PROFESSOR LEADS WILDLIFE EFFORT
Reducing canopy benefits animals
James Cain, wildlife and affiliate associate professor at New Mexico State University, and his team will monitor how mammals respond to forest thins and prescribed burns.
JEMEZ MOUNTAINS — Among the ponderosa pines in the Valles Caldera National Preserve, large herds of elk may be seen foraging on the grasses along the forest floor.
Many areas in these Northern New Mexico Jemez Mountains have been through prescribed burns or forest thins to allow for a less dense canopy, so new grasses and shrubs may grow on the forest floor and so wildfires will be less destructive.
These forest restoration treatments are part of the larger Southwest Jemez Collaborative Landscape Restoration Project that includes the Santa Fe National Forest and Valles Caldera National Preserve.
James Cain, a wildlife and affiliate associate professor at New Mexico State University, is leading a research team to monitor how certain mammals are responding to the forest thins and prescribed burns.
“My role in this project is to assess the responses of large mammals to these landscape scale forest restoration treatments,” Cain said. “We’re specifically looking at how the vegetation responds to the thinning and prescribed burns, and then how the herbivores respond to that vegetation. We’re looking at the responses of mule deer, elk, black bears and mountain lions.”
Wildlife researchers – including Cain – have placed GPS collars on over 50 animals to record their location at regular intervals.
“We usually have 10 to 20 bears, about 50 elk and about 10 or 15 mule deer with GPS collars at any given time,” he said. “This allows us to see where they’re moving throughout the landscape, which areas they’re using and whether they’re using the treated areas. If they are using the treated areas, one of the main things we are interested in is how long it takes from when an area is thinned to when it actually becomes an area that’s utilized by deer, elk and black bears.”
NMSU received a $100,000 research grant from the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service to help with the larger animal study.
So far, three NMSU wildlife sciences graduate students have worked with Cain on the project. Tanya Roerick, who received a master’s degree in the summer, studied mule deer. Sarah Kindschuh and Susan Bard have both researched black bears. Kindschuh received her master’s degree in 2015, and Bard is currently pursing her master’s degree. Caleb Robers, who received a master’s degree in wildlife from Texas Tech University, helped with the project as well, focusing on elk.