White-Tailed Deer Habitat: Ecology and Management on Rangelands
328
White-Tailed Deer Habitat: Ecology and Management on Rangelands
328eBook2, Expanded and Updated (2, Expanded and Updated)
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
The original, 2006 edition of Timothy Edward Fulbright and J. Alfonso Ortega-S.’s White-Tailed Deer Habitat: Ecology and Management on Rangelands was hailed as “a splendid reference for the classroom and those who make their living from wildlife and the land” and as “filling a niche that is not currently approached in the literature.”
In this second, full-color edition, revised and expanded to include the entire western United States and northern Mexico, Fulbright and Ortega-S. provide a carefully reasoned synthesis of ecological and range management principles that incorporates rangeland vegetation management and the impact of crops, livestock, predation, and population density within the context of the arid and semiarid habitats of this broad region. As landowners look to hunting as a source of income and to the other benefits of managing for wildlife, the clear presentation of the up-to-date research gathered in this book will aid their efforts. Essential points covered in this new edition include:
White-tailed deer habitat requirements
Nutritional needs of White-tailed deer
Carrying capacity
Habitat management
Hunting
Focused across political borders and written with an understanding of environments where periodic drought punctuates long-term weather patterns, this revised and expanded edition of White-Tailed Deer Habitat: Ecology and Management on Rangelands will aid landowners, researchers, and naturalists in their efforts to integrate land management and use with sound ecological practices.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781603449724 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Texas A&M University Press |
| Publication date: | 04/26/2013 |
| Series: | Perspectives on South Texas, sponsored by Texas A&M University-Kingsville |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 328 |
| File size: | 51 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
TIMOTHY EDWARD FULBRIGHT is a Regents Professor and Meadows Professor in Semiarid Land Ecology at the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute, Texas A&M University–Kingsville. J. ALFONSO ORTEGA-S. is a professor and research scientist at the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute, Texas A&M University–Kingsville.
Read an Excerpt
White-Tailed Deer Habitat
Ecology and Management on Rangelands
By Timothy Edward Fulbright, J. Alfonso Ortega-S.
Texas A&M University Press
Copyright © 2013 Timothy Edward Fulbright and J. Alfonso Ortega-S.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60344-972-4
CHAPTER 1
Habitat Requirements of White-Tailed Deer
KEY CONCEPTS
* The basic habitat requirements of white-tailed deer are food, cover, space, and water.
* A key to habitat management is identifying limiting factors and the optimum levels of these factors for survival, growth, and reproduction.
* Habitat use and diet composition of males and females differ, so males and females should be managed as if they were separate species.
* Managing for plant species diversity is more important than managing for what are thought to be preferred forage plants.
Objectives and Scope
Management of white-tailed deer habitat should be based on sound scientific theories (Joyce 1993; Fulbright 1996). Wildlife managers use scientific theories to predict the anticipated outcome of management practices (Fulbright and Hewitt 2008). Management practices may not have the same results in all environments. Deer management practices that were developed and work well in humid environments may have different, perhaps deleterious, effects in semiarid environments. An example of this would be harvesting female deer based on the theory that white-tailed deer populations are always density-dependent. Environmental factors such as low rainfall and infertile soils may change population behavior in a manner that makes density-dependent models less useful for predicting the outcome of harvesting females (DeYoung 2011). Managers must have a thorough understanding of the theories on which management practices are based so they will be able to adjust their practices to fit different environments and changing needs. Knowing when a particular practice is unsuitable for a certain environment or geographic location is critical for successful management.
Our objectives in this book are to (1) provide readers with the foundation of ecological theory on which habitat management is based; (2) discuss the tools available to deer managers in rangeland environments within the context of the ecological theories on which they are based; and (3) link basic ecology, range management, and wildlife management. Our regional focus is the rangelands of the western United States—particularly Oklahoma, Texas, and the central and northern Great Plains from Colorado to North Dakota and Montana—and northern Mexico. Although we focus on rangelands, most of the basic concepts we present in this book apply in other ecosystems inhabited by white-tailed deer. Our target audience includes landowners who want to improve deer habitat; range, wildlife, and other natural resource managers; undergraduate students who aspire to be natural resource managers; and ecologists who are interested in application of ecological theories and principles to management.
Three important principles underlie proper habitat management for white-tailed deer: (1) optimum habitat for white-tailed deer consists of a mosaic of vegetation dominated by woody plants and vegetation dominated by herbaceous plants interspersed within the landscape; (2) landscapes with diverse vegetation provide better habitat than homogeneous landscapes; and (3) plant communities should be managed to enable deer to maintain positive energy balance through ample food supplies and thermal cover. Plant communities are recognizably distinct groups, or stands, of plants that can be distinguished from other groups of plants based on the particular combination of species they contain. Our objective in chapters 1 through 4 is to establish the foundation on which these principles are based. Habitat and nutritional requirements of white-tailed deer, described in chapters 1 and 2, must be understood to manage for optimum habitat. In chapter 3, we explain the ecological theories that form the basis of white-tailed deer habitat management and show how these theories are applied in predicting the outcome of management practices. Chapter 4 focuses on determining the number of animals the habitat can support, a critical factor in managing for ample food supplies.
Aldo Leopold (1933, vii) stated in the preface of Game Management, "The central thesis of game management is this: game can be restored by the creative use of the same tools which have heretofore destroyed it—ax, plow, cow, fire, and gun. A favorable alignment of these forces sometimes came about in pioneer days by accident. The result was a temporary wealth of game far greater than the red man ever saw. Management is their purposeful and continuing alignment." Leopold's ideas regarding habitat management are as applicable now as they were when he wrote them. The most effective method of habitat improvement for white-tailed deer often is adjusting numbers of livestock, wildlife, or both. The ax, plow, and fire, in the form of rangeland discing, mechanical brush management, food plots, and prescribed burns, are widely used to manipulate vegetation on rangelands. Proper planning of habitat improvements and application of those improvements in the appropriate situations are critical to ensure that they are cost-effective and have long-term benefits. Our objective in chapters 5 through 8 is to review the state of the art of use of Leopold's tools—the cow, plow, ax, fire, and gun—and to discuss the pros and cons of these practices with regard to the three important principles underlying proper habitat management.
Quite often, attempts by wildlife managers to improve deer habitat, in the course of time, actually do more harm than good. A second objective of the final chapters in this book is to make wildlife managers aware of the negative impacts on habitat that Leopold's tools can have when applied improperly or in plant communities that may be damaged by manipulation. Explicit in Leopold's statement regarding the tools of wildlife management is the caveat that these same tools can destroy wildlife and their habitat. These tools can irreversibly damage wildlife habitat when improperly applied. Negative effects can be avoided if management practices are based on thorough understanding of habitat and nutritional requirements of white-tailed deer (chapters 1 and 2) and ecological concepts (chapter 3) that form the basis of habitat management.
Habitat
Habitat management often involves manipulating vegetation; however, habitat includes much more than the vegetation in an area where deer live. Habitat is composed of the basic resources needed by white-tailed deer and includes food, cover, space, and water (fig. 1.1). It is the space surrounding deer that provides the resources necessary for their survival and reproduction. Habitat is species specific; for example, good white-tailed deer habitat may be poor mule deer habitat (Hall, Krausman, and Morrison 1997; Krausman 2002). Habitat is a "fuzzy" concept because the idea that it exists is intuitive but defining it in a manner that is free from exceptions is difficult.
Habitat quality is an important concept, and increased habitat quality is commonly a management goal. The idea of habitat quality is intuitively understandable in that better-quality habitat should be able to support more animals than poor-quality habitat. Wildlife managers have debated the indicators used to judge habitat quality. Population density greater in one area than in another is often viewed as an indicator of better habitat quality. Van Horne (1983) argued, however, that density of an animal is not an adequate indicator of habitat quality. She recommended that the definition of habitat quality should include survival and production characteristics of animals in addition to density. Increased production includes parameters such as increased reproduction or carcass weights.
"Improvement" is normally the goal of habitat management. The definition of habitat improvement depends on how you define habitat quality because increased quality should be the outcome of improvement. Habitat improvement is often assessed based on vegetation characteristics; for example, if a management practice results in more forage, or higher-quality forage, for deer, then the habitat is considered to be "improved." Estimates of nutritional carrying capacity, for example, have been used to provide a measure of whether or not habitat has been improved (Jones, Edwards, and Demarais 2009).
It is important to understand the inherent limitations in the inferences you can make about habitat improvement when vegetation attributes are used to make decisions about whether or not habitat has been improved. An increase in a specific habitat attribute such as more food does not constitute improvement if that attribute is not limiting to deer. Clearing brush to increase forbs for deer to eat may have a minimal or even negative effect, for example, if forbs are abundant and lack of cover or water limits population growth. Finally, habitat is more than just vegetation. Measuring vegetation parameters tells you only how an improvement practice affected one component of habitat—vegetation.
Animal attributes are the best parameters for measuring habitat improvement just as they are for habitat quality. Measuring deer survival and reproduction, in addition to density, is the most desirable approach to determining if habitat has been improved (Van Horne 1983; Johnson 2005). Measuring parameters such as survival, however, is often not practical. Attributes such as body condition and body weight are more easily quantified.
Deer managers should avoid placing too much emphasis on individual habitat needs, such as food, and neglecting the other basic needs, such as cover. Focusing management on individual habitat needs and neglecting the others may result in a habitat that is out of balance, which may result in habitat degradation that will take years to correct. Therefore, management strategies should be based on equal importance of food, cover, space, and water. A key to habitat management is identifying limiting factors for survival, growth, and reproduction in a particular area. Habitat should be managed to provide optimum levels of the greatest number of limiting factors possible under the prevailing climatic and edaphic (soil) conditions.
Deer managers should avoid focusing on males and take into account that males and females may use distinctly different plant communities during much of the year. It is the female segment of a deer population that gives birth to the males and has the strongest influence on their nutritional status until weaning. Healthy females produce and raise healthy males; thus, when making management decisions, a manager should give equal weight to plant communities preferred by females and those utilized by males. An imbalance in male and female habitat may result in less productive females and, consequently, fewer and smaller males.
Environmental Factors
An organism's habitat must provide all of its basic needs for it to reproduce and maintain viable populations. Food, cover, space, and water must be available in the appropriate amount and quality for the habitat to support self-perpetuating white-tailed deer populations. White-tailed deer shift diet composition and utilization of cover, space, and water with changes in environmental conditions, such as soil properties and climate, especially temperature and timing and amount of rainfall.
Precipitation
The region encompassed by the Great Plains of the United States south into northeastern Mexico varies climatically along east-to-west and north-to-south gradients. Mean annual rainfall declines from east to west in the region. Potential annual evapotranspiration, the water loss from plants and the soil, also increases from east to west. This results in bioclimatic zones ranging from humid in the east to arid in the west (fig. 1.2). The decline in rainfall and increase in evapotranspiration from east to west result in a change in vegetation from forests in the east to desert scrub in the Trans-Pecos region of Texas and adjacent northern Mexico, and shortgrass prairie in the High Plains (fig. 1.3).
Rangelands, the focus of this book, include the arid, semiarid, and dry subhumid bioclimatic zones. The ratio of annual precipitation to potential evapotranspiration ranges from 0.05 to less than 0.2 in arid zones, 0.2 to less than 0.45 in semiarid zones, and 0.45 to less than 0.65 in dry subhumid zones (fig. 1.2; United Nations Environment Programme 1992; Le Houérou 1996). Rangelands are not cultivated and are dominated by herbaceous vegetation, shrubs, or open forests. Large tracts of semiarid rangeland occur in the northern and central Great Plains of western North and South Dakota west to eastern Montana and south to eastern New Mexico and the Texas Panhandle (fig. 1.3). Rangelands in Texas, Oklahoma, and northeastern Mexico include the Cross Timbers and Prairies, Edwards Plateau, High Plains, Rolling Plains, Tamaulipan Thorn Scrub, Chihuahuan Desert, and western Gulf Prairies and Marshes vegetation regions. The Cross Timbers and western Gulf Prairies and Marshes vegetation regions border the semiarid zone on the west and range into the dry subhumid zone. The Edwards Plateau, High Plains, Tamaulipan Thorn Scrub, and Rolling Plains regions are semiarid. The extreme western Chihuahuan Desert vegetation region is arid. Throughout this book, we refer to the Texas portion of the Tamaulipan Thorn Scrub as the South Texas Plains, and to the Texas portion of the Chihuahuan Desert vegetation region as the Trans-Pecos region.
Plant growth and potential production of forage for deer become increasingly more restricted as the climate changes from dry subhumid to semiarid to arid from east to west across this region. These changes in forage production may affect potential productivity of deer populations; however, numerous ancillary factors make the relationship between deer population productivity and mean annual rainfall rather complicated. For example, white-tailed deer fawn recruitment in Texas declined during 1977 through 1995 with increasing average annual precipitation, just the opposite of what might be expected (Ginnett and Young 2000). Fawn recruitment is the number of fawns born that survive and are added to the population each year, expressed as the ratio of fawns to adult females. The authors could not explain the underlying reasons for this relationship, but they suggested that deer densities did not affect the relationship because the Edwards Plateau region had the highest deer densities despite its location toward the arid end of the precipitation gradient.
Relationships between fawn recruitment and March-through-July rainfall varied depending on the precipitation zone (Ginnett and Young 2000). In the western, more arid portion of Texas, fawn recruitment increased with increasing rainfall during these months. In the central part of the state, there was no relationship between fawn recruitment and rainfall during this period. In the eastern, wetter part of the state, fawn recruitment decreased with increasing March-through-July rainfall.
There are several possible explanations for the negative relationship between rainfall during this period and fawn recruitment in East Texas (Ginnett and Young 2000). High rainfall causes leaching of nutrients, resulting in infertile soils and poor forage nutritional value for lactating females. Poor nutrition reduces milk production, growth rates, and health of females and fawns. Red imported fire ants may also reduce fawn recruitment (Allen, Demarais, and Lutz 1997). External and internal parasites are more abundant during wet years and may increase fawn mortality (Ginnett and Young 2000). Complications resulting from exposure during wet years may also increase fawn mortality.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from White-Tailed Deer Habitat by Timothy Edward Fulbright, J. Alfonso Ortega-S.. Copyright © 2013 Timothy Edward Fulbright and J. Alfonso Ortega-S.. Excerpted by permission of Texas A&M University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
PREFACE,1. Habitat Requirements of White-Tailed Deer,
2. White-Tailed Deer Nutrition,
3. Ecological Principles Underlying Habitat Management,
4. Estimating Carrying Capacity,
5. The Cow: Livestock and White-Tailed Deer Habitat,
6. The Plow: Food Plots,
7. The Ax, Plow, and Fire: Brush Management for White-Tailed Deer,
8. The Gun: Harvest and Management Planning,
APPENDIX 1. Common and Scientific Names of Selected Animals and Plants,
APPENDIX 2. Metric–English System Unit Equivalents,
APPENDIX 3. Determining Adequate Sample Sizes,
APPENDIX 4. Planting Summary for Selected Forages,
REFERENCES,
INDEX,
What People are Saying About This
“. . . fills a niche that is not currently approached in the literature, both for South Texas/northern Mexico and for the wildlife field in general. There is no other text that addresses the management of the white-tailed deer in a semi-arid environment.”--D. Lynn Drawe, Rob & Bessie Welder Wildlife Foundation
— D. Lynn Drawe, Rob & Bessie Welder Wildlife Foundation