Jason D. Carlisle

Wyoming Game and Fish Department · Science Research and Analytical Support Unit

Energy development such as coalbed-methane (CBM) extraction is a major land use with largely unknown consequences for many animal species. Some raptor species may be especially vulnerable to habitat changes due to energy development given their ecological requirements and population trajectories. Using 12,977 observations of 3,074 nests of 12 rapto...

Conservation practitioners often rely on areas designed to protect species of greatest conservation priority to also conserve co-occurring species (i.e., the umbrella species concept). The extent to which vertebrate species may serve as suitable umbrellas for invertebrate species, however, has rarely been explored. Sage-grouse (Centrocercus spp.) h...

The umbrella species concept, wherein multiple species are indirectly protected under the umbrella of a reserve created for one, is intended to enhance conservation efficiency. Although appealing in theory and common in practice, empirical tests of the concept have been scarce. We used a real‐world, semi‐protected reserve established to protect a h...

Grasslands are one of the most imperiled ecosystems globally, and the Lesser Prairie-Chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus) is an iconic grassland-obligate species with high conservation priority in the USA. Lesser Prairie-Chicken conservation is compounded by its requirement for a spatial hierarchy of heterogeneous habitats, coupled with nearly all...

Surrogate-species concepts are prevalent in animal conservation. Such strategies advocate for conservation by proxy, wherein one species is used to represent other taxa to obtain a conservation objective. The efficacy of such approaches has been rarely assessed empirically, but is predicated on concordance between the surrogate and sympatric taxa i...

The young of some altricial bird species hatch asynchronously, which can lead to considerable size differences among siblings. Nestling traits such as body mass, moreover, can carry over and influence post-fledging survival. Despite the potential importance of nestling mass for reproductive outcomes, however, variation in nestling mass and relation...

Infrastructure development can affect avian populations through direct collision mortality. Estimating the exposure of local bird populations to the risk of direct mortality from infrastructure development requires site-and species-specific data, which managers may find difficult to obtain at the scale over which management decisions are made. We q...

Electrocution of Golden Eagles (Aquila chrysaetos) on overhead power poles is a conservation concern in the western United States. The US Fish and Wildlife Service recommends retrofitting power poles to minimize electrocution risk as one mechanism for compensatory mitigation to offset permitted take for Golden Eagles. Because densities of Golden Ea...

The Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (WAFWA) has overseen an aerial survey of lesser prairie-chickens (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus, LEPC) since 2012, with the objective to estimate the range-wide population size. Approximately 250 – 300 grid cells (15 × 15 kilometers [km]) were surveyed annually following a multiple-observer, distan...

Demographic assessments of nesting birds typically focus on failures due to nest predation or brood parasitism. Extreme weather events such as hailstorms, however, can also destroy eggs and injure or kill juvenile and adult birds at the nest. We documented the effects of a severe hailstorm on 3 species of sagebrush-associated songbirds: Sage Thrash...

The Aleutian Tern Technical Committee convened an Aleutian Tern Conservation Planning Meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, January 26-27, 2018. The meeting's overarching goal was to work towards methods for assessing statewide Aleutian Tern population size and trend. The primary question addressed at the meeting was whether and how within-year population...

The ''umbrella species'' concept is a conservation strategy in which creating and managing reserve areas to meet the needs of one species is thought to benefit other species indirectly. Broad-scale habitat protections on behalf of an umbrella species are assumed to benefit co-occurring taxa, but targeted management actions to improve local habitat...

The range-wide monitoring program for the lesser prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus) conducted by the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies plays an important role in landscape conservation initiatives for the recovery of the species. Methodologies to evaluate lesser prairie-chicken responses to habitat conditions and conservat...

The intent of this work was to determine the amount and suitability of Golden Eagle habitat within federally designated Priority Areas for Conservation (PACs) managed for Greater Sage-Grouse, and to assess the extent to which the protection of PACs might reduce the risk of oil and gas development and wildfire faced by Golden Eagle habitats.

The umbrella species concept is a conservation shortcut wherein multiple species are protected under the umbrella of areas protected for one species. While appealing in theory, empirical tests of the concept have been scarce. Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus, “sage-grouse”) have high conservation priority across western North America,...

Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) have been the focus of an unparalleled conservation effort across the western United States (US) in recent years. Greater Sage-Grouse have been suggested as an umbrella species, meaning that management actions for Greater Sage-Grouse are likely to benefit a host of other species that use similar sageb...

Rdistance is an R package that contains functions and associated routines to analyze line transect data, and functionality for point count data is forthcoming. A large suite of classical, parametric detection functions are included, and the package can also accommodate user-defined detection functions. Website: https://github.com/tmcd82070/Rdistanc...