Assessing American Marten Use of Track-Plate Box Surveys for Estimating Population Size in the Black Hills of South Dakota

• Main Author: Smith, Joshua B.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Open PRAIRIE: Open Public Research Access Institutional Repository and Information Exchange 2007
• Subjects: american marten; track-plate surveys; bird populations; black hills; south dakota; wyoming; Natural Resources and Conservation; Black Hills; Canada; Psi; American marten; Martes americana
• Online Access: https://openprairie.sdstate.edu/etd/414; https://openprairie.sdstate.edu/context/etd/article/1414/viewcontent/SmithJoshua2007.pdf

Following a 50-year absence, American marten (Martes americana) were reintroduced into the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1980. Surveys conducted post-reintroduction indicated 2 regions of the Black Hills where sub-populations of marten existed; 1) a 246-km2 region in the northern Black Hills, and 2) a 121-km2 area in the central Black Hills. However, due to their low densities and secretive nature, monitoring efforts for carnivores routinely neglect to identify all individuals in the population, leading to biased estimates of species distribution and abundance. Thus, assessing the efficacy of techniques designed to determine presence of forest carnivores, such as American marten, is crucial for validation of survey results. Furthermore, reintroduced populations face numerous genetic problems resulting from low number of founder individuals. The fragmented nature of the Black Hills marten population could exacerbate bottleneck effects and threaten long-term viability. To improve active management of this species, we evaluated factors affecting range expansion, estimated probability of detecting (p) marten at high (>2 marten/10.2 km2) and low (≤1 marten/10.2 km2) densities, and assessed connectivity and genetic variation among the 2 sub-populations of marten from 2005-2006 in the Black Hills of South Dakota. We used presence-absence data obtained from a track-plate survey in conjunction with results from a saturation-trapping study to derive detection probabilities when marten occurred at high (>2 marten/10.2 km2) and low (! 1 marten/10.2 km2) densities within 8, 10.2 km2 quadrats. Estimated probability of detecting marten in high density quadrats was p = 0.952 (se = 0.046), while the detection probability in low density quadrats was considerably lower (p = 0.333, se = 0.136). Results indicated that failure to account for imperfect detection could lead to an underestimation of marten presence in 15% - 52% of low density quadrats. Additionally, we surveyed and collected habitat data at track-plate boxes (n = ...