Authors:

Jackson Doyel, Madelon van de Kerk

Abstract

(Currently conducting analysis)

Wildlife migrations are a complex natural behavior that has experienced decline across the planet as civilization has developed. Long-distance migrations by ungulates are rarely contained within the confines of National Parks, putting them in conflict with the state and federal jurisdictions they enter during migration. How anthropogenic management practices such as hunting, capture, and culling events throughout adapting management and tolerance zones affect the long-term migratory capabilities of ungulates is not well understood. We investigate the migratory plains bison population found within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem to better understand this relationship while accounting for the natural drivers of ungulate migrations such as winter severity, forage quality, elevation, and population density. Using 2003-2023 historical data from a non-government organization, the Buffalo Field Campaign, we implement species distribution models with generalized additive mixed models to understand the significance of anthropogenic drivers on heavily managed ungulate populations. We hypothesize that management intensity significantly affects bison migration patterns, distinguishable from environmental factors, with areas of higher management intensity showing lower bison presence probability. Our research objectives include quantifying the relative importance of environmental versus anthropogenic factors, analyzing temporal trends across a 20-year period, and developing a predictive framework for future management scenarios. This study addresses critical knowledge gaps in understanding long-term ungulate migration responses to restrictive management, with implications for preserving bison as keystone species for threatened grassland ecosystems.