Project Details

Also, see the attached project proposal for an easier to read version of the information contained here.

In the fall of 2015, the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (UDWR) and the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station (UAES) funded Phase I of a research project to begin investigating forest grouse (dusky [Dendragapus obscurus] and ruffed [Bonasa umbellus] grouse) populations in the Bear River Mountains of northern Utah. The objectives of this project were to:
1) Begin assessing harvest characteristics of forest grouse.
2) Develop population-level surveys to index annual changes.
3) Begin evaluating seasonal habitat selection and response to habitat management.
4) Better understand the relationship of livestock grazing and brooding habitat use. 
5) Assess efficacy of different capture methods.
 
Based on the data we have collected during the first two years, we were able to address phase I objectives. However, other objectives require more than two field seasons of data, including:
1) Estimation of harvest rates to inform harvest management. 
4) Increased knowledge of movements, seasonal habitat use, response to management actions, and evaluation of nesting habitat selection to understand limiting factors of population growth and inform design of habitat management projects.
3) Estimates of seasonal survival to understand population dynamics and inform harvest management.
4) Define sample size and geographic extent required for a reliable population index.

Phase I of this project has received significant attention. Our research was featured at The Wildlife Society's 2016 Annual Conference in Raleigh, NC as part of a National Symposium on Forest Grouse. Additionally, our research is the topic of an article published in the March-April 2018 edition of The Wildlife Society's Wildlife Professional Magazine. Results from phase one of the study are detailed in the thesis by Skyler Farnsworth entitled "Forest Grouse Ecology and Management in the Bear River Range, Northern Utah". Data gathered in Phase I was also used to produce a USU Extension Bulletin on hunting forest grouse in Utah (Carpenter et al. 2019).

Other state wildlife agencies have become aware of the project and are interested in the forest grouse research being conducted in Utah. For example, the Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW) has partnered with USU to begin their own dusky grouse project due to the lack of basic and applied information, to better manage these important upland game resources.  The issues studied include the impact of beetle kill on conifers used as winter habitat, harvest management, and seasonal habitat selection. We have also had conversations with Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks about these efforts. While the recognition of the need for more information on western forest grouse has been highly positive, critical management objectives such as harvest rate and nesting ecology simply require more time than a two-year study to complete.

Western forest grouse (dusky and ruffed grouse) are currently lacking some of the most important information needed for future management, especially considering our knowledge and understanding of other game species across the West. Our research is focused on providing the most relevant information for future management of these important resources.  Forest grouse are an important small game species in Utah and are highly sought after, largely because of the public land opportunities that are available for hunting these species (Krannich and Eriksen 2006 report). Forest grouse have maintained stable to increasing harvest over the last several decades (Bernales et al. 2020), and could likely provide increased hunting opportunity for Utah's hunting public.

Information gathered during Phase I has indicated that many of the reproductive habitats selected by dusky grouse may be important reproductive areas for big game, such as mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) and elk (Cervus canadensis). To our knowledge, there is no available information explicitly assessing the overlap of forest grouse and cervid habitat selection. Concurrent to Phase I and this proposed research in Phase II, the UDWR has and will continue collecting detailed information on habitat selection by mule deer, elk, and moose. By combining these data, there is an opportunity to understand the sympatric use of habitat types between forest grouse and cervids in Utah.

Forest grouse in Utah and throughout the West, inhabit large portions of the landscape. Many of the forested montane areas in Utah have received relatively little active habitat management over the last several decades. This has led to older mature vegetation communities and high fuel-loads, creating an increasing risk of catastrophic wildfire. Fire and fuel-load management is becoming more and more ubiquitous across Utah, and is often focused on creating early successional habitats. Forest grouse and other wildlife species will certainly be impacted by these management techniques and will likely benefit in many cases. Vast areas of Utah could potentially be shifted through active management to more early successional vegetation communities. By understanding the basic ecology and habitat selection of these upland game resources, and their potential sympatric use with big game, the UDWR will be in a better position to guide management actions to optimize benefits to wildlife.

This proposed research will be important to the UDWR by providing information for several procedures and programs such as: the R3 program, and measured hunter recruitment and participation with results from this research contributing to maintenance of huntable populations and funding for wildlife management in Utah. This research will also inform the Migration Initiative, habitat management, and policy decisions by Regional Advisory Councils and the Wildlife Board. Additionally, dusky grouse have a similar life history to sage-grouse, and as we have seen in the case of many potential listings, data on the ecology, life history, habitat and abundance can prevent a species from becoming listed as threatened or endangered. However, dusky grouse have a comparative paucity of information on their ecology and life history.

Provide evidence about the nature of the problem and the need to address it. Identify the significance of the problem using a variety of data sources. For example, if a habitat restoration project is being proposed to benefit greater sage-grouse, describe the existing plant community characteristics that limit habitat value for greater sage-grouse and identify the changes needed for habitat improvement.

Our overall goal is to provide the most relevant information concerning the ecology and management of dusky grouse populations in Utah to ensure future opportunities to harvest and manage the conservation of these species.

Our specific objectives for Phase II (2-year study) are:

*	Harvest Management -- We will continue to monitor harvest rates via GPS marked and banded dusky grouse and banded ruffed grouse. We will attempt increase our sample of ruffed grouse and dusky grouse to provide an opportunity to contrast harvest characteristics between species in the same study area. We will also continue to collect and analyze harvested wings of both species throughout the 2022-23 and 2023-24 hunting seasons.
*	Movements, Migration, and Habitat Selection -- assess and monitor the movements of dusky grouse to better understand habitat selection to inform future habitat management. When possible, we will monitor the movements of dispersing juveniles at the end of the brooding season to better understand population-level emigration and immigration to identify movement corridors or patterns. We will also continue to monitor nest and brood site selection.
*	Population Dynamics -- We will monitor and estimate the survival of dusky grouse during critical life stages. We will monitor adult, nest, and brood survival to better understand critical life stages to maintain stable harvestable populations. We will monitor chicks, associated with GPS marked brood females, using mini-VHF transmitters (< 1 g) to understand factors that influence population-level recruitment.
*	Population Monitoring: Breeding Surveys -- We will continue breeding surveys in our study area within the Bear River Range, although at a lower intensity level than Phase I. We will work with the UDWR Upland Game Program to identify other population areas statewide and conduct breeding surveys for both forest grouse species at a broader scale. This will help us understand how to develop monitoring for state-wide populations and provide important breeding habitat information for large-scale habitat selection analyses.

Deliverables
1.	Researchers will send a monthly progress e-mail to UDWR staff, including the upland game program managers, regional staff and SLO leadership.
2.	An annual progress report will be submitted by December 31st each year (2023, 2024, and 2025) to the UDWR Research Council and the UDWR Upland Game Program. 
3.	A thesis will be published upon completion of the graduate student's project.  
4.	We will develop several fact sheets by June 2025 and peer-reviewed publications from available data will be submitted following the completion of the thesis (Figure 1). 
5.	We will provide a technical report to the UDWR at the completion of the project, July 1 2025 detailing findings and recommendations related to all project objectives and goals.
6.	Raw spatial data will be provided to UDWR quarterly.
7.	Copies of all data and databases, including spatial data, will be provided to UDWR following completion of this project.

Harvest rate information should be available at the end of this research to help guide harvest management recommendation for the 2025 RAC and Board cycle.

Provide an overall goal for the project and then provide clear, specific and measurable objectives (outcomes) to be accomplished by the proposed actions. If possible, tie to one or more of the public benefits UWRI is providing.

LOCATION: Justify the proposed location of this project over other areas, include publicly scrutinized planning/recovery documents that list this area as a priority, remote sensing modeling that show this area is a good candidate for restoration, wildlife migration information and other data that help justify this project's location.

TIMING: Justify why this project should be implemented at this time. For example, Is the project area at risk of crossing an ecological or other threshold wherein future restoration would become more difficult, cost prohibitive, or even impossible.

List management plans where this project will address an objective or strategy in the plan. Describe how the project area overlaps the objective or strategy in the plan and the relevance of the project to the successful implementation of those plans. It is best to provide this information in a list format with the description immediately following the plan objective or strategy.

If applicable, detail how the proposed project will significantly reduce the risk of fuel loading and/or continuity of hazardous fuels including the use of fire-wise species in re-seeding operations. Describe the value of any features being protected by reducing the risk of fire. Values may include; communities at risk, permanent infrastructure, municipal watersheds, campgrounds, critical wildlife habitat, etc. Include the size of the area where fuels are being reduced and the distance from the feature(s) at risk.

Describe how the project has the potential to improve water quality and/or increase water quantity, both over the short and long term. Address run-off, erosion, soil infiltration, and flooding, if applicable.

Description of efforts, both completed and planned, to bring the proposed action into compliance with any and all cultural resource, NEPA, ESA, etc. requirements. If compliance is not required enter "not applicable" and explain why not it is not required.

We will trap dusky and ruffed grouse using two techniques (Zwickle and Bendell 1967, Schroeder 1986, Pelren and Crawford 1995). The first will use pointing dogs to locate grouse and noose poles to capture them from perches after they flush into a tree (Dahlgren et al. 2012). The second method will use walk-in traps with drift fences. Both methods were successfully and safely used during Phase I of the project.

All captured grouse will receive aluminum leg bands. Chicks or juveniles of either species will have cotton glued to the inside of the leg band to allow for growth of the leg. Dusky grouse under 500 grams will receive either a 16 gram rump-mounted solar-powered GPS radio (Harrier model from Ecotone; www.ecotone-telemetry.com/en, or similar) with a 3.5 gram VHF radio included for ground tracking (19.5 gram total) or a 19 gram VHF necklace-style radio.

During Phase I we attached solar-powered GPS-PTT ARGOS radios to dusky grouse, the first ever documented case of GPS data gathered from this species. The GPS-PTT units performed well during the brooding season, when marked brood hens were using more open habitat types. However, once the marked females began selecting for more forested cover types, the radios reported sporadic location data, presumably due to lack of solar recharge and loss of power. At the end of Phase I (July and August 2017), we attached Ecotone Harrier units to several dusky grouse. These GPS units have been successfully used on other forest species, such as northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis) and northern goshawks (Accipiter gentilis). Harrier units are store-on-board solar-powered GPS radios with low power requirements relative to ARGOS-enabled units. These units are similar to transmitters that were successfully deployed on wild turkey in the Mendon, UT area. Our initial tests of the Harrier units showed success and promise for future use with forest grouse.

We will continue developing a capture and banding database for both ruffed and dusky grouse. We will also develop a monitoring database for both spring breeding and late summer surveys. All databases will be housed at Utah State University but shared openly with the UDWR Upland Game Program Managers and telemetry locations imported into the Migration Initiative database.

We will use the "Guidelines to the use of Wild Birds in Research" for this research project (Fair et al. 2010). We will work through USU's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) to renew our IACUC permit for all trapping, handling, and field research activities. USU has already received a COR from the UDWR for trapping and handling both dusky and ruffed grouse (COR# 2BAND9386), and we will renew this for Phase II.

Movements, Migration, and Habitat Selection -- Movements and seasonal habitat selection are poorly understood for western forest grouse. In 2016 and 2017, a successful brooding female dusky grouse moved over 30 km north into Idaho following chick dispersal at the end of the summer, and returned the following spring to the same breeding area (within a couple hundred meters) in Utah. This is an example of some of the more unusual movements dusky grouse are capable of, and movements that were not anticipated from what was generally expected of dusky grouse.

Our GPS location database for dusky grouse will continue to grow allowing for analysis of movements, migrations, and seasonal habitat selection. A resource selection function analysis will be conducted to determine seasonal habitat selection. We will measure micro-site vegetation characteristics at a use and random sites for comparison at nest sites. Use of the Harrier units will help us overcome any bias associated with ARGOS units that only working in more open habitats, but failing under tree canopy. We will perform regular downloads of GPS data (approximately weekly during the field season) from Harrier-marked grouse. Harrier units have enough data storage to record data for several months and we can retrieve data when the marked bird or unit is located. This will allow for winter location data to be gathered without many telemetry flights or time intensive field work in areas with limited winter travel.
Our most successful trapping period for dusky grouse has been during the brooding period in July and August. We will continue to monitor dusky grouse broods from the time of hatch or capture. When we capture young of the year dusky grouse during this period and if they are over 500 grams, we will attach a GPS radio to monitor the bird's movements which are most likely to show dispersal from the population, allowing us to better understand immigration and emigration for the species.

Very little is known about dusky grouse nesting habitat. Phase I of our research allowed us to begin documenting nest site selection. However, because trapping female dusky grouse was mostly successful during the brooding period (July and August), nest site selection did not occur until the following spring. During this time gap, our sample was reduced due to natural mortality and radio failure, but we were still able to locate some dusky grouse nests and a couple unmarked ruffed grouse nests. However, a larger sample of nest sites could be collected with continuation of this research and would allow for robust habitat relationships to be established.

Harvest Management -- We will monitor harvest characteristics with banded and radio-marked grouse, as well as harvest wing collection (wings collected regularly during the hunting season). Band return data is slow and it will likely take several hunting seasons to build a sample size of harvest information that we can analyze. During Phase I we only recovered 3 bands -- 2 through harvest and 1 from a hiker who found a mortality site. We believe the low harvested band return is due to few marked birds (n > 100) relative to the population and the short time period in which this study was conducted. Increased capture efficacy from experience gained in Phase I should increase the opportunity to assess harvest rates. Band recovery rates will need to be adjusted for pre-season mortality rates, crippling loss, and non-reported bands (see example in DeStefano and Rusch 1986). We will use the multiple-recapture method to estimate pre-hunting season survival (Seber 1973). Having a GPS radio-marked sample during the fall will also help us understand factors that may influence harvest rate; such as documenting the annual variation in onset of fall migration for dusky grouse (see Appendix A; Mussehl 1960). Crippling loss will be estimated with a radio-marked sample if available, or assumed from reported literature of other grouse species. Non-reporting rates for bands will be assumed from available game bird literature.

During Phase I, we established wing-barrels at the main forest outlets along Logan Canyon and Black Smith Fork Canyon. We collected wing samples twice per week during the hunting season. We will continue to collect wing data during Phase II. This wing data will overlap harvested band return data, allowing us to better analyze population characteristics, including:  age structure, sex ratio and annual production of the harvested population (Hill et al. 2003). Wing barrel locations will continue to be placed strategically throughout the study area and allow us to estimate harvest pressure separately for several small geographic areas within the study area roughly represented by each wing barrel. Over time, we can consider past population trends, survival from marked grouse, and possibly build population reconstruction model(s) from historic data (see Chumbley 2009).

Currently, harvest management for ruffed grouse and dusky grouse is combined for bag and possession limits, season dates, etc. However, these species exhibit different life histories and could potentially respond very differently to harvest mortality. By maintaining our sample of marked dusky grouse and obtaining a larger sample of marked ruffed grouse, we will be able to compare and contrast harvest between these two species. Following data analysis, we will provide a long-term harvest monitoring recommendation for the UDWR.

Project Schedule:
A graduate student would begin January 2023. The student beginning in January allows for some upfront tuition cost savings, but enough time for the student to be prepared for their first field season. Additionally, the student will have 2 semesters following their last field season to prepare and complete their thesis. Trapping and other field work will begin April 2023 and continue for two field seasons ending September 2024. The graduate student will complete a thesis by May 2024. We will collect wing samples and harvested bands for the 2023, 2024, and 2025 hunting seasons. When combined with the Phase I data this will constitute a six-year dataset of band returns and wing samples

Describe the actions, activities, tasks to be implemented as part of the proposed project; how these activities will be carried out, equipment to be used, when, and by whom.

This project is designed to develop improved monitoring methods for Dusky Grouse.  For example, breeding surveys -- during Phase I we established routes and stops for surveying breeding male dusky and ruffed grouse. We collected data on the number of male grouse by species, such as the number of calls or drums per time period, and the approximate location of each detected grouse. At each stop, we established three consecutive time intervals of four minutes each and counted all the calls and individuals detected within each four-minute period. At the end of the twelve minute survey period, we used electronic playback calls of female dusky grouse to test the response of dusky grouse males in the area. We are able to use this data as an index to annual changes in breeding populations of both species;, to calculate a detection probability for each species, and perform a breeding habitat analysis while contrasting the two species (Alldredge et al. 2007). We will continue these breeding surveys in Phase II to continue to build a population index and assess breeding habitat, and expand our sampling area to key locations within Utah. As part of Phase II, we will conduct a power analysis using data from Phase I to better understand the effort needed to obtain reliable information from breeding surveys (Steidl et al. 1997). Protocols will be reassessed over time based on our findings.

Survival -- during Phase I we recorded data that can be used to estimate survival of adults, nests, and broods. Survival estimates are most useful when analyzed with multiple years of data. Phase II will include adult, chick, nest, and brood survival estimates using data from both phases for dusky grouse. We will use radio marked individuals to monitor adult survival at least monthly during the field season and as often as possible during the winter. We will estimate both annual and seasonal survival of adults. Reproductive radio-marked females will be monitored to estimate nest initiation rates, nest survival rates (at least one egg hatching from the nest), and brood survival (at least one chick surviving to 50 days post hatch). We will use program RMARK and the nest survival analysis to determine these rates. If funding is available, we will radio-mark dusky grouse chicks and monitor survival every 2-3 days until fledging. We will also monitor survival of radio-marked juvenile dusky grouse from fledging (end of the brooding season) to the following spring. Juvenile survival is one of the most under-studied periods of life history for many wildlife species. All survival information will be connected to attributes of age, sex, and habitat for individuals. We will record information on signs of predation at mortality sites, however, we will not make a definitive cause of mortality due to the issues of scavenging by various predators.

Population Modeling - By estimating survival and reproductive rates for the life stages, we will eventually be able to construct life-tables and population models. These models can be used to help us understand which life stages are most critical to population growth and focus management efforts. With this data we would also be able to conduct population simulations and test different harvest strategies to best guide harvest management.

Describe plans to monitor for project success and achievement of stated objectives. Include details on type of monitoring (vegetation, wildlife, etc.), schedule, assignments and how the results of these monitoring efforts will be reported and/or uploaded to this project page. If needed, upload detailed plans in the "attachments" section.

List any and all partners (agencies, organizations, NGO's, private landowners) that support the proposal and/or have been contacted and included in the planning and design of the proposed project. Describe efforts to gather input and include these agencies, landowners, permitees, sportsman groups, researchers, etc. that may be interested/affected by the proposed project. Partners do not have to provide funding or in-kind services to a project to be listed.

Detail future methods or techniques (including administrative actions) that will be implemented to help in accomplishing the stated objectives and to insure the long term success/stability of the proposed project. This may include: post-treatment grazing rest and/or management plans/changes, wildlife herd/species management plan changes, ranch plans, conservation easements or other permanent protection plans, resource management plans, forest plans, etc.

Potential for the proposed action to improve quality or quantity of sustainable uses such as grazing, timber harvest, biomass utilization, recreation, etc. Grazing improvements may include actions to improve forage availability and/or distribution of livestock.