Field Notes Newsletter Index
Read more about the Southwest Wisconsin CWD project in this newsletter! The newsletter covers fieldwork, status of the project and the many researchers involved, from DNR scientists to U.S. Geological Survey. New editions are released every few months.
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RECENT NEWSLETTERS
DECEMBER 2023
Where do bucks go during rut? Matt Hunsaker conducted his master's thesis to find that answer, studying buck movement ecology during the breeding season and determining when peak rut is. Follow a buck Matt tracked through three breeding seasons. We also caught up with Dr. Daniel Walsh, Unit Leader at the USGS Montana Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit, who talks about his big hopes for the impact the project will have.
JULY 2023
CWD is persistent in the environment, which begs the question: what are all the ways that deer can come in contact with CWD? UW-Madison researcher Dr. Heather N'te Inzalaco decided to think outside the box in her investigation into landscape and community-level factors of CWD transmission. We also introduce you to a collaborator of ours, Dr. Wendy Turner, who is leading the UW-Madison team helping analyze the data we collected and build the IPM. Turner is a wildlife disease ecologist who brings in knowledge and experience from working with anthrax in southern Africa and facilitating global research projects.
NOVEMBER 2022
Dr. Marie Gilbertson shares another analysis from the GPS locations of over 1,000 deer. This time she investigated dispersal, a period when deer venture from their birth range to establish new home ranges of their own. Gilbertson dives into the who, when, where and why to further our understanding of how Wisconsin’s deer population uses the landscape and how dispersal may contribute to the spread of CWD.
APRIL 2022
The Southwest Wisconsin CWD, Deer and Predator Study has two new analyses ready to share. The first is a recap of what we’ve learned from our evaluation of the deer who died in the research area. This analysis of necropsy reports helps us understand what diseases are afflicting the deer population in the area. The second analysis investigated fawn survival and cause-specific mortality rates, helping us better understand deer recruitment in Wisconsin.
NOVEMBER 2021
The research team is wrapping up the first few analyses from the Southwest Wisconsin CWD, Deer and Predator Study. In this edition of the newsletter, the team shares the results of one of these studies, the Coyote Survival and Cause-Specific Mortality study. These results give a deeper look into the lives and deaths of coyotes in southwest Wisconsin. Additionally, a new researcher recently joined the team, and she explains her role and excitement about being involved.
MAY 2021
The research team shares a new timeline for when they expect to have results for each analysis in this study. This timeline is the clearest overview to date of all that is to come from the study, as well as when each piece of the puzzle is expected to be analyzed. The team also highlights an example of the types of information they can learn from the collared animals. This story follows a buck's movement throughout the Fall of 2021.
NOVEMBER 2020
The Southwest Wisconsin CWD Deer and Predator Study is now heading into its second phase. We recapped the project from a research perspective, but we want to spend some time recognizing the different groups of people who helped make phase one successful: The landowners, volunteers, staff and other members of the public who have followed our success over the years.
JULY 2020
We reflect on the study’s progress so far, the completion of phase 1, and details of what the next phase of the project will look like. We also share summaries of the data collected during the capture of the 1,249 animals that comprise the study’s large sample size. These data include graphs of weight-at-capture and sex distributions for all four animal groups, as well as the CWD test results for deer.