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Migration Stopovers of Mule Deer in the Paunsaugunt Herd in Utah

The Paunsaugunt Plateau in southern Utah is home to around 5,200 mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus). Ongoing research by the Utah DWR has continued to shape our understanding of their annual migration. In contrast to the Volume 1 report (Kauffman et al. 2020), the Paunsaugunt Herd in this Volume includes the addition of 25 individual mule deer, 127 migrations, and 161 winter range sequences. Beginning in early October the mule deer migrate south an average of 36 mi (58 km) to winter range along the Utah-Arizona border. Approximately 20–30 percent of the Paunsaugunt Plateau herd reside in northern Arizona during the winter, sharing winter range also used by deer from Arizona’s Kaibab Plateau herd. Beginning around mid-April, the deer return north to their summer range on the Paunsaugunt Plateau. The most significant challenge for these deer is U.S. Highway 89 which bisects this migration corridor and winter range, where deer-vehicle collisions have historically been a problem. In 2012, the Utah Department of Transportation and partners placed 12.5 mi (20.1 km) of wildlife exclusion fence between existing and new crossing structures to reduce deer-vehicle collisions and provide connectivity for deer and other wildlife across the highway. These mitigation measures have been a tremendous success, facilitating more than 78,600 successful mule deer crossings and a 77 percent crossing success rate (Cramer and Hamlin, 2019). These data provide the location of migration stopovers for Mule Deer from the Paunsaugunt Herd in Utah. They were developed from Brownian bridge movement models using 244 migration sequences collected from a sample size of 77 adult mule deer comprising GPS locations collected every 2 hours.

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Author(s) Matthew J Kauffman orcid, Blake H Lowrey orcid, Jeffrey Beck, Jodi Berg orcid, Scott Bergen, Joel Berger orcid, James W Cain orcid, Sarah Dewey, Jennifer Diamond, Orrin Duvuvuei, Julien Fattebert orcid, Jeff Gagnon, Julie Garcia, Evan Greenspan orcid, Embere Hall, Glenn Harper, Stan Harter, Kent Hersey, Pat Hnilicka, Mark Hurley, Lee Knox, Art Lawson, Eric Maichak, James Meacham, Jerod Merkle orcid, Arthur Middleton, Daniel Olson, Lucas Olson, Craig Reddell, Benjamin S Robb orcid, Gabe Rozman, Hall Sawyer orcid, Cody Schroeder, Brandon Scurlock orcid, Jeff Short, Scott Sprague, Alethea Steingisser, Nicole Tatman
Publication Date 2022-04-07
Beginning Date of Data 2017-12-01
Ending Date of Data 2021-06-18
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DOI https://doi.org/10.5066/P9TKA3L8
Citation Kauffman, M.J., Lowrey, B.H., Beck, J., Berg, J., Bergen, S., Berger, J., Cain, J.W., Dewey, S., Diamond, J., Duvuvuei, O., Fattebert, J., Gagnon, J., Garcia, J., Greenspan, E., Hall, E., Harper, G., Harter, S., Hersey, K., Hnilicka, P., Hurley, M., Knox, L., Lawson, A., Maichak, E., Meacham, J., Merkle, J., Middleton, A., Olson, D., Olson, L., Reddell, C., Robb, B.S., Rozman, G., Sawyer, H., Schroeder, C., Scurlock, B., Short, J., Sprague, S., Steingisser, A., and Tatman, N., 2022, Migration Stopovers of Mule Deer in the Paunsaugunt Herd in Utah: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9TKA3L8.
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Metadata Date 2022-04-07
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Harvest Source: ScienceBase
Harvest Date: 2024-07-24T04:01:55.917Z