" for the wildlifer is related best by contiguity, nearness, zones of influence, and edge length.
24. Edge length needs to be replaced by measures of the edge tunnel or volume.
25. Edge effect

    Carrying capacity in species of high type requirements and low radius varies directly with the interspersion of the types, which is proportional to the sum of the type peripheries. Such game is "edge effect". Leopold 1933: 134.

    See also The Trevey on edges.

26. A management guild (unlike a faunal guild) is an enterprise working to produce profits from sophisticated single-species management.
27. "Ecosystem management" has emerged from "new perspectives" and needs to be replaced by total system management including the 5-E themes or paradigms.
28. Pest management: replace IPM with integrated vertebrate pest damage management. Manage damage, not injury or the population.
29. Buffer species are alternative prey that take foraging pressure of predators off of game animals or other animals of interest.
30. Fence may be a management device to reduce damage. There are at least 13 "F" major ways to manipulate succession.
31. A production function is a succession curve, a graph of transition.
32. In nature, conditions change in fairly predictable ways due to sequential developments.
33. The pathway can be change. Managers can set back or advance succession curves.
34. The succession curve is the most important process concept of this course. Age of communities is more important modifier of animal responses than type.
35. Interspersion, etc. are modifiers of succession curve quality for animals.
36. By adding succession curves for small areas over a large area, total food or other faunal space characteristics over time can be achieved.

37. Potential food plot yields (kcal/acre/year) The energy cost of creating a food plot is 5,000,000 kcal
    corn oats soybeans	23,000,000 6,000,000 8,000,000

    Once a level that is needed (of some characteristic of an area, e.g., food), then the level obtained can be subtracted from that desired. The difference (squared) is a good measure of system performance.
38. With an objective, curves of the proper time and area may be started .
39. The height of the curve is a function of the area.
40. The shape of the curve (slight alterations) can be adjusted for quality -- related to edge volumes and juxtaposition.

Corners

There are several corner types that seem to have different values to animals. Corners are special volumes, special faunal spaces. In fields (symbolized as being around the word "Type") there are edge volumes. The overlap of the edge volumes is shown in color. For Type 1, the simple sum of two nearly identical volumes is shown. A sharp angle is required to define a corner (an angle to be specified, e.g., less than 100 degrees, and is not an indentation in an otherwise straight line). For Type 2, three or more cover type or significantly-different age edge volumes come together. Over large areas, regular packing areas are triangles and hexagons. Packing triangles produces areas where 6 cover types come together. These diverse corners have unusual faunal complexes and provide food and conditions for small game and songbirds, etc. over several years not found elsewhere.

Where the number of combinations ,C, is

C = n! / r! ( n - r )!

that is n things taken r at a time, then when corners are seen as three things taken together, then a maximum value of three things at a time (r) from n types (or ages) suggests the maximum number of specific types (uniquely different corners) possible. (recall that n! = n factorial or where n = 3 then
n! = 3 x 2 x 1 = 6).

See related notes on faunal space and Managing Faunal Space

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A Variety of References on Faunal Space, Nutrition, and Foraging

Beck, J. R., and D. O. Beck. 1955. A method for nutritional evaluation of wildlife foods. J. Wildlife Manage. 19:198-205.

Beckerton, P. R., and A. L. A. Middleton 1982..Effects of dietary protein levels on ruffed grouse reproduction. J. Wildl. Manage. 46:509-579.

Blair, R. M., H. L. Short, and E. A. Epps, Jr. 1977. Seasonal nutrient yield and digestibiIity of deer forage from a young pine plantation, J. Wildl. Manage. 41:667-676.

Carl, G. L., and R. D. Brown. 1985. Protein requirement of adult collared peccaries. J. Wildl. Manage. 49:351-355.

Corn, J. L., and R. J. Warren. 1985. Seasonal variation in nutritional indices of collared peccaries in south Texas. J. Wildl. Manage.49:57-65.

Hobaugh, W. C. 1985. Body condition and nutrition of snow geese wintering in southeastern Texas. J. Wildl. Manage. 49:1028-1036.

Moen, A. N. 1978. Seasonal changes in heart rates, activity, metabol ism, and forage intake in white-tailed deer. J. Wildl. Manage. 42:715-738.

Mould, E. D., and C. T. Robbins. 1981. Evaluation of detergent analysis in estimating nutritional value of browse. J. Wildl. Manage. 45:323-334.

Norman, G. W., and R. L. Kirkpatrick. 1984. Foods, nutrition, and condition of ruffed grouse in southwestern Virginia. J. Wildl. Manage. 48:183-187.

Noyes, J. H., and R. L. Jarvis. 1985. Diet and nutrition of breeding female redhead and canvasback ducks in Nevada. J. Wildl. Manage. 49:203-211.

Robbins, C. T. 1983. Wildlife feeding and nutrition. Academic Press, New York. 343 pp.

Robel, R. J., and S. M. Arruda. 1986. Energetics and weight changes of northern bobwhites fed 6 different foods. J. Wi Idle Mana-ge. 50:236-238.

Robel, A. J., R. M. Case, A. R. Bisset, and T. M. Clement, Jr. 1974. Energetics of food plots in bobwhite management. J. Wildl. Manage 38:653-664.

Scanlon, J. J., and T. L. Sharik.1986. Forage energy for white-tailed deer in loblolly pine plantations. J. Wildl. Manage. 50:301-306.

Sedinger, J. S. 1984. Protein and amino acid composition of tundra vegetation in relatIon to nutritional requirements of geese. J. Wildl. Manage. 48:1128-1136.

Wood, K., F. S. Guthery, and N. E.Koerth. 1986. Spring-summer nutrition and condition of northern bobwhites in south Texas. J. Wi Idl. Manage. 50:84-88.

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Last revision January 15, 2004.