Wildlife research
The Office of Applied Science employs a highly-skilled staff who are equipped with a broad range of expertise across wildlife, fisheries and ecology research.
Staff on the wildlife research team specialize in a variety of areas throughout the field, including wildlife population monitoring, harvest projection, disease ecology and population dynamics. We conduct our work statewide and our projects are diverse in scope, with a primary focus on game species management.
Some of our current projects include evaluation of CWD impacts to deer; research on the primary drivers of duck populations; modeling of bear and bobcat populations; evaluation of wildlife habitat management strategies and evaluation of elk reintroduction.
The wildlife research team collaborates with universities, federal and state agencies and conservation groups across the state and country to help meet the DNR’s high priority research needs, and provides opportunities for citizen science through hunter, trapper, landowner and recreational volunteer programs.
Wildlife research areas
Explore the topic areas below to learn more about our ongoing and recently completed projects.
- Deer and elk [PDF]
- Upland birds [PDF]
- Waterfowl [PDF]
- Furbearers and carnivores [PDF]
- Citizen monitoring [PDF]
- Habitat [PDF]
- Turkey research [PDF]
- Southwest Wisconsin Chronic Wasting Disease, Deer and Predator Project [PDF]
- Chronic Wasting Disease Forecasting [PDF]
- Chronic Wasting Disease Prion Persistence in Soil and Infectivity [PDF]
- Advancing In Vitro Prion Amplification Assays [PDF]
- Deactivation of Chronic Wasting Disease Prions Using Composting [PDF]
Publications and reports
View a list and links to our recent journal publications and reports.