Effects of prescribed fire on prenesting movements of wild turkeys in Arkansas

Abstract

The restoration of historic disturbance regimes is an increasingly common management strategy to conserve disturbance‐dependent communities and species, and enhance resilience of ecosystems to climate change or plant and animal invasions. However, the reintroduction of frequent and wide‐scale disturbance may have unexpected consequences on species that are accustomed to an environment absent of frequent disturbance. Implementation of frequent prescribed fire for community restoration has coincided with population declines of eastern wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) in the Ozark Highlands of Arkansas. We investigated whether there was evidence of linkage between wild turkey movement behavior and habitat use and the widespread use of prescribed fire that began in 2002 and continued through the end of our study in 2013. We fitted 67 female wild turkeys with satellite transmitters in 2012 and 2013 on the White Rock Ecosystem Restoration Area to estimate annual and seasonal home ranges and examine pre‐nesting habitat use at multiple spatial scales. Home range was larger for adults in 2013 (4,750 ha, SE = 946.2, n = 12) than in 2012 (2,703 ha, SE = 283.4, n = 19). Mean pre‐nesting ranges for adults were 1,633 ha (SE = 238.9, n = 23) in 2012 and 1,118 ha (SE = 158.8, n = 18) in 2013, smaller than those of sub‐adults, 1,761 ha (SE = 581.2, n = 3) in 2012 and 5,576 ha (SE = 2260, n = 8) in 2013. Habitat selection analyses for the pre‐nesting period indicated that wild turkeys used locations with more variability in canopy cover and vegetation height and in smaller patch sizes than expected based on availability. However, female wild turkeys selected nesting cover that had more variability in canopy cover and vegetation height but in larger patches. Differences in sub‐adults and adult home and seasonal ranges suggest that other factors such as density dependence or social hierarchy could be driving movements as opposed to prescribed fire application. Wild turkey females selected variable vegetation structure during the pre‐nesting and nesting periods with characteristics that could be a result of frequent prescribed fire or forest succession. However, we documented no direct evidence these characteristics or other aspects of the prescribed fire program were causing wild turkey population declines.

Inverse relationships between coyote and wild turkey population time series: Implications for future studies of predator–prey interactions

“…Empirical evidence of the kills and direct consumptions of wild turkeys by coyotes is intuitively required to support the impacts of coyote populations on wild turkey populations. Studies have ascribed predation by canids, including coyotes, as a major mortality cause of wild turkeys in Arkansas, Kansas, and Missouri, USA (Holdstock et al, 2006; Thogmartin & Schaeffer, 2000; Vangilder & Kurzejeski, 1995), consistent with our findings of the negative impacts of increased coyote abundance on wild turkey population in Mississippi. Wild turkeys were also present in the diet of coyotes, constituting <4% of the diet, in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, and Mississippi of the Southeastern US (Wagner & Hill, 1994).…”

Spatial dynamic N‐mixture models with interspecific interactions

“…In the second case study, we examined potential predator-prey interactions and movement patterns in bobcat and wild turkey while assuming Poisson observations to allow the count to be smaller (false negative) or larger (double counting) than the true abundance. The bobcat is a generalist species that prey not only on a variety of mammalian species such as snowshoe hare Lepus americanus and porcupines Erethizon dorsatum but also prey on wild turkeys (Beasom & Moore, 1977;Litvaitis et al, 1986;Pollack, 1951;Thogmartin & Schaeffer, 2000), indicating a potential top-down process but not necessarily a bottom-up process in our study system. Studies also have found differentiated habitat preference of bobcats and wild F I G U R E 1 Violin plots showing the relative bias based on the posterior distributions of parameters in a competition system (left two columns) or a predator-prey system (right two columns) with binomial or Poisson observations.…”

“…We had to restrict the mean population growth rate to 1 due to the short time period of this study, but it is encouraging to see that the model could reveal the effect of bobcat abundance on the spatial variation of wild turkey population growth. Bobcats have been documented as predator of wild turkeys (Litvaitis et al, 1986), including during winter (Thogmartin & Schaeffer, 2000), thus, the top-down process suggests that abundance of bobcat may have contributed to declines in wild turkey abundance. Our results suggest that bobcat abundance could be one factor limiting continued growth of the wild turkey population in New York.…”

Factors influencing survival of female eastern wild turkeys in northeastern South Dakota

“…Evidence such as tracks, feces, fur, carcass caching, and bite marks on the transmitter identified the mortality as mammalian predation. Sharp puncture wounds accompanied by removal of the head and neck region from the carcass, as well as presence of raptor feathers at the kill site, were characteristic of avian predation events (Miller and Leopold 1992, Thogmartin and Schaeffer 2000, Lehman et al 2007).…”