Mule deer in Southern Alberta are going to be wearing a new collar, and it isn’t for fashion reasons.
The Alberta Professional Outfitters Society (APOS) announced last week that they are beginning their Alberta Mule Deer Collaring Project this winter.
As part of this multi-year project, they will capture, collar, and release 100 mule deer in southeast and southwest Alberta to help gather information on how to support mule deer management in the province.
This project is based off a similar project that occurred in Utah in 2014.
That project initially placed radio collars on 210 does and 210 female fawns.
On top of the information they gathered from the collars, they had capture crews go out and asses the animal’s body condition, age, reproductive status, as well as testing for diseases.
Their program has run for the past ten years, and the information gathered has resulted in robust information that helps managers understand mule deer mortality, reproduction, survival, and management.
APOS has given approximately $675,000 to support the first round of collaring and the project management through the first year of this new program.
The Alberta Conservation Association (ACA) has also contributed $100,000 to help get the project started, and the Alberta Forestry and Parks (AFP) has committed $250,000 to the project.
“After 4 years of building Alberta’s new Mule Deer Management Plan, an investment in data is the next logical step,” the APOS President, Corey Jarvis, stated in a media release. “Aerial surveys generate valuable information, but they are costly and do not capture the same level of nuance that will be gleaned from the biometric and movement data available through the collars. APOS is excited to contribute to innovation in wildlife management in Alberta, and we are thankful to Dr Randy Larsen at Brigham Young University and others for their support and guidance.”
The information from this project will increase the knowledge and understanding of mule deer abundance and distribution.
It will also inform management actions to make sure there is mule deer conservation throughout Alberta.
They have specific objectives of this project to evaluate, and they are:
- Adult female survival and determine causes of mortality,
- Adult male survival and determine causes of mortality,
- Efficient population monitoring methods,
- Seasonal movement, natural movement corridors, and seasonal habitat preference, and
- Regional deer body condition and the correlation to changes in mule deer abundance.
This Alberta Mule Deer Collaring Project is led by the consulting firm Wilderness Solutions Inc. and is being lead by a Steering Committee.
The Committee is made up of the government and project funders, and there will also be a Technical Subcommittee that will help to refine the study methodology.
Both the mortality assessments and the field collection of the collars will be done in partnership with various organizations and agencies.
As part of this project, they are looking for landowners in the Wildlife Management Units (WMUs) 102, 116, 118, 119, 624, 303, 304, 305, 306, 308, and 402 who know there is a mule deer population living on their land and are willing to grant access to their land for collaring efforts.
For more information on this project, click here.