Wildlife and Terrestrial Species

Critical information predicting condition changes in manatee habitat resulting from the alteration of freshwater flows to estuaries is needed to develop the PSRP Detailed Design and PSRP Operations Plan components and complete consultation under the Endangered Species Act.

Turbid water conditions make the delineation and characterization of benthic habitats difficult by traditional in situ and remote sensing methods. Consequently, only a small fraction of this valuable resource has been mapped or characterized.

Unexplained heterogeneity in statistical models of animal responses to their physical environment is reasonable to expect because the measured habitat resources are a constraint on—but not the sole determinant of—abundance, survival, fecundity, or fitness. The ecological understanding and reliability of management predictions based on animal habitat models can be improved by shifting focus from...

Understanding species habitat requirements is incomplete without insight into nutrition, including various aspects of foraging ecology. Traditional diet studies can be challenging because of logistics, issues related to resource availability, and observations are often short-term in nature based on gut contents or scat. Additionally, perturbations such as species introductions, habitat degradation...

The ultimate success of North American Waterfowl Management Plan (NAWMP) depends on maintaining relevance to stakeholders and society. In order to be relevant, a first step is to better understand what people value in regard to waterfowl and their habitats.

Wind energy is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world and represents an important step toward reducing dependence on nonrenewable sources of power. However, widespread deployment of industrial wind turbines is having unprecedented adverse effects on certain species of bats that roost in trees and migrate. Bats are beneficial consumers of agricultural insect pests and migratory species...

The Challenge: The Federal Aviation Administration has long relied on the expertise provided by the Smithsonian Feather Identification Lab for identification of bird remains recovered from bird-aircraft (birdstrike) collisions. Recently, these identifications are increasingly reliant on data from mitochondrial DNA. While generally successful in delimiting species, mitochondrial DNA is not...

The Challenge: Accurate taxonomic delineation of species and subspecies provides the biological and legal foundation for effective conservation action, whether by domestic resource management agencies or by other countries throughout the hemisphere that may be involved through international treaties or common conservation threats. Although birds are among the most well-known groups of organisms...

The Challenge: The Channel Islands, sometimes called “The Galapagos of North America,” consist of 8 islands off the coast of southern California. The islands are managed by a variety of agencies, including the National Park Service, the Nature Conservancy, and the US Navy, as well as private owners, and they have had a wide variety of uses through time, from occupancy by Native American hunter...

The Challenge: Federal and state government agencies, NGOs, scientists, and authors of field guides and other literature need a standardized classification of birds to provide the taxonomic and nomenclatural foundation for bird research, conservation, and education in North America. These public agencies, private individuals, and organizations rely on the latest developments in systematics...

Hawaiian forests are beset by many stressors, resulting in a complex pattern of altered ecosystems, impeirled species, and (in some areas) substantial protection and restoration. Short-term studies focused on specific sites or biota have limited value in understanding landscape-level change. Long-term and spatialy extensive data are needed to understand how ecosystems are reacting to both stressor...

A large number of bat species are considered “species of concern” in the United States and its Territories, and resource managers are increasingly interested in learning more about their distribution, status, and potential management.