Regional collaboration in wildlife monitoring and management

Background/Question/Methods

Wildlife species inhabiting Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER) are managed by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG), in cooperation with JBER Natural Resources.   Recent wildlife studies on JBER lands have been designed to collect data on wildlife movement corridors, which help guide land management and planning decisions.  These studies involve tracking moose (Alces alces), black bear (Ursus americanus), brown bear (U. arctos), and wolverine (Gulo gulo) with Global Positioning System (GPS) radio collars, as well as determining the nutritional value of habitat to various wildlife species.   

Game Management Unit (GMU) 14C, which includes JBER and Anchorage, is difficult to manage for moose due to large areas of urban-wilderness interface, as surveying moose in urban areas is not practical.  JBER and the adjacent Ship Creek drainage include much of this urban-wilderness interface, making these lands critical for moose management; although these lands support approximately 27% of the moose population in GMU 14C, they provide roughly 60% of the total harvest from this unit.  A Gassaway census is conducted yearly by ADFG staff to estimate moose numbers in the area and set harvest objectives.

Results/Conclusions

A 2005-2007 study on brown bear habitat use on JBER lands allowed researchers to identify travel corridors.  A high number of brown bears were found foraging and rearing young in close proximity to human presence.  Using DNA analysis of hair samples, researchers identified a minimum of 36 bears within the study area (JBER and the Anchorage area).  Stable isotope techniques were used to determine the proportion of salmon (37%), terrestrial meat (34%), and vegetation (30%) in bear diets.

An ongoing study is enabling researchers to identify travel corridors for moose and black bear and evaluate the influence of diet and habitat quality on moose movements.

In 2012, a pilot study was initiated in Anchorage and on JBER to gain new insights about urban bear behavior and human-bear conflicts using video cameras mounted on GPS-equipped radio collars.  

A 2007-2013 project using GPS radio collars deployed on wolverine is helping to determine the movement patterns of wolverines in the interface of Chugach State Park, JBER, and Anchorage.  These movement patterns are being used to validate the sample unit probability estimator (SUPE), an aerial survey technique used to estimate wolverine abundance from winter tracks.