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Nonnative, invasive ants, and especially the red imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta, are a widespread threat to ground‐nesting wildlife. In this paper I describe a method of controlling fire ants using hot water. The hot water approach was applied to reduce fire ant impacts on sea turtles and ground‐nesting songbirds and to demonstrate its utility in protection of different ground‐nesting species in different habitats. Fire ant controls using hot water provided 90% or greater control, significantly improving survival of both turtle and bird hatchlings, without the use of pesticides. The success of the method and the availability of necessary equipment shows that hot water control of fire ant populations should be considered as a tool for wildlife affected by fire ants and is useful for a wide variety of scenarios where fire ant controls are desirable or necessary. The method does require that 1) wildlife nest locations are known and that 2) nearby fire ant colonies can be found and treated with hot water. The method can be used as a complement to broadcast or bait‐station baiting strategies or as a stand‐alone method for managing fire ants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within academia and research, publishing peer‐reviewed articles is expected for dissemination of knowledge and is used as a measure of professional performance. However, few papers have been published on professionals' and graduate students' perceptions of student publication performance, how professionals encourage student publishing, and what types of publication barriers exist for graduate students to publish. In 2019, we emailed a survey to professional and student attendees of the 2013 and 2016 North American Duck symposia as a representative cadre of waterfowl and wildlife biologists. We surveyed 469 professionals and 98 students who attended the symposia. Response rates were 42% and 45% for professionals and students, respectively, and deemed reliable as response rates approached 50%. Fifty percent and 69% of professional respondents indicated they felt frustration motivating their Ph.D. and M.S. students to publish, respectively. Of strategies used to motivate graduate student publishing, 79% of students ranked providing congenial encouragement most effective, while 60% of professionals ranked playing a major role in drafting and editing as most effective. Both professionals and students considered lack of time during and outside work hours as barriers to publishing graduate work. Professionals and students agreed that asking students to sign a contract at time of their initial matriculation may be an effective strategy to publish. Information from this study adds to knowledge on graduate student publishing practices and can be used to improve methods to increase graduate student publication rates in wildlife science and conservation. Similar surveys can be conducted face‐to‐face or remotely at international wildlife and other ecological conferences to broaden application of our results. We encourage students to generate publications from their research by writing separate thesis/dissertation chapters to expedite the publication process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The green anole (Anolis carolinensis) has been introduced to the Ogasawara Islands, Japan, and has adversely affected native fauna through predation and competition. To eradicate green anoles, adhesive traps for capture and Teflon™‐sheet fencing to restrict movement have been used, however, their efficiency needs to be improved. Using behavioral experiments, we evaluated colors that would attract green anoles to traps and repel them from fences. We also conducted similar experiments on the native snake‐eyed skink (Cryptoblepharus nigropunctatus) to establish color preferences in an effort to reduce bycatch. We presented choices of 2 out of 6 colored papers (blue, brown, green, purple, red, yellow) to green anoles and 3 colored papers (blue, brown, red) to snake‐eyed skinks to observe which color of paper the animals walked on first. Both species chose blue significantly less often than the other colors (blue was chosen only in 29% of runs). Green anoles demonstrated a preference for brown, whereas snake‐eyed skinks favored red. Our results suggested that using blue Teflon™‐sheet fence might reduce the transborder crossing rate of green anoles. Furthermore, bycatch of native snake‐eyed skinks may be reduced by changing the adhesive trap color to brown, from the currently used red. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The toxic effects on wildlife of lead ingested from spent hunting ammunition have long posed a conservation challenge for wildlife biologists, managers, and hunters. We got commitments for 7 papers that address the issue of lead hunting ammunition from a number of perspectives. The focus of the symposium and this special section was on lead from spent hunting ammunition, not lead ammunition associated with all forms of shooting. [Extracted from the article]

ABSTRACT Greater sage-grouse ( Centrocercus urophasianus; sage-grouse) are highly susceptible to infection with West Nile virus (WNV), with substantial mortality reported in wild populations and in experimentally infected birds. Although sage-grouse are hunted throughout much of their range, they have also recently been considered for protection under the Endangered Species Act. We used blood samples collected on filter-paper strips during the 2006-2010 Oregon, USA, annual sage-grouse hunt to survey for specific WNV-neutralizing antibodies that indicate a previous infection with WNV. During this period, hunters submitted 1,880 blood samples from sage-grouse they harvested. Samples obtained were proportional for all 12 Oregon sage-grouse hunting units. Laboratory testing of 1,839 samples by the WNV epitope-blocking enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (bELISA) followed by plaque reduction neutralization test on bELISA-positive samples yielded 19 (1%) and 1 (0.05%) positive samples, respectively. These data provided early baseline information for future comparisons regarding the prevalence of WNV-specific neutralizing antibodies in sage-grouse in Oregon. This methodology may provide other states where sage-grouse (or other species) populations are hunted and where WNV constitutes a species conservation concern with a viable option to track the relative prevalence of the virus in populations. © 2014 The Wildlife Society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cougars (Puma concolor) have been recolonizing portions of their historic range over the last few decades and are currently a rare, transient species in the western Great Lakes Region. Anticipatory attitude surveys can identify potential management challenges, stakeholder groups, and conservation and educational priorities for recolonizing cougars. We implemented an anticipatory attitude survey to better understand attitudes towards transient cougars in northern Wisconsin, USA. We distributed the survey in fall and early winter of 2014–15 (n = 423) and 2015–16 (n = 594). We compared attitudes towards transient cougars to attitudes towards other established large carnivores and white‐tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). We also explored factors that may affect human attitudes towards cougars, such as hunter identity, livestock ownership, risk perception, and the loss of a domestic animal to wildlife. Despite the rare, transient status of cougars in Wisconsin, many respondents (mean of 29%) reported to have observed a cougar or sign of one in the wild in Wisconsin. Cougars had a mean favorability score similar to coyotes (Canis latrans) and wolves (Canis lupus) and less than bobcats (Lynx rufus), bear (Ursus americanus), and white‐tailed deer. Comparatively, respondents' risk perception for all categories of risk (i.e., fear for personal safety, the safety of children, and the safety of domestic animals) was higher for cougars than for wolves. Hunter identity and loss of livestock to wildlife were determined by multinomial logistic regression as the most important parameters affecting respondents' favorability towards cougars (ωi = 0.71). Using the 2015–2016 survey data, we found that as cougar risk perception increased, favorability towards cougars decreased similarly for both hunters and non‐hunters. Hunters were less likely to be favorable towards cougars, more likely to be neutral, and equally likely to be unfavorable towards cougars compared to nonhunters. We identify potential management challenges, stakeholder groups (e.g., hunters and those who have experienced loss of livestock to wildlife), and conservation and educational priorities for recolonizing cougars. © 2021 The Wildlife Society. As cougars recolonize portions of their former range, understanding what influences attitudes towards this large carnivore is a critical step in guiding their conservation. Using anticipatory attitude surveys, this paper provides insights into the factors that shape attitudes towards transient cougars prior to recolonization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) populations in North America were once estimated at nearly 30 million. However, unrestricted harvest of pronghorn was one of the major factors that led to 25,000 individuals by 1924. Through rigorous management, pronghorn populations rebounded to an estimated 1 million individuals by 1984. Within Texas, USA, by the late 1980s, the pronghorn population had recovered to a new estimated historic high of 17,226 individuals through restoration efforts. However, by 2010, the Texas Trans‐Pecos population declined to approximately 4,700 individuals, and declined even further to only 2,751 in 2012. A main contribution to successful recovery has been large‐scale translocations. Since the early 1920s, >30,000 pronghorn have been translocated in 17 states. As one large restoration project in Texas, translocation of pronghorn from the Texas Panhandle to Marfa and Marathon grasslands in the Trans‐Pecos region occurred in January–February 2011, 2013, 2014, 2016, and 2017. However, within the available literature on pronghorn translocations, it was difficult to find a scientific paper that provides sufficient detail to guide the translocation process. Our intent is to summarize the effective methodology behind 5 years of pronghorn translocations, inform others to make evidence‐based recommendations and justifiable‐decisions when selecting translocation methodology, and provide insight regarding design and application of our translocation methodology. Based on our translocation experience, we recommend using halperidol as a sedative given to pronghorn at the site of capture and keeping handling times to ≤4 minutes as well as maintaining pronghorn body temperatures below 40° C during processing. Flunixin meglumine should be used when body temperatures exceed 40° C. In addition, we also recommend utilizing larger, more spacious livestock trailers to transport captured pronghorn versus transport boxes or smaller, more enclosed trailers. We also recommend releasing a minimum of 50–100 individuals/release site to minimize stress from group separation and improve long‐term population sustainability. © 2020 The Wildlife Society. Translocations are done as part of restoration efforts for pronghorn due to population declines. We describe and consolidate evidence from our experience to make translocation guidelines for future management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: Over the past decade, declines of Canadian populations of boreal caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) have received considerable attention from scientists, government agencies, environmental nongovernmental organizations, Indigenous communities, and the forest industry. Boreal caribou (also known as boreal woodland caribou) was listed as a threatened species in Canada when the Species at Risk Act came into force in June 2003. Many boreal caribou populations have been shown to be decreasing, in some cases precipitously, and empirical evidence from adult survival and calf recruitment surveys indicates that the cumulative effect of habitat disturbance, including that which results from industrial development, is a key driver in the decline. Yet, as scientific understanding of the decline has become clearer, and agreement among scientists and governments about habitat management requirements has increased, campaigns of denial have intensified in the public sphere. In this paper, we examine parallels with climate change rhetoric prolific in the 2000s and show that willful ignorance disguised as skepticism has resulted in public uncertainty despite robust scientific evidence. We show how these strategies of manufactured uncertainty used in climate change denial campaigns have seeped into wildlife management debates, with pernicious results. In this case, it has successfully delayed efforts to effectively address the decline of boreal caribou, which is protected under federal, provincial, and territorial legislation, and inhibited meaningful dialogue about socially acceptable conservation solutions. © 2018 The Wildlife Society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although wild turkey conservation efforts largely are in a post-restoration phase, there is still much to be learned and shared, both among turkey biologists and researchers and with the greater wildlife conservation community. Beginning in 1959, wild turkey researchers and managers have come together every few years from across the United States to share their experiences, present monitoring data and research results, and address novel or timely turkey conservation issues. The other invited paper summarized the potential effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on turkey hunting during spring 2020; the authors surveyed the primary wildlife biologist tasked with wild turkey management for each state to document wild turkey hunter and hunting dynamics before and during the spring 2020 turkey season. [Extracted from the article]

ABSTRACT Mitigation of large carnivore depredation is essential to increasing stakeholder support for human-carnivore coexistence. Lethal and non-lethal techniques are implemented by managers, livestock producers, and other stakeholders to reduce livestock depredations by large carnivores. However, information regarding the relative effectiveness of techniques commonly used to reduce livestock depredations is currently lacking. We evaluated 66 published, peer-reviewed research papers that quantitatively measured livestock depredation before and after employing 4 categories of lethal and non-lethal mitigation techniques (livestock husbandry, predator deterrents and removal, and indirect management of land or wild prey) to assess their relative effectiveness as livestock protection strategies. Effectiveness of each technique was measured as the reported percent change in livestock losses. Husbandry (42-100% effective) and deterrents (0-100% effective) demonstrated the greatest potential but also the widest variability in effectiveness in reducing livestock losses. Removal of large carnivores never achieved 100% effectiveness but exhibited the lowest variation (67-83%). Although explicit measures of effectiveness were not reported for indirect management, livestock depredations commonly decreased with sparser and greater distances from vegetation cover, at greater distances from protected areas, and in areas with greater wild prey abundance. Information on time duration of effects was available only for deterrents; a tradeoff existed between the effectiveness of tools and the length of time a tool remained effective. Our assessment revealed numerous sources of bias regarding the effectiveness of techniques as reported in the peer-reviewed literature, including a lack of replication across species and geographic regions, a focus on Canid carnivores in the United States, Europe, and Africa, and a publication bias toward studies reporting positive effects. Given these limitations, we encourage managers and conservationists to work with livestock producers to more consistently and quantitatively measure and report the impacts of mitigation techniques under a wider range of environmental, economic, and sociological conditions. © 2016 The Wildlife Society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Long-term monitoring and research projects are essential to understand ecological change and the effectiveness of management activities. An inherent characteristic of long-term projects is the need for consistent data collection over time, requiring rigorous attention to data management and quality assurance. Recent papers have provided broad recommendations for data management; however, practitioners need more detailed guidance and examples. We present general yet detailed guidance for the development of comprehensive, concise, and effective data management for monitoring projects. The guidance is presented as a graded approach, matching the scale of data management to the needs of the organization and the complexity of the project. We address the following topics: roles and responsibilities; consistent and precise data collection; calibration of field crews and instrumentation; management of tabular, photographic, video, and sound data; data completeness and quality; development of metadata; archiving data; and evaluation of existing data from other sources. This guidance will help practitioners execute effective data management, thereby, improving the quality and usability of data for meeting project objectives as well as broader meta-analysis and macrosystem ecology research. © 2015 The Authors. Wildlife Society Bulletin published by The Wildlife Society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Camera traps have increased our knowledge of animal distribution, activity, and behavior, but they are rarely used for small mammal research. This is likely because there are few techniques to that allow for species identification, reduce disturbance of bait from non-target animals (e.g., raccoon [ Procyon lotor]), and that can be used in all environments. In this paper we present a small mammal camera-trapping methodology, the Hunt trap, which was designed to 1) work in tidal environments, 2) eliminate capture myopathy, 3) allow for successful identification of small mammal species, and 4) allow for continued trapping after disturbance by non-target species. We tested the Hunt trap in the Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge, Florida, USA, during February 2012 to February 2013. Live traps are still the best option when individuals must be physically captured for marking, radiotagging, demographic studies, or physiological assessments. However, if such data are not required, the Hunt trap design is an excellent technique to monitor species diversity, community composition, habitat selection, and distribution with efficiency and minimal effort. Published 2014. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The baited hoop-net is one of the most heavily used sampling tools for monitoring freshwater turtle populations. In the past several years, we have published a series of studies that tested potential biases associated with this sampling method. For this paper, we used a new experiment to directly test the influence of trap-mouth opening size on both captures and escapes. We also summarized the results from previous studies to direct future research on this topic and provide a useful guide for managers and researchers using this sampling device. In our experiment during May 2013 in Texas, USA, we found that traps with larger mouth-openings were more efficient at capturing turtles, while escapes were minimal for both mouth sizes. Thus, at least within the boundaries we tested here, increasing mouth-opening size is an effective way to increase captures without introducing biases caused by differential escape probabilities. © 2014 The Wildlife Society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The ability to determine wildlife age classes is important for wildlife management and the key to understanding the life histories of species. We used radiograph images of the epiphyseal cartilage at the distal end of the radius and the age-class criteria developed by Lechleitner (1959) for black-tailed jackrabbits ( Lepus californicus) to determine age classes for antelope jackrabbits ( L. alleni) between 2011-2016. Using 2 known-age antelope jackrabbits, we found that 3 developmental phases similar to those identified by Lechleitner (1959; class 1 [juvenile: <7 months], class 2 [subadult: 7-11.4 months], and class 3 [adult: >11.4 months]) were also applicable to radiographs of forelegs of antelope jackrabbits. Although requiring some interpretive experience, we consider this technique superior to other lagomorph aging methods because radiographs can be obtained from live and dead animals. Using this method, biologists can determine ages of individuals in the population, which would help to estimate recruitment rates and predict population changes. © 2017 The Wildlife Society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author talks about manuscript preparation for submission to the periodical for publishing. Topics discussed include the wildlife data published in the periodicals, the periodicals of The Wildlife Society, and the scientific papers published by publisher Wiley Publishing. Also mentioned are the Web of Science index and the Journal Impact Factors of the periodical.