The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, DNR, is inviting Wisconsinites to report their sightings of deer, and birds like turkey, ruffed grouse and pheasant. The data helps DNR make decisions about managing those wildlife populations. During August and September, those looking to become a “Community Scientist” can report their wildlife observations on the survey123 app.
To learn more, WUWM’s Eric Von Fellow Maria Peralta-Arellano spoke with Wisconsin DNR Data Analyst Paul Frater.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Could you begin explaining what these surveys are and specifically what populations that we're looking for people to report?
Yeah, so we have two citizen science surveys available for people to participate in. The first is our Operation Deer Watch, which records deer observations, and the second is our game birds survey, which records observations of wild turkey, ruffed grouse and pheasants.
Why are we surveying for these specific populations versus a wider survey for other animals that we have in the area?
We're interested in getting information on these species because they're all harvested species, and so that really helps us to be able to manage those populations in a sustainable way, since we are the agency that manages the quotas and the allowable harvest, we want to make sure we have a good idea of, you know, that we're not negatively impacting the populations.
What do those negative impacts look like that we're trying to help limit?
For example, if we overharvest any one particular population of, say, turkey or ruffed grouse for long enough, the population could decline from that, and that's something that we really want to try to avoid. We want to see either maintained or increased populations for the most part of these species.
We are asking for these surveys to be filled out between the months of August and September. Can you just kind of go into why those months and what the data is going to be used for thereafter?
Late summer is really the ideal time for counting both deer and game birds with their offspring because the young are typically found close to their mothers, but they're still readily distinguishable, juveniles are quite a bit smaller than the adults. Fawn deer also still have spots to help tell them apart from adult deer. These characteristics help provide a more accurate count of juveniles to adults, which is what the surveys are intended to measure. Going back to a previous question, I mentioned maintaining or increasing populations, but there are also certain cases where we may want to decrease populations too, like in a lot of areas where we have an overabundance of deer, so we may want to decrease those populations.
Having a good measure of a doe ratio for deer, for example, helps build our population estimates so we have a good sense of what the deer population is like in certain areas, and that'll allow us to make management decisions based on that knowledge. When we are looking at the data in the areas of populations, we might want to see increases or decreases.
How we can ensure that the data that we're receiving from the survey is reliable and accurate?
I think the first thing to really stress is that, it's important for when, you know, when people are submitting observations, it's important to make sure that they're good observations. So, for instance, if you drive or [are] driving 75 miles down the highway and you see a deer or a turkey standing in the ditch, that's maybe not the best observation. The best case scenario would be if you could safely stop a vehicle and really look at the individual, especially if you have binoculars and can look through binoculars, that's really helpful. We're really trying to make sure that you're confident with that observation that deer, or turkey, or grouse, does or does not have juveniles with them.
What are the current statuses of deer and game bird populations currently in Wisconsin?
So for deer, it really kind of depends on where in the state you are, for much of the southern portions of the state, which, you know, ... we have different deer zones. We have our farmland zones, which are mostly the agricultural areas of the state, and for much of the farmland zones, our deer, our populations are pretty high and increasing in many cases — we have an overabundance of deer.
For the more heavily forested areas of the zones, the northern third of the state, it just kind of depends on where you are, and in certain areas, there are healthy deer populations. In certain areas, there's an overabundance in localized spots, and in many areas, there is a low density of deer populations. For turkeys, turkeys are actually doing really quite well in the state. Our last two spring turkey seasons have been the fourth- and fifth-highest harvests on record. Populations are expanding in the north and doing really quite well throughout the state. And as far as ruffed grouse go, there's kind of a sort of a long-term historical decline in ruffed grouse. The last two years we've seen increases in our grouse drumming survey counts that we do in the spring, and so that's hopeful, but over the longer term, we're tending to see lower grouse numbers across the state.
Why is it important to enlist the state community versus leaving this to a government entity like the DNR?
Our staff are also out there collecting the same observations and submitting them, so we have sort of two parallel tracks of this survey. We have the DNR version and then we have the the public version, which is a citizen science initiative. So we're collecting data right alongside the public, but by bolstering the number of observations by including the public, that allows us to just get a much better idea of the juvenile to adult ratio for these different species that helps us understand reproductive capacity for the populations of these species this year. It's really just a matter of increasing our confidence with the data. The more observations that we can get, the more confident that we can be in the data.
Are there any differences in what the DNR is submitting and collecting versus what the public is submitting and collecting?
Nope, it's pretty much the exact same survey. For the DNR version, we basically ask what affiliation in the DNR they are in, whether they're wildlife, law enforcement, parks or forestry, that sort of thing. We also have cooperating partners, staff and biologists in different agencies like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Forest Service. We also ask those individuals to submit observations as part of that survey. The other thing I wanted to reiterate is that we want to make sure people avoid submitting repeat observations. So if it's the same deer or the same group of turkeys coming into, say, your yard or a particular field every night, just submit those observations once.
