MULE DEER WORKING GROUP

MEETING MINUTES

WHCE, Salt Lake City, UT February 18, 2015 (8-5pm)

Chair – Jim Heffelfinger, Arizona Game and Fish Department

Attendees

Jim Heffelfinger (AZ, Chair), Greg Sheehan (UT, Dir. Sponsor), Cody Schroeder (NV - Scribe), Ryan Darr (NM), Justin Shannon (UT), Andy Holland (CO), Brian Wakeling (NV), Toby Boudreau (ID), Matt Pieron (ID), Steve Belinda, Joe Loehner (USFS), Miles Moretti (MDF), Randy Larsen (BYU), Stan Baker (MDF), Ken Hand (MDF), Randy Morrison (MDF), Charlie Stockstill (MDF), Dan McKinley (MDF), Marty Holmes (MDF), Lindy Mosteller (WY-MDF), Mike Laughter (UT MDF), Eric Tyckson (MDF), Chirre Keckler (USFS-Kaibab), David Smedler (BYU), Channing Howard (UT), Jodi Stemler (MDF)

Call-In: Daryl Lutz (WY), Terry Messmer (USU), Anis Aoude (AZ)

Mule Deer and Movement Barriers (Brian Wakeling)

This document is nearing completion with a few gaps that were discussed at the meeting. For example:

1) Brian added a lot of text (pages 9-10), but no literature cited - this will have to be anchored with citations from the literature.

2) Need to flesh out the section on "Nighttime and seasonal speed limits." Discussion revealed a few things that should be considered when finishing this part:

o CDOT ended their program for night time speed limits. Andy Holland will provide some comments and language from recent CO legislation actions - They removed night-time speed limits due to lack of compliance.

o Jeff Gagnon may have some literature – reducing speed limits may not work well due to non-compliance, animal signage that lights up when animals are present seems to be the most effective.

o The Highway 260 work in AZ may have some useful info

o Some work has been done on stoppage distance in Montana

o NY and PA work with whitetail deer might have information we can use

3) Coordinating and funding projects section needs work

o Jeff Gagnon has experience with this and is effective in this arena

o We need to provide practitioners a roadmap of how to coordinate with state DOT’s and work with them throughout the whole process.

o UT has fairly extensive and great relationship with DOT and this could be used as reference material and a good example of success

o Idaho’s experience with DOT is limited with big DOT projects, but had decent success on a small scale with local DOT representatives

The group discussed UT’s road kill application for smartphones - This app works very well with state and local and private contractors in development of extensive and comprehensive database. Telemetry data may not always truly represent animal crossings especially if data are not long-term and you don’t consider different migratory populations and weather covariates. Planting attractants along the roadway could be a problem we haven’t addressed in this document. UT’s application for phones has also resulted in vast cultural and citizen science relationship between public and state officials. CO identified road-kill problem as one of 7 general tenants in statewide management plan. ID did get some money from State Farm insurance to help fund highway and deer research project. Insurance companies seem reluctant to be a major partner in funding wildlife crossings and research. There might be an opportunity to pursue funding from other insurance companies at a larger scale. The West in general is under-represented in national research projects on this topic which are largely focused on eastern states with denser human and deer populations.

Justin Shannon will now take the lead on the Coordinating and Funding section (#3 above) and get draft text to Brian Wakeling. Brian would like to wrap up a final draft version in the next two weeks for internal review. Missing pieces should be to Brian by March 7 so he can turnaround a draft for internal review.

o Internal review comments on draft due back to Brian by April 15th.

o Out to external reviewers by May 18 with comments back from them by June 12

o Out to Directors June 30th in time for them to review and staff before the summer WAFWA where we will ask for approval to publish.

External review will include key people in state DOT’s for input and critique. Possible external reviewers: Jeff Gagnon, Nova Simpson (UT), Patty Cramer (UT), K. C. VerCauteren (CO), John Bissonnette (ID), ITD folks.

Range-wide Mule and Black-tailed Deer status (Jim Heffelfinger for Gerry Kuzyk)

We discussed the inclusion of the 2013 update in the last Deer/Elk Workshop Proceedings and the upcoming 2015 update that will be lead by Gerry Kuzyk. We will publish the 2015 update in the 2015 workshop proceedings. Changes for the 2015 version we'd like to see:

· No subspecies map. We will use a simple gray map of mule and black-tailed deer distribution.

· Each agency will include a map showing trends in their deer population over past 10 or 20 years. This can be whatever metric they have the most confidence in indexing temporal changes in abundance.

· Agencies should report what they actually use for population and harvest recommendations -- population estimates, buck ratios, recruitment trends, etc. If you gather survival information on an annual basis you may want to report the latest survival rate as it compares to an average.

· Status updates can include more than one graph, but we want to maintain some consistency in what detail each agency provides. We don't want a paragraph for one state and 4 pages for another province. More than one graph is OK, but updates should not be more than one page.

· Gerry will send out a request for an update for the directors at the summer WAFWA meeting. June 1, 2015 is a good general target date to have these completed because many agencies are getting their current data in April/May.

Translocation Updates from UT and NM (Randy Larsen/Ryan Darr)

Ryan Darr (NM) and Randy Larson (UT) gave great powerpoint presentations on the on-going mule deer translocation efforts in those states and fielded questions from the group. The presentations will be distributed with these minutes and since they contain all the important and interesting details, only a few main points are listed below.

o Soft release pens in NM didn't increase survival significantly, but movement data of soft vs hard releases hasn't been analyzed yet.

o In general, there seems to be about 50% mortality the first year, but those other 50% that survive have survival rates in year 2 that are similar to native deer and they reproduce.

o NM's effort is not just to alleviate urban deer problems, they are attempting to reestablish deer populations with translocations. They selected release sites in areas with very low deer populations and where Mt. Lion control was being done for bighorn. Some release areas had almost no deer - even after 50% mortality, deer were observed on surveys the next year and most were marked (released) deer so they feel they are doing something.

o Both states experienced low capture mortality.

o In UT deer were released on winter range that was not being used, but seemed in good shape. Deer were walking through these areas and going to winter range that didn't seem as high quality.

o Of the deer released in UT in 2013, 95% of then returned to that winter range the next year so this may be establishing some fidelity to less-used winter range areas.

o These translocations are being done under optimal conditions (pretreatment predator control and released in good range not being used much by resident deer). If it doesn't work under these conditions then it won't work; if it works we need to pay attention to under what circumstances it works and not apply this tool everywhere under conditions that are less than optimal.

o There is a concern the ground-swell of public support for this will surpass the science. We want to learn from these efforts and use the results to guide us regarding whether this is a worthwhile technique to bolster deer populations. I don’t think we know that yet. There is a danger the public will pressure agencies everywhere to start doing this before we know if it is effective.

o See the powerpoints for the whole story

Rangewide Survival Analysis (Jim Heffelfinger)

Jim has been in touch with Paul Lukacs (U of MT) about the proposal he submitted to the MDWG previously to conduct a multi-jurisdictional spatial survival analysis with mule deer telemetry data. Paul said there are a few things he would change from the original proposal at this point because of developments on his end. First, he already has a PhD student working on evaluating monitoring design (#3 from his original proposal) so we can remove that from the list. Second, he has a post-doc working on much of the task of combining information across space for management relevant models (his #4 in the original proposal). That leaves us with the first 2 tasks in the proposal: #1) Spatial Survival Analysis, and #2) Environmental and Biological Impacts to Survival). Survival estimation on this scale will be complicated and we all have discussed previously that the biggest hurdle will be organizing all of the data. Paul agreed that we should have a discussion about data storage and transfer prior to deciding how to proceed and how much it will cost. He could hire a technician to organize the data before hiring a more expensive post-doc to analyze it. The bottomline is that he has his lab up and running and with some of the work begin done so we should be able to do this much cheaper than the original proposal. Some agencies will need to enter into data sharing agreements and there will be datasets (some of them large and important) that may be available because the work has not been published and can't be released until after it is used in its primary purpose. Jim has contacted Paul again to see if he can make the Deer/Elk Workgroup meeting or summer WAFWA to discuss with the group. More importantly, a short questionnaire to the WAFWA agencies and federal/university partners will be needed to gather who has what data, in what form, at what frequency of monitoring available for such an analysis. The MDWG reps can serve as the points of contact and they can forward the request to any other entities who may have these kinds of data.

Mule Deer and the BLM Planning 2.0 process (Jim Heffelfinger)

The draft letter to the BLM was supported by the MDWG with a few suggestions. It needs to specifically state that migration and movement corridors (and stopover points) be named specifically in the manual (i.e., not just to reference that these are features that “can be” considered critically important habitat components. We need to include the key MDWG products when we send it rather than just reference them. MDF will be weighing in on the process as well. Jim Heffelfinger will revise the draft letter by May 1 and send it out to the MDWG again before getting it to the directors by June 30 so they can read it and staff it before approving at the summer WAFWA meeting.

Southern Rockies Landscape Conservation Cooperative (John Rice)

John Rice gave the MDWG an overview of the status of the Southern Rockies LCC. Mule deer are a focal species and they will be developing a mule deer strategy in the next year. They would like the MDWG to be involved in that and have the MDWG Chair or other representative to be a liaison to represent the MDWG. Their next meeting is April 28-29, but they will be discussing how they will accomplish their strategies at a later meeting in the Fall. The SRLCC could potentially help us with the Rangewide Mule Deer Survival Analysis and with wildlife-vehicle collision collaboration. John's presentation is also being provided with these minutes.

Mule Deer Fact Sheet Status/Timelines/Reviewers

The Fertility Control (Heffelfinger) and Forestry Practices (Jesse Shallow) fact sheets have just been reviewed by the MDWG. Jim will make sure Jesse has all the latest internal comments. Jim and Jesse will incorporate internal comments on these 2 Fact Sheets by March 30 and Heffelfinger will send them out to external reviewers. External reviewers will have to get comments back by April 30 so they can be finalized and sent to the directors by June 15 so they can review/staff them before voting at the summer WAFWA meeting. All: please send suggestions for external reviewers for these 2 fact sheets.

Forestry Practices Fact Sheet

· Is grazing and burning part of “Forestry” practices in the truest sense? Group felt it was appropriate to address it here, but avoid distracting from the main focus of forestry.

· Is overgrazing by cattle separate from elk or other herbivores? Overuse and overgrazing should be discussed for native ungulates as well. It doesn't make any difference if elk or cows eat all the herbaceous forage.

· Summer nutrition should be part of the language.

· Over-utilization in general as an alternative to just saying generically “grazing.” Note our definitions of overuse and overgrazing in the SW Mule Deer Habitat Guidelines

· Should historical forestry practices, such as clear-cutting be considered today?

· Consider adding mention of “let-burn” policies to this to address wilderness areas.

· Burning and/or fire policy practices needs to be identified in separate Fact Sheet but can be mentioned here. Avoid giving the appearance this is also a grazing and burning fact sheet.

· Include importance of Late Fall and Early winter transition habitat and doe body condition going into winter as it relates to Forestry Practices, such as Aspen stands, conifer habitats, silvicultural practices providing more forbs and shrubs.

· Laura Wolf and Jim Hayden might be good external reviewers