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| The not so secret life of # 77 (Summer 2007) |
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A radio collar lets wildlife specialists learn how this deer lives
By Dale McDonald
Four years ago a beautiful, unsuspecting
mule deer fawn walked into a live
trap placed by the Colorado Division
of Wildlife. When the door swung shut
behind her, she became special. She
was now Number 77, and her new radio
collar would let state biologists track her
movements year-round.
She was not alone. Along with 41 other
newly tagged deer, Number 77 would participate
in a study to try and determine why
chronic wasting disease was prevalent on the
north side of the St. Vrain River on Colorado's
northern front range, but rare on the south
side of the river. One theory was that perhaps
the deer did not mix, and by tracking the animals
the theory could be tested.
Surprise.
What the biologists learned was
that yes, they did mix, and no, they didn't.
"Plotting the movements of those deer was
really interesting," says Sherri Huwer, a terrestrial biologist with the Division of Wildlife. "Number 77 never left the hill she was born on. In fact, with her you could pretty much
drive to the intersection of Quartz Way and
Pyrite and there she'd be. Over on the north
side of the river there was a similar group.
They stayed on the east side of a relatively small parcel of open space and never left
it. Their whole lives were spent within one
square mile. Oddly though, another group on
the west side of that space moved 15 miles
west to the Allenspark area every summer.
"The extreme animal was one we trapped
near where we caught Number 77. That
deer made a 20-mile trek every summer and
crossed the Continental Divide, which we
thought was a barrier. Very surprising."
While Huwer can't say for certain why
deer do as they do, there are some probabilities.
Number one, she says, is likely cultural.
Deer do what their mothers did. For example,
the deer that crossed the Divide had a buck
fawn the biologists tagged, and it crossed the
Divide every year, too. For number 77, her
lack of movement likely was a combination
of factors. "That hill is just great habitat,"
Huwer says. "Deer are not dumb. They know
where they are safe and they know where they
are not. If her mom hung out there, it fits."
High-tech management.
Across the country, wildlife managers are using new technology such as radio collars to learn more and more about wildlife habits. It's now commonplace to combine radio collars with airplanes equipped with receivers. The planes do regular fly-overs and record the animals' positions with GPS equipment. There are even radio
collars that have onboard GPS. Eight times a
day the collar records where it is, then downloads
that information to a receiver.
Then there's the top-of-the-line collar currently
being used in the reintroduction of the
lynx. The collar logs its location and downloads
to a satellite, which then relays the
information to a computer in France. That
information can be accessed on the Internet
whenever needed. It is valuable technology
for animals that travel hundreds of miles.
For Sherri Huwer, the rewards from this
knowledge are many. In addition to plotting
movement as it relates to disease
transmission, the maps help the biologists
with basic, yet important, decisions
that can affect wildlife management.
"We are learning that we have some high animal densities on open space lands
where there is no hunting," she explains. "For
herd health reasons, we may want to reduce
some of those populations. But how do you do
that in no-hunt zones? By knowing how and
when they move, we learn when they move off
the open space lands. In August, for example,
the deer are on their summer range when archery
season begins. If the deer move off the
open space then, we could increase archery
permits to help manage the herd."
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