Mortality

Wildlife & Predators

Predators are animals that survive by killing and eating other animals. Because the idea of killing as a way of life is distasteful to the general public – and because predators do, on occasion, kill domestic livestock – people have severely persecuted predators. Often called vermin or varmits, predators have been subjects of control programs. Lets…

Wildlife & Fire

The use of fire in wildlife management is a controversial area of research. Resource managers are attempting to counter the “Smoky the Bear” image and show that fire can be a valuable wildlife management tool. So how does fire influence your management area? Wildlife habitat can be positively or negatively impacted by fire. How fire…

Life Tables & Survivorship Curves

Knowing how your animals will fare over time is an important part of being a wildlife manager. Not all animals live long lives, and sometimes thats by design. Having a long term plan for “long-lived” species such as deer, would be more beneficial than the same type of plan for a spawning cycle of fish…

Poaching

Illegal, uncontrolled harvest of wildlife is known as poaching and it threatens the survival of wild animal populations. Today we’ll discuss poaching and its negative impacts on your wildlife. Unfortunately, poaching is more common than you may think. A lot of times you will find evidence like pictured below: this is a male deer who has…

Types of Wildlife Mortality

As a follow up from the last post, today we’ll go over the different types of wildlife mortality. There are many different ways your animals can die, when we discuss these ways, you can see how to prevent these types of mortality as much as possible. Starvation and Malnutrition: Starvation is death or debilitation caused…

Wildlife Mortality Concepts

There are many types of mortality that wildlife can succumb to. Mortality is merely the cause of death; some being normal and others abnormal. Today we will discuss the differences between the two and the general concepts of mortality that can damage your wildlife populations. Normal Mortality vs. Abnormal Mortality Normal Mortality: Types of mortality…