Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Rocky Mountain

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The US Geological Survey Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center (NOROCK) is offering a funding opportunity is to amalgamate and analyze data regarding distribution of North American porcupines from the contiguous western USA (from the West Coast to Texas and Montana) relative to several possible drivers. The intent is three-fold: 1) quantitatively assess current patterns in occupancy and abundance of porcupines from existing records, and test whether any management-relevant and ecologically meaningful trends in these have occurred; 2) assess whether any factor(s) (e.g., aspects of forest-community type, climate [ecological water availability, latitude as a proxy], silvicultural harvest strategies, extent of historic poisoning) may be underlying any changes in porcupine distribution; This could use an information-theoretic approach to compare competing models, and use multi-model inference to inform future predictions and work, or instead employ multivariate analytical approaches; and 3) determine how porcupine occupancy and density influence forest stand structure and especially fire frequency, after accounting for other factors known to affect fire risk. The porcupine is a widely distributed species that many land and wildlife managers believe may be undergoing declines, but a broad-scale analysis has yet to be performed. The proposed research will provide important data to help the USFWS and state agencies assess whether elevated conservation status is merited for the species. Expected deliverables will be: a) compilation of high-confidence records of porcupines from numerous sources (e.g., all state wildlife agencies and Natural Heritage Programs in the region, NGOs, GBIF, ARCTOS, MVZ database at U.C. Berkeley, other museums, state Departments of Transportation) into a central database; b) the development and evaluation of alternative models to quantitatively describe spatial and temporal patterns in porcupine distribution, a report that provides statistically valid, spatially explicit estimated probability of current and future porcupine distributions across the region based on observations amalgamated to date (using the factors mentioned in 2) and 3), above), and 2 peer-reviewed journal articles.

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