Click a link below for details.
CNHP has conducted breeding bird surveys for a host of land managers in Colorado, helping biologists understand what species exist where and in what density. Such surveys at the U.S. Air Force Academy and Buckley Air Force Base were essential for clarifying the distribution and abundance of breeding birds on these installations.
The dramatic decline in bat populations has triggered a need to better understand the status of bat populations throughout North America. Since white-nose syndrome began its spread in 2006, some species have lost millions of individuals, while others seem to be somewhat immune. Those individuals where declines were precipitous, most evidence came in the form of masses of dead bats at the opening of caves and mines in eastern North America. In the West, we do not have such concentrations of bats and must rely on monitoring diversity and population status in alternate ways. One way CNHP has been monitoring bat populations is by partnering with Colorado Parks and Wildlife to record bats’ ultrasonic acoustic calls and using those to identify what species exist where in Colorado.
In an effort to understand the distribution of rare and lesser-known bats, rodents, lagomorphs, and insectivores, CNHP embarked on a state-scale inventory for these small mammals. Starting along the Front Range, then the northwest, southwest, and south-central sections of Colorado, CNHP conducted capture effort throughout the appropriate habitats in these areas. From this work came a new understanding of species’ distributions (Siemers et al. 2006), and information for state and federal land managers to address conservation.
