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Core Zones, Livestock, and Population Ecology of Argali in Mongolia's Gobi

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Core Zones, Livestock, and Population Ecology of Argali in Mongolia's Gobi University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers Graduate School 2016 CORE ZONES, LIVESTOCK AND POPULATION ECOLOGY OF ARGALI IN MONGOLIA’S GOBI STEPPE Lars Stefan Ekernas Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Ekernas, Lars Stefan, "CORE ZONES, LIVESTOCK AND POPULATION ECOLOGY OF ARGALI IN MONGOLIA’S GOBI STEPPE" (2016). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 10887. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/10887 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CORE ZONES, LIVESTOCK AND POPULATION ECOLOGY OF ARGALI IN MONGOLIA’S GOBI STEPPE By LARS STEFAN EKERNAS B.A. Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 2001 M.A. Columbia University, New York, NY, 2005 M.S. University of Montana, Missoula, MT, 2010 Dissertation presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Wildlife Biology The University of Montana, Missoula, MT September 2016 Approved by: Scott Whittenburg, Dean of The Graduate School Graduate School Joel Berger, Co-Chair Colorado State University Paul M. Lukacs, Co-Chair Wildlife Biology Program Jon Graham Department of Mathematical Sciences John Maron Division of Biological Sciences L. Scott Mills Wildlife Biology Program © COPYRIGHT By Lars Stefan Ekernas 2016 All Rights Reserved Ekernas, Lars Stefan, Ph.D., Autumn 2016 Wildlife Biology Core zones, livestock, and population ecology of argali in Mongolia’s Gobi steppe Co-Chair: Joel Berger Co-Chair: Paul M. Lukacs Core zones are established to reduce anthropogenic disturbance under the assumption that they protect biodiversity, yet this assumption has rarely been tested. In Central Asia, increasing livestock density threatens 70% of large mammals including in protected areas where livestock often constitute ~95% of ungulate biomass. A resulting conundrum is that local pastoralists are both key threats and crucial allies to conservation. Core zones, which reduce disturbance in small areas of important habitat, offer a potential solution to support wildlife and indigenous livelihoods. For my dissertation, I capitalize on a manipulation spanning 12 years to evaluate wild argali sheep (Ovis ammon) responses to reducing livestock density by 40% inside a core zone in Mongolia’s Gobi steppe. I investigate direct and indirect pathways through which pastoralists affect argali; quantify effects of livestock reduction on argali birth mass, survival, and population growth; and improve methods for monitoring argali populations throughout Central Asia. Because pastoralists influence plant, herbivore, and predator communities, they can affect argali through diverse pathways. Pastoralists alter predation pressure from both native and introduced carnivores, and their livestock probably compete with argali for food. I found that livestock reduction strongly affected argali, increasing argali birth mass by 18%, increasing juvenile survival from pre-reduction 19% to post-reduction 51%, and increasing argali population growth by 9% annually from 0.91 to 1.00. I found clear signals that argali are resource limited, since livestock reduction plus normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) explained 97% of the annual variation in cohort lamb survival and explained 90% of the annual variation in asymptotic population growth. My analyses therefore reveal that livestock detrimentally affect argali and simultaneously provide empirical evidence that core zones can mitigate these effects. I also develop methods for monitoring argali populations using lamb:ewe ratios, from which I can infer population trend if adult survival at my study site is incorporated as a ceiling that can be attained but not surpassed at other locations. Lamb:ewe ratios are simple, inexpensive and can engage local communities in conservation efforts. In totality my dissertation advances conservation of argali while broadly yielding insight on a complex ecological process, interspecific competition. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Completing – in fact even getting to – this dissertation was a long and circuitous route. I wouldn’t have gotten here without a staggering amount of help. First and foremost in guiding me has been my advisor Joel Berger. Joel has been an ardent supporter throughout the ups and the downs, has placed unwavering trust in me, offered up his time, house, beer, and coffee too generously on too many occasions to count, and for that I will always be deeply grateful. Joel’s phenomenal creativity, commitment to conservation, and speed up mountainsides provide goal posts that continue to push me. I am enormously indebted to Rich Reading, who offered me unfettered access to a dataset that took him almost 20 years and several million dollars of fundraising to collect. I hope my resulting contributions to argali conservation partially repay his graciousness. Paul Lukacs took on the reins as my co-advisor in the last year, for which I am greatly appreciative. I also extend a deep thanks to my committee members Jon Graham, John Maron, Scott Mills, and Dan Pletscher (emeritus) for their insights, valuable advice, and availability. My wife Karen has been an unyielding source of strength in supporting me to both start and finish my Ph.D., which was without question harder on her than it was on me. As with all things, she has gone through this process with remarkable tenacity and grace. Despite me telling them, I don’t think my little ones Elin and Anders can ever understand how much inspiration and joy they continue to give me. I suspect the same is true for my loving parents Anders and Mariann, who probably didn’t expect the chips to fall quite this way when they fervently supported I follow my passions wherever they take me. iv Gana Wingard has been a phenomenal friend and collaborator in Mongolia and at Denver Zoo. Gana, T. Selenge, and Sukh Amgalanbaatar introduced me to Mongolia and went out of their way to make all my trips smooth and productive. Onoloo, Oogi, Remo, Batdorj, Ankhaa, Nandin, Chimidee, and all the other students and staff at Ikh Nart Nature Reserve made it an absolute pleasure to work there. For much of the last four years I’ve put my office in Denver Zoo, and I feel tremendously fortunate to have been a part of that great team alongside Rich Reading, Gana Wingard, Kyoko Wilson, Erin Stotz, Nanette Bragin, Matt Herbert, Amy Levine, Kel Rayens, Rebecca Garvoille, Erica Garroutte, Heather Batts, Luis Ramirez, Dave Kenny, Kevin Fitzgerald, and Graeme Patterson. My Berger lab mates Wesley Sarmento, Theresa Laverty, and Nick Sharp have been true colleagues and friends. Through some strange aligning of the stars Wesley has meaningfully contributed field work to all four projects, spanning three continents, that I’ve engaged in at various stages along the way to this dissertation. I hope he enjoyed it as much as I did. Cheryl Hojnowski and AJ Glueckert also volunteered their field work on some of those earlier projects. AJ put in many miles in the sagebrush and alpine with me, hauling mountain goat carcasses, checking perpetually empty jackrabbit traps at dawn, chasing a bear off his backpack, and counting hare poop on all fours without ever losing his positive attitude. AJ is the only person I know who is so genuine and enthusiastic that the simple phrase “How are you?” gets hikers to stop in their tracks to tell him how awesome their life is right now. Renee Seidler was a tremendous asset when I worked in Wyoming, opening her house and going out of her way to show me the ropes in southern Greater Yellowstone. v I sincerely thank Denver Zoological Foundation, Earthwatch Institute, and Trust for Mutual Understanding for their long-term financial commitments to this project, which spans 20 years for DZF. I feel very fortunate to have received as much financial support as I did from Montana Ecology of Infectious Diseases (NSF grant DGE- 0504628), for which I am especially grateful to Bill Holben. I was also supported by the Clancy Gordon Environmental Scholarship. During my time in southern Greater Yellowstone I received funding from the Boyd Evison Graduate Research Fellowship (organized by the Grand Teton Association) and the Montana Chapter of The Wildlife Society. Last I thank the people who call Ikh Nart home – Dandar, Uynga, Batbold, Maikhant, Ulzii, Choka to name but a few – who have let me freely wander around their home and audaciously interpret whatever I saw however I saw fit. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………..………………..... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…….….……...…………………………………...………… iv TABLE OF CONTENTS………………………………………………………...………vii LIST OF TABLES…………...………………....…...……………………………….…… x LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………………... xii CHAPTER 1. Introduction and overview……………………………………………….... 1 Background…………………………………………………………………………… 1 Research objectives……………………….……….……………………………….… 3 Summary of results……………….…………………………………………………... 8 Research significance…………….………………...……………………...………… 12 Conservation recommendation…………..…………….……………………………. 13 Develop schemes to reduce livestock and human-wildlife conflict…......………. 13 Implement and evaluate core zones……………………………………………..
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