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Game management has been defined as the art of making land produce sustained annual crops of wild game for recreational use (Leopold, 1939). Game is a product of the land; thus the successful practice of game management is dependent upon the manipulation of the land so as to meet most adequately the needs of any animal species. Natural habitats are constantly undergoing many changes in response to external influences. These changes are usually very slow but almost invariably take place in a series of integrating, but well defined steps when the pattern is unaltered by the activities of man. This sequence or plant changes has associated with it an animal population which is probably governed by floristic alterations. There are few quantitative data available on the relationship of these plant successional changes on the associated animal populations. Whereas the effect of plant succession on the animal population of a habitat is not susceptible to exact measurements, this effect probably may be measured in relative terms. In Virginia alone, an average of 50,000 acres of land has been abandoned each year for the past fifty years (United States Department of Commerce, Agricultural Census, 1950). In the state this represents approximately two and one half million acres of wildlife habitat which is in a state of dynamic change. Such abandoned areas may be among the more important wildlife producing areas 1n the state as the production of wildlife on such areas is not in conflict with agricultural or forestry interests and, therefore, may be given top priority in a game management program. On the 40,000 acres of the three state forests here in Virginia, large sums of money are spent annually on a wildlife management program and a majority of the activities under this program is devoted to the reclamation of abandoned areas or the holding of such areas at a stage of ecological succession so as to produce the maximum crop of wildlife. A similar wildlife management program is in effect on the approximately 1,500,000 acres in the two Virginia National Forests. In addition, there is a statewide farm game program sponsored by the Virginia Commission of Game and Inland Fisheries and a majority of work under this program also is concerned With holding ecological succession at a stage where game supposedly is produced in reasonable quantities. Basic data on the influence of ecological succession on game populations are needed for these programs if they are to be carried out intelligently and effectively. It is the purpose of this project to attempt to supply such data. The primary objectives of the project were fourfold: (1) To follow the trend of natural plant succession in abandoned areas in Cumberland County, Virginia in the Piedmont Region of the state, (2) to determine the influence of natural plant succession on the cottontail rabbit and bobwhite quail on abandoned areas in Cumberland County, Virginia, (3) to determine those stages in ecological plant succession which are best suited to the requirements of the cottontail rabbit and the bobwhite quail, (4) to develop a basis for predicting the tenure of animal and plant species in areas in which natural succession is undisturbed. A study or this nature should indicate the type of habitat changes which might be normally expected on abandoned land and the associated shifts in animal populations which may be concurrent with these habitat changes. If these successional data are accurately analyzed, they may indicate in general what has happened, is happening, or may be expected to happen on much of the approximately two and one half million acres of abandoned land in Virginia. This study was largely concerned with the trend or plant changes on abandoned land rather than with the underlying causes for these changes. In addition to the primary objectives of the study, three secondary objectives were considered in this investigation in Cumberland County. These objectives were: (1) To determine rabbit utilization of land use types other than abandoned land by means of trapping, (2) to collect population data, age ratios, and call indices for the bobwhite quail and to attempt to relate these data to land use types, (3) to determine small manal utilization of land use types other than abandoned land by means of trapping. / Ph. D.

The impacts of human activities on the natural world have accelerated rapidly in recent centuries and decades. Consequent loss and fragmentation of natural habitats is the greatest threat to short and long-term survival of the planet’s rich biodiversity. Large carnivores are particularly sensitive to these changes, as many species rely on expansive natural areas to maintain healthy, genetically diverse populations. As a result, this charismatic clade is a focal point of conservation attention, and is also frequently used as a conservation umbrella to conserve other species which share their broad range of habitats. While diminished, fragmented populations and geographic isolation can be detrimental to species longevity, habitat corridors which connect populations throughout a broader human-dominated landscape provide resistance and resilience to the effects of isolation by maintaining genetic connectivity between sub-populations. Accordingly, understanding how large carnivores move through natural and non-natural landscapes to connect with other populations is a key area of research in movement ecology and conservation biology. In this dissertation, collaborators and I implemented open-source synthetic, comparative, and machine learning approaches to model the movement of tigers and jaguars, two ecologically vital and connectivity-dependent carnivore species, in regions of their ranges which are largely shared with humans. For Chapters 1 and 2, focusing on tigers in central India, we synthesized five independently derived layers of landscape resistance to derive consensus among existing research (Chapter 1) and comparatively test different movement simulation techniques’ abilities to predict tiger occurrence data (Chapter 2). We found that existing research efforts on habitat quality and potential connectivity areas for tigers in central India were more aligned than independent results indicated. We also derived a geospatial layer for “consensus connectivity areas (CCAs)” – areas where existing research agreed on high potential movement for tigers – and detailed the extensive current and future anthropogenic pressures on these important areas. Additionally, we found that while outputs from several popular techniques for simulating wildlife movement can predict in situ tiger occurrences, a circuit theory-based method, Circuitscape, performed best overall in this landscape and was the most robust to both inputs and validation data used for the analysis. In Chapter 3, we analyzed a collection of jaguar telemetry data to understand how the environmental responses of jaguar movements vary depending on the behavioral state of the animal. We found that jaguars in a higher (i.e., exploratory) movement state were more likely to move through anthropogenic areas, low tree cover, and areas farther from high tree cover. As similar, less risk-averse behavior has been reported in other carnivores during larger scale movements such as dispersal, these exploratory movement patterns may be a proxy for dispersal movement tendencies and thus more applicable for connectivity planning for jaguars, particularly in mixed-use landscapes. Collectively, this research provides insight into the movement ecology of two threatened large carnivore species as well as multiple open-source methodologies for modeling movement that can be applied to other research questions and conservation objectives worldwide.

The development of a fisheries and wildlife indicator system is described. The system is intended to serve as a planning and policymaking aid for state fisheries and wildlife agencies and to enhance communications between state agencies and the public. The conceptual basis for the indicator system derives from the field of social indicators research and rests on the premise that explicit decisionmaking methods are more desirable than intuition and subjective methods. Four major steps were involved in developing the fisheries and wildlife indicator system. The first step was assessing the current availability of resource information and involved analyzing state fisheries and wildlife agency annual reports. Administrative information was emphasized in reports over fisheries and wildlife resources and their use. States rarely reported trend statistics that allow comparisons over time to be made. Reports contained a mixture of quantitative and qualitative information, but contained few tables and graphs compared to the amount of text. Assessing the type, quality, and quantity of performance information currently available laid the base for subsequent work on the indicator system. The second step was developing a comprehensive classification framework representing all aspects of the fisheries and wildlife resource. The framework, a 16-cell matrix including the resource categories of People, Populations, Habitat, and Administration, and the resource components of Inputs, Processes, Outputs, and Impacts, contained 82 separate resource characteristics representing the universe of concerns and responsibilities faced in state-level fisheries and wildlife management. The third step was identifying indicators representative of each characteristic in the framework. Through an extensive analysis of fisheries and wildlife literature, agency documents, and social assessment literature, 377 indicators were identified. Based on appropriateness and availability of each indicator, 242 indicators were recommended for monitoring by state fisheries and wildlife agencies. The last step in the process was describing the use of the fisheries and wildlife indicator system, how the system can fit into an agency's administrative structure and planning programs, and how its use may affect the future of fisheries and wildlife management. / Ph. D. / incomplete_metadata

Global urbanization is rapidly expanding, leading to habitat degradation and fragmentation, which present strong challenges for native wildlife. At the same time, urbanization is often accompanied by the introduction of non-native species, which alter community and habitat structures. These changes may disrupt ecosystem functions upon which animals and humans rely. Therefore, it is essential to understand the impact of anthropogenic habitat modifications on urban animals. In this dissertation, I use three case studies to examine anthropogenic influences on 1) species dispersal in Caribbean lizards, 2) mammalian behavior along an urban-rural gradient, 3) tick-borne disease host and vector communities. In my first chapter, I examined the influence of urbanization and road networks on dispersal of three lizard species in the context of their development tolerance. I found that development tolerance is a key predictor of dispersal impact, with the least tolerant species experiencing dispersal restriction and the most tolerant species experiencing dispersal facilitation. In my second and third chapters, I investigated the influence of urbanization and invasive understory vegetation along an urban-rural gradient in southeastern Pennsylvania. The second chapter focused on behavioral responses of four urban-adapted mammal species to urbanization across temporal and spatial scales. I found that behavioral changes were not driven by landscape-scale development, but rather by temporal and local-scale variables, most importantly local vegetation structure. Finally, in my third chapter, I again examined the effects of landscape-scale urbanization and local-scale vegetation density, this time in relation to tick-borne disease dynamics. My results suggest that invasive vegetation influenced small mammal and tick habitat use at micro-habitat scales, with important ramifications for tick-borne disease infection. In combination, the results from my three disparate chapters add to our understanding of anthropogenic impacts on urban animals. / Biology