Seasonal Nutrition Of Desert Bighorn Sheep In Canyonlands National Park Utah

Author : Kanalu Sproat
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 31 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (853 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Alteration of Behavior by Desert Bighorn Sheep from Human Recreation and Desert Bighorn Sheep Survival in Canyonlands National Park written by Kanalu Sproat and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 31 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bighorn sheep populations experienced significant declines after European settlement in North America. Today, the primary practice of bighorn sheep conservation is through population restoration and augmentation from remnant source populations. We conducted a 9-year telemetry study for a source population of desert bighorn sheep in Canyonlands National Park, Utah. We captured and collared 58 bighorn sheep from 2002-2009. To estimate annual and seasonal survival, we used known-fate analysis in Program MARK 4.1. We used model selection to test hypotheses for bighorn survival, including sex, age, human use, year, and month, as possible explanatory variables. There were 20 mortalities during the study. Annual survival ranged from 83% -88% with no significant variation among any of the years. Model selection results showed that the top six models included a temporal variable (e.g. season or month), and carried 92% of the AICc weight. Population persistence for bighorn sheep can be compromised by high levels of predation, habitat fragmentation, and disease transmitted from domestic sheep. We suggest that land managers continue to maintain the separation of domestic sheep from bighorns in CNP. We also recommend that survival studies continue to ensure that future translocation projects do not occur at the expense of the source population.