DAMA GAZELLE RADIO COLLAR STUDY Mungall, P. 1 Home Range Size Proposal, March 2012
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DAMA GAZELLE RADIO COLLAR STUDY Mungall, p. 1 Home range size proposal, March 2012 Project proposal from Dr. Elizabeth Cary Mungall To further a dama gazelle biology investigation via the Second Ark Foundation, Ingram, Texas Photos by Dr. Elizabeth Cary Mungall courtesy of Stevens Forest Ranch DAMA GAZELLE RADIO COLLAR STUDY Mungall, p. 2 Home range size proposal, March 2012 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY PROPOSAL: Dama Gazelle Radio Collar Study to Determined Home Range Size OBJECTIVE: To promote herd growth (for either ranch or reintroduction). TIME SPAN: 1 year (to cover all four seasons) plus 3 months for collar retrieval and data mapping. COST: $14,585 split between 2012 ($8,600) and 2013 ($5,985) and with multiple partners. BENEFITS: Determine seasonal spacing of dama gazelles. This will help estimate breeding patterns and ultimate population numbers that can be accommodated under various conditions. BACKGROUND: Given this insight into use patterns by dama gazelles, people working with this species can project more efficiently how breeding groups may assort within an area and the composition of the population for maximum breeding opportunities with minimum friction (harassment, fights, mortality) within the population. Radio collars are expected to work more effectively than the direct observation which has been tried. There may be two main reasons. 1. Dama gazelles are semi-desert animals and so may be adapted to wander over large areas in order to find adequate forage. 2. Dama gazelles, like their close relatives Grant’s gazelles, may be adapted to using much larger areas even if localizing their activity. METHODOLOGY: 1. Meet with Steve Forest, landowner of the large rangeland study site with a breeding population of dama gazelles, to settle details of the study plan. 2. Get Forest’s advice on capture locations. 3. Work with Forest and with Dr. Susan M. Cooper and her technicians from the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Uvalde, Texas, to capture, radio collar, and monitor 5 adult males and 3 adult females for one year. 4. Use radio signals to monitor the radio collars and then to locate the auto drop-off collars after 1 year. 5. Cooper’s technicians will then download the latitude and longitude data and map it for Dr. Mungall’s interpretation. 6. Mungall will prepare report. Cooper and her team have successfully used similar procedures to collect similar information for native white-tailed deer. See figure 1 for diagrams of four of the possible outcomes. DELIVERABLES: Map of locations on CD showing grouping of fixes, summary of interpretation. CD for each major sponsor. For landowner, also a poster-size map of range sites included within the study area used. FUTURE APPLICABILITY: 1. Test for different density effects. 2. Test for proximity effects by using shorter location intervals for fewer months. 3. Use radio collars with digital cameras attached. CONTACT INFORMATION: Dr. Elizabeth Cary Mungall, 646 Shin Oak Way, Kerrville, TX 78028, [email protected], (830)257-8431. DAMA GAZELLE RADIO COLLAR STUDY Mungall, p. 3 Home range size proposal, March 2012 Two male territories each with its own Two male territories, one wandering female group. female group. One male territory with its own Overlapping male home ranges, one female group; bachelor group wandering female group. excluded. FIGURE 1: EXAMPLES OF POSSIBLE USE AREAS (SIMPLIFIED). DAMA GAZELLE RADIO COLLAR STUDY Mungall, p. 4 Home range size proposal, March 2012 STUDY PLAN Objective: To promote herd growth, whether for ranch propagation or for reintroduction, this radio collar study of dama gazelles on Texas rangeland will investigate seasonal spacing. With this information, managers can better estimate breeding patterns and ultimate population numbers that can be accommodated under various conditions. Background: This study is directed at a serious gap in a project that the Second Ark Foundation has been funding on the basic biology of dama gazelles (Gazella dama, alternatively called Nanger dama): how much space is enough space for normal dama gazelle behavior? The Second Ark Foundation and the Exotic Wildlife Association have been interested in the study of dama gazelles because this species has been particularly hard to establish as exotics, unlike other species such as scimitar-horned oryx (Oryx dammah) from similar native habitat and Indian blackbuck antelope (Antilope cervicapra) which is a relative of gazelles. Working in the Texas Hill Country where the raising of exotic hoofed stock is a major activity and where there has been much interest in establishing populations of this rare species, this investigation has been following the life histories of known individuals born during the project. However, Hill Country experience has been that mature males end up in lethal fights when allowed in the same pasture and a herd male will harass and kill maturing males if they are not withdrawn soon enough. Thus, the standard Hill Country model is to keep only single-herd groups. The proposed radio collaring study asks, how much space is enough space so that a self sustaining population can include multiple adult males? How big is a male’s normal home range under unrestricted Texas conditions? Do these home ranges overlap and, if so, do males use the overlap zone at the same time or only at different times? Do males DAMA GAZELLE RADIO COLLAR STUDY Mungall, p. 5 Home range size proposal, March 2012 appear to be territorial? Do females stay with a particular male or do they range more widely? With habitat shrinking in the wild, these questions have relevance for conservation programs in native habitat as well as for safe-harbor breeding programs in the United States. Recent estimates are that there may be only 300 dama gazelles left in the wild, and that what is left of their core home in the Sahel on the semi-desert southern fringe of the Sahara may only have one or two populations with enough animals (about 20) to be self sustaining (Mallon 2012, J. Newby, pers. comm.). The dama gazelles in Texas are all realistic candidates for reintroduction as well as ideal safeguards against extinction in the wild. This is because it is known where all of the dama gazelles in Texas came from in Africa. All of this makes improved dama gazelle husbandry, and a project like what is proposed here, particularly important. Timing and cost justification: Ideally, the radio collars for this project will be placed on the animals before the middle of May. After May, it is likely to become too hot to capture animals until the summer heat abates in mid October. Spring rather than fall will also be best because the animals have had a wet winter to recover from the drought of last summer. By fall, the animals may just be coming out of another stress period. The proposed project is an exceptionally good deal. AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Uvalde is presently in between projects enough to be able to lend out eight radio collars with only a charge for battery packs and drop-off units: total for the eight complete collar units $3,520. By contrast, collars from a commercial distributor such as Advanced Telemetry Systems (ATS) would cost $20,000 for eight complete collars, more than a third again as much as the whole two-year budget in the present proposal (ATS 2011, J. Roth pers. comm.). Moreover, the Uvalde lab presently has enough room in their schedule to be able to track, download, and map the data for $3,090, whereas receiving the ATS data would cost $3,814.40 for the same number of fixes without including any mapping. If cost were comparable, then collars like the ATS units with satellite transmission of locations during the course of the project year would be attractive. With such a difference in cost, the increased effort to check periodically on the animals using an antenna and radio receiver to track them in the field is well justified. This is too good an opportunity to miss. A detailed budget is given at the end of the proposal. Materials and Methods: To minimize the effect of fencing limiting travel, a really large ranch has been recruited for this project. Steve Forest of Stevens Forest Ranch has generously agreed to allow his population of approximately 75 dama gazelles in 25,993 acres to be used for this study. Navigating such large distances to capture animals will be done by helicopter using a net gun. Radio collars are expected to work more effectively than the direct observation which has been tried with limited success for pastures larger than 60 acres. There may be two main reasons. First, dama gazelles are semi-desert animals and are known to have wandered over long distances in order to find forage (Estes 1992). Second, dama gazelles, like their close relatives Grant’s gazelles (Gazella granti, alternatively called Nanger granti), may be adapted to using much larger areas even if localizing their DAMA GAZELLE RADIO COLLAR STUDY Mungall, p. 6 Home range size proposal, March 2012 activity. For example, Grant’s gazelles have territories of 37 to 148 acres; in Africa, a single Grant’s gazelle territory has been seen to overlap 10 Thomson’s gazelle territories when both of these species are using the same habitat (Walther et al. 1983). At typically 2 to 12 acres, Thomson’s gazelle territories are more like the 5 to 22 acre territories of blackbuck antelope in either Texas or their native India (Walther et al. 1983). Being large gazelles, the study subjects should easily be able to accommodate the radio collars. Generally, 3% of body weight is considered the upper limit for tagging devices. At a female body weight of about 90 lbs.