Wildland Resources

WILD undergraduates Mikenne Debruin, Victoria Radley, and Luke Woolf give their thoughts about spending the summer as interns at Timpanogos Cave National Monument.

Bird trainer Nick Harris gave students and members of the community an in-person look at captive raptors in a recent wildlife presentation sponsored by the Berryman Institute.

Emily Bonebrake (WILD) took home the award for the Best Undergraduate Presentation during the most recent college sponsored Rapid Fire Research. Check out the video about the event.

Although savannas already hold substantial belowground carbon, new research found that increasing tree cover through fire suppression captures much less carbon than projected.

Dr. Jim Lutz (WILD) studies Big Trees — not necessarily the heavyweight species like coast redwood or giant sequoia — but the biggest trees in any given forest.

Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep make a tough choice every winter — to remain cold, hungry, and relatively safe from predators at high elevations, or to drop down to more temperate and more risky low-elevation ranges. New research explores the strategies they ...

Bella Wetzler recently complete a research project at Cedar Breaks, as a result of the QCNR Undergraduate Research Grant she won to study how big logs in the old growth Douglas-fir/western hemlock forest change the way new tree seedlings survive and grow....

Manlove was recently nominated for, and participated in Scialog, an experimental conference designed to generate cross-discipline and scale-spanning brainstorming among academic researchers. Manlove was awarded one of several $50K seed grants for her team...

Drs. Tucker Furniss and Jim Lutz have found that less crowded trees have a better chance of surviving wildfire and bark beetle infestation.

Sarah Cross Brown is big on ‘Take Two’ experiences. The first time around, for instance, her university path didn’t quite click. Two decades later, Brown found her educational stride at the Quinney College of Natural Resources.

Dr. Julie Young has some tips for being in cougar country and what to do should you have the rare experience of a mountain lion encounter.

A new institute at USU that focuses on sharing evidence-based research with state decision-makers released its 2021 Report to the Governor on Utah’s Land, Water, and Air.

Impact factor shows the importance of a journal based on the number of times it is cited. Edited by Dr. Terry Messmer and Rosanna Vail, it is the only journal tailored to NR managers in areas of human-wildlife conflict.

Fieldwork, an essential part of education in the Quinney College of Natural Resources, was put on hold because of the pandemic. Students in WILD were able to make up for some of that this past summer along the Colorado River.

The team of researchers will use satellite data taken from the International Space Station to study how far ranging populations of wildlife react to a changing environment.

Recent WILD graduate in Forest Ecology and Management Elyse Doty sees the forest for the trees when it comes to wildfire.

700 bison were being rounded up and corralled as part of the annual event at Antelope Island State Park, which this year was supported by volunteers from the student chapter of the Wildlife Society in the S.J. & Jessie E. Quinney College of Natural Resour...

The purpose of this Fellowship is to recruit a new student into WILD who has (1) a record of exceptional academic excellence, achievement, and promise, and (2) a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in WILD, QCNR, USU, and their profession.

Thanks to a partnership between Utah State University, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, and the USDA Millville Predator Research Facility, orphaned black bear cubs are getting a new lease on life.

Dr. Terry Messmer explains how to prevent conflicts with mountain lions and what to do if you encounter one.

When cubs are orphaned the summer after first den emergence, the UDWR contracts with USDA and Utah State University to care for the bears until they are old enough for release back into the wild by UDWR.

PhD student Sara Germain and Dr. Jim Lutz study the pivotal relationship between large trees and underground fungi.

In 2019 and 2020, grad student Emma Doden and her colleagues gave 47 nuisance beavers a second chance by translocating them to Utah desert waterways. Their success has the potential to reshape riparian and aquatic ecosystems in this harsh environment.

The research team determined that soil from biodiverse communities helped to reduce plant pathogens, and boosted plant growth.

Dr. Terry Messmer has some helpful tips for home/landowners on how to prevent conflict with wildlife during this time of extraordinary drought.

A budget-conscious project in Parley's Canyon, Utah included an overpass that was more narrow than the standard design. Nicki Frey evaluated the structure and documented hundreds of animal crossings within the first few months of research.

Dr. Nicki Frey is featured in The New York Times, along with some fantastic video documentation of wildlife using these crossings, including the I-80 wildlife overpass near Park City, the subject of some of Dr. Frey's research.

New research has found that the Fremont people, an indigenous group of farmers, actively managed the forests of the Fish Lake Plateau in central Utah using fire.

Research areas of interest to the Department include, but are not limited to carbon cycling, biogeochemistry, ecosystem modeling, disturbance and land cover shifts.

Dr. Mark Chynoweth is featured on KCPW's program This Green Earth to discuss human-wildlife coexistence.

Congratulations to WILD postdoctoral fellow Simona Picardi who won the Best Professional Presentation Award at the Utah Chapter of the Wildlife Society's annual meeting.

Mark your calendars and preregister for a presentation by WILD's David Stoner on cougar response to urban expansion: Tuesday, April 20 at 6pm.

Data compiled by these researchers will be a critical resource for both federal and local government agencies for years to come.

Congratulations to USU WILD PhD student Soren Struckman on his award of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship!

Mammals of Cedar Breaks National Monument is a very accessible guide based on surveys conducted from 2017 to 2019, led by Dr. Nicole Frey and involving WILD undergraduate students and National Park Service biologists.

Featuring Dr. Kezia Manlove. Wild and Wool addresses domestic sheep grazing on public land was an integral part of settling the western United States. However, as conservation efforts ramp to rebound bighorn populations, the wool industry, scientific comm...

Utah State University has been announced as the recipient of the 2020 Award for Undergraduate Research Accomplishments (AURA), recognizing USU as a national leader in undergraduate programs for research and creative inquiry. The award will be presented by...

We lost a special friend, colleague, and scientific intellect this week. Martyn M. Caldwell passed away from complications of Parkinson's and Lewy Body disease on January 24th.

Today, Dec. 17th, our Forest Ecology and Management degree was accredited for another 10 years by the Society of American Foresters (SAF)

The Colorado Plateau, located in the western United States, is known for its stunning landscapes and wild-west ambiance. The cowboy lifestyle is still very much a part of the landscape with over 90% of the region being utilized by the cattle industry. Cli...

Greetings and welcome to the first WILD Alumni and Friends newsletter! In this first edition, we look at two of our members: Bill Woody and Jennifer Bakken.

A new study by authors including WILD faculty David Stoner, Terry Messmer, and UDWR personnel Kent Hersey and Dan Olson provides strong evidence that exposure to light pollution alters predator-prey dynamics between mule deer and cougars across the interm...

Spring is in full swing. Trees are leafing out, flowers are blooming, bees are buzzing, and birds are singing. But a recent study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that those birds in your backyard may be changing right al...