Mammals

Renewable energy development is expanding in southwestern deserts, including in Arizona. Energy developers look to resource management agencies to provide siting guidance on public lands where there might be conflicts with wildlife. Often, agency guidance considers species of conservation concern and economic importance, but information on comprehensive vertebrate biodiversity has been hard to...

Grand Canyon National Park is a hotspot for bat diversity. Twenty-two bat species have been documented in the Park, more than any other national park unit.

The presence of top predators is considered an indication of ecosystem health and can play a vital role in ecosystem functioning by promoting biodiversity, and can contribute to regulating prey species abundance, and herbivory. In the intermountain west, the largest mammalian predator and obligate carnivore is the mountain lion, Puma concolor . This elusive and wide-ranging predator occupies a...

Desert bighorn sheep populations in the southwestern United States are subject to non-native disease outbreaks, habitat loss, and genetic isolation that can threaten their long-term sustainability. In some regions of the southwest, mountain lion predation on desert bighorn sheep has been found to be the primary source of mortality. Grand Canyon National Park is home to one of the largest desert...

As a result of growing human populations, many areas have become urbanized and highly developed, leaving natural native habitats fragmented across the landscape. In southern California many of the remaining patches on native habitat are bisected by major, multi-lane highway systems. Threats to the long-term sustainability of native wildlife populations include genetic isolation, where inbreeding...

Big sagebrush ecosystems are a major component of landscapes in the western U.S. and provide vital habitat to a wide array of wildlife species. However, big sagebrush ecosystems have been dramatically impacted by disturbances in the past several decades. This collaborative research between USGS and the University of Wyoming focuses on understanding how climatic and soil conditions influence big...