GLNF-CESU Conduct Deer Survey on NMI-SLBE

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The project goals are 1) to monitor and estimate the relative abundance of deer and other co-occurring mammals on the Manitou Islands and 2) to estimate vegetation understory characteristics associated with variation in the relative abundance of deer. These protocols have been applied on other islands of the Great Lakes. The project will focus on white-tail deer on North Manitou Island, however, the study also has potential to capture information on a wide variety of large and medium-sized mammals that co-occur with white-tailed deer across both islands. Scientific community and/or researchers external to NPS will gain new knowledge provided through research and related results as well as dissemination of natural resource information. Students will gain real-world, hand-on experience of natural resource projects outside of the classroom. Findings will be used to inform NPS management decisions for deer (including but not limited to public hunt) as well as other mammals.  Recipient will conduct a field study to determine relative abundance of mammals on the Manitou Islands using camera traps. Primary focus will be white-tailed deer on North Manitou Island. Recipient will also estimate understory characteristics associated with variation in the relative abundance of deer. Study design follows protocols used on the 18 Islands of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore (Allen et al. 2018). Use of these protocols enables comparisons to other island systems in the Great Lakes and is a standardized method that has proved to be efficient for detection of large and medium-sized mammals native to the Great Lakes region.

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