Damon B. Lesmeister

USDA Forest Service · Pacific Northwest Research Station

Carnivore guilds play a vital role in ecological communities by cascading trophic effects, energy and nutrient transfer, and stabilizing or destabilizing food webs. Consequently, the structure of carnivore guilds can be critical to ecosystem patterns. Body size is a crucial influence on intraguild interactions, because it affects access to prey res...

Passive acoustic monitoring is a promising method for monitoring rare and nocturnal species, and for tracking changes in forest wildlife biodiversity. We conducted simulations to compare and evaluate various passive acoustic sampling designs effectiveness for monitoring spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) population trends. We found that each...

Background The northern spotted owl ( Strix occidentalis caurina ) is an Endangered Species Act-listed subspecies that requires coniferous forests with structurally complex and closed-canopy old-growth characteristics for nesting. With climate change, large wildfires are expected to become more common within the subspecies’ range and an increasing...

Breeding dispersal, the movement from one breeding territory to another, is rare for philopatric species that evolved within relatively stable environments, such as the old-growth coniferous forests of the Pacific Northwest. While dispersal is not inherently maladaptive, the consequences of increased dispersal on population dynamics in populations...

The northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) inhabits older coniferous forests in the Pacific Northwest and has been at the center of forest management issues in this region. The immediate threats to this federally listed species include habitat loss and competition with barred owls (Strix varia), which invaded from eastern North America....

Arthropods contribute importantly to ecosystem functioning but remain understudied. This undermines the validity of conservation decisions. Modern methods are now making arthropods easier to study, since arthropods can be mass-trapped, mass-identified, and semi-mass-quantified into 'many-row (observation), many-column (species)' datasets, with homo...

Practitioners interested in using computer vision models lack user-friendly and open-source software that combines features to label training data, allow multiple users, train new algorithms, review output, and implement new models. Labeling training data, such as images, is a key step to developing accurate object detection algorithms using comput...

An annotated acoustic dataset.

We present PNW-Cnet v4, a deep neural net with an associated Shiny-based application designed to facilitate efficient data processing to detect terrestrial wildlife species through passive acoustic monitoring. PNW-Cnet v4 is a deep convolutional neural network that detects audio signatures of 37 focal species of birds and mammals that inhabit fores...

We explore relationships between physiological indicators of energetic demands as they relate to recruitment and survival in a long-lived owl species, the Northern Spotted Owl, which has been of conservation concern for over 30 years.

Early life experiences have carry-over effects that manifest in later life stages. Challenging rearing environments result in more energy invested in immediate survival and less energy on growth and maturation, which can decrease survival in both the short and long-term. One way to measure differences in energy allocation to growth between individu...

Old growth forests are declining globally, threatening dependent wildlife. Many arboreal old-growth obligates, such as the threatened red tree vole, are difficult to monitor for changes in habitat occupancy, and abundance. Yet, conservation planning relies on this information to prevent population declines. We integrated a range of species, habitat...

Managing forests for biodiversity conservation while maintaining economic output is a major challenge globally and requires accurate and timely monitoring of imperiled species. In the Pacific Northwest, USA, forest management is heavily influenced by the status of northern spotted owls (Strix occidentalis caurina), which have been in continued popu...

The success of long-term wildlife monitoring programs can be influenced by many factors and study designs often represent compromises between spatial scales and costs. Adaptive monitoring programs can iteratively manage this tension by adopting new cost-efficient technologies, which can provide projects the opportunity to reallocate costs to addres...

There are increasing concerns about the declining population trends of small mammalian carnivores around the world. Their conservation and management are often challenging due to limited knowledge about their ecology and natural history. To address one of these deficiencies for western spotted skunks (Spilogale gracilis), we investigated their diet...

Species richness within a site (i.e., alpha diversity) and between sites (i.e., beta diversity) are important measurements of biodiversity utilized in wildlife research and management. However, novel occupancy modeling approaches, especially at large spatial scales and in conjunction with other analyses of biodiversity, remain scarce in studies of...

We conducted a range‐wide investigation of the dynamics of site level reproductive rate of northern spotted owls using survey data from 11 study areas across the sub‐species geographic range collected during 1993–2018. Our analytical approach accounted for imperfect detection of owl pairs and misclassification of successful reproduction (i.e., at l...

The potential for trophic cascades triggered by recent range expansion of the Barred Owl (Strix varia) to the Pacific Northwest has caused concern among conservationists and managers. Barred Owl predation of small forest carnivores is a particular concern because these carnivores typically have low population growth rates relative to their body siz...

Wildlife monitoring programs designed to inform forest management and conservation decisions in the face of climate change benefit from long-term datasets with consistent methodology. Nevertheless, many monitoring programs may seek to transition to alternative methods because emerging technologies can improve trend tracking and expand the number of...

We present PNW-Cnet v4, a deep neural net with an associated Shiny-based application designed to facilitate efficient data processing to detect terrestrial wildlife species through passive acoustic monitoring. PNW-Cnet v4 is a deep convolutional neural network that detects audio signatures of 37 focal species of birds and mammals that inhabit fores...

This is the fourth in a series of periodic monitoring reports on status and trends of forests used by northern spotted owls (Strix occidentalis caurina; NSO) for nesting, roosting, and dispersal on federally administered lands within the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) area (NSO range in the United States) since its implementation in 1994. The objecti...

Species coexistence is governed by availability of resources and intraguild interactions including strategies to reduce ecological overlap. Gray foxes are dietary generalist mesopredators expected to benefit from anthropogenic disturbance, but populations have declined across the midwestern USA, including severe local extirpation rates coinciding w...

Managing wildlife populations in the face of global change requires regular data on the abundance and distribution of wild animals but acquiring these over appropriate spatial scales in a sustainable way has proven challenging. Here we present the data from Snapshot USA 2020, a second annual national mammal survey of the United States of America. T...

Northern Spotted Owls (Strix occidentalis caurina) are of management and conservation concern in the US Pacific Northwest where populations have been monitored since the 1990s using mark-resight methods. Passive acoustic monitoring has the potential to support monitoring efforts; however, its use is currently primarily restricted to determining spe...

Age-and sex-specific survival estimates are crucial to understanding important life history characteristics, and variation in these estimates can be a key driver of population dynamics. When estimating survival using Cormack-Jolly-Seber (CJS) models, emigration is typically unknown but confounded with apparent survival. Consequently, especially for...

There are increasing concerns about the decreasing population trends of small mammalian carnivores around the world. With limited knowledge about their ecology and natural history, small mammal conservation and management remains difficult. To address one of these deficiencies for western spotted skunks ( Spilogale gracilis ), we investigated their...

There is a growing interest and investment in restoring riparian areas in the Pacific Northwest to protect biodiversity and water quality, and to restore quality habitat for threatened fish species. However, these management activities change vegetation conditions and potentially impact terrestrial species in these ecosystems. Our objective was to...

The plains spotted skunk (Spilogale interrupta) is of conservation concern because of widespread population declines and is being considered for listing under the United States Endangered Species Act. Although the taxon is relatively rare and difficult to study, recent research and reports provided some information about spotted skunks in Arkansas...

Northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina), a species listed under the Endangered Species Act, have been monitored for nearly three decades using callback surveys and mark-and-recapture methods. Callback surveys can result in negative effects on the owl yet are widely used on federal, state, and private forest land prior to activities that r...

Corticosterone is a steroid hormone integral to a variety of physiological pathways and is strongly associated with the vertebrate stress response. In avian species, circulating corticosterone is sequestered into developing feathers and is used as an indicator of energy allocation during feather growth and widely applied in conservation physiology....

Owls are important avian predators in forested systems, but little is known about landscape use by most forest-adapted owl species in environments impacted by mixed-severity wildfire. To better understand species-specific patterns of post-wildfire landscape use within an owl guild, we used passive acoustic monitoring using autonomous recording unit...

Spilogale putorius interrupta (Plains Spotted Skunk) has been documented to host a variety of macroparasites, but the impacts of these infections are largely unknown. We emphasize the importance of incorporating disease-ecology components into ongoing field-research studies by revisiting previously collected data on infection by the metastrongylid...

Age- and sex-specific survival estimates are crucial to understanding important life-history characteristics and variation in these estimates can be a key driver of population dynamics. When estimating survival using Cormack–Jolly–Seber (CJS) models and capture–recapture data, emigration is typically assumed to have a negligible effect on estimates...

The tayra ( Eira barbara ) is a common and broadly distributed Neotropical carnivore, yet is not well‐studied. While this species is apparently associated with forested habitats, it also appears tolerant of some anthropogenic disturbance. We deployed 57 unbaited camera traps ( n = 4923 trap‐days) in and around a protected area (Furnas do Bom Jesus...

Many ecologists have lamented the demise of natural history and have attributed this decline to a misguided view that natural history is outdated and unscientific. Although there is a perception that the focus in ecology and conservation have shifted away from descriptive natural history research and training toward hypothetico-deductive research,...

Significance Invasive species can cause extinctions of native species and widespread biodiversity loss. Invader removal is a common management response, but the use of long-term field experiments to characterize effectiveness of removals in benefitting impacted native species is rare. We used a large-scale removal experiment to investigate the demo...

The use of passive acoustic monitoring in wildlife ecology has increased dramatically in recent years as researchers take advantage of improvements in autonomous recording units and analytical methods. These technologies have allowed researchers to collect large quantities of acoustic data which must then be processed to extract meaningful informat...

Mesocarnivores fill a vital role in ecosystems through effects on community health and structure. Anthropogenic-altered landscapes can benefit some species and adversely affect others. For some carnivores, prey availability increases with urbanization, but landscape use can be complicated by interactions among carnivores as well as differing human...

With the accelerating pace of global change, it is imperative that we obtain rapid inventories of the status and distribution of wildlife for ecological inferences and conservation planning. To address this challenge, we launched the SNAPSHOT USA project, a collaborative survey of terrestrial wildlife populations using camera traps across the Unite...

Background The northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) is an Endangered Species Act-listed subspecies that requires forests with old-growth characteristics for nesting. With climate change, large, severe wildfires are expected to be more common and an increasing threat to spotted owl persistence. Understanding fire severity patterns relat...

Western North American forest ecosystems are experiencing rapid changes in disturbance regimes because of climate change and land use legacies (Littell et al. 2018). In many of these forests, the accumulation of surface and ladder fuels from a century of fire suppression, coupled with a warming and drying climate, has led to increases in the number...

This report presents considerations of potential hazards and mitigation measures associated with conducting field research in the context of a pathogenic epidemic or pandemic situation. We use an example of a specific risk assessment developed for advising decisions on initiating or continuing field activities (in this case, markresight and passive...

Passive acoustic monitoring using autonomous recording units (ARUs) is a fast-growing area of wildlife research especially for rare, cryptic species that vocalize. Northern Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) populations have been monitored since the mid-1980s using mark–recapture methods. To evaluate an alternative survey method, we used ARUs...

Abstract Small mammal abundances are frequently limited by resource availability, but predators can exert strong lethal (mortality) and nonlethal (e.g., nest abandonment) limitations. Artificially increasing resource availability for uncommon small mammals provides a unique opportunity to examine predator–prey interactions. We used remote cameras t...

We used a before-after-control-impact (BACI) experimental design on three study areas with long-term demographic information on spotted owls to determine if removal of barred owls can improve population trends of spotted owls. This report summarizes research accomplishments and initial results from the first 4.5 years (from March 2015 to August 201...

The use of passive acoustic monitoring in wildlife ecology has increased dramatically in recent years as researchers take advantage of improvements in automated recording units and associated technologies. These technologies have allowed researchers to collect large quantities of acoustic data which must then be processed to extract meaningful info...

Passive acoustic monitoring using autonomous recording units (ARUs) is a fast-growing area of wildlife research especially for rare, cryptic species that vocalize. Northern Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) populations have been monitored since the mid-1980s using mark-recapture methods. To evaluate an alternative survey method, we used ARUs...

Knowledge of the spatiotemporal variability of abundance and vital rates is essential to the conservation of wildlife populations. In Pacific Northwest forests, previous small mammal research has focused on estimating abundance; few studies have focused on vital rates. We used robust design temporal symmetry models and live-trapping data collected...

Ecologists routinely fit complex models with multiple parameters of interest, where hundreds or more competing models are plausible. To limit the number of fitted models, ecologists often define a model selection strategy composed of a series of stages in which certain features of a model are compared while other features are held constant. Definin...

Dispersal among breeding sites in territorial animals (i.e. breeding dispersal) is driven by numerous selection pressures, including competition and spatiotemporal variation in habitat quality. The scale and trend of dispersal movements over time may signal changing conditions within the population or on the landscape. We examined 2,158 breeding di...

In this article we respond to a recent paper in which Rosenberg (2019) suggested that red tree voles (Arborimus longicaudus) were just as common as western red-backed voles (Myodes californicus) and implied that federal management agencies should consider dispensing with field surveys of red tree voles in favor of an unspecified adaptive management...

Live trapping is a common tool used to assess demography of small mammals. However, live-trapping is often expensive and stressful to captured individuals. Thus, assessing the relative tradeoffs among study goals, project expenses, and animal well-being is necessary. Here, we evaluated how apparent bias and precision of estimates for apparent annua...

Exposure of nontarget wildlife to anticoagulant rodenticides (AR) is a global conservation concern typically centered around urban or agricultural areas. Recently, however, the illegal use of ARs in remote forests of California, USA, has exposed sensitive predators, including the federally threatened northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina...

The process of an animal selecting resources involves a series of behavioral choices. Understanding these behaviors is a foundational and cross-cutting theme in wildlife research and management. Resource selection analyses (RSAs) represent a broad class of statistical models for identifying underlying environmental correlates of animal resource sel...

Abstract Passive acoustic monitoring is an emerging approach to wildlife monitoring that leverages recent improvements in automated recording units and other technologies. A central challenge of this approach is the task of locating and identifying target species vocalizations in large volumes of audio data. To address this issue, we developed an e...

The Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) has guided the management of 17 federal forests in the US Pacific Northwest for the past 25 years. The existing management plans for these national forests – which were amended by the NWFP – are now being evaluated for revision under the US Forest Service's 2012 planning rule. To help inform federal land managers, w...