Elisabeth B. Webb

Monitoring waterfowl populations provides the basis for improving habitat quantity and quality, establishing harvest regulations, and ensuring sustainable waterfowl populations through appropriate management. Waterfowl biologists currently use a variety of population and habitat monitoring methods ranging from informal ground observations to low-level occupied aircraft surveys. Unoccupied aerial systems (UAS) may provide safer and more precise alternatives to traditional aerial survey techniques that are less disturbing to waterfowl, but there is limited information on how waterfowl in...

Lead poisoning occurs when birds forage in habitats containing lead pellets and ingest and store pellets in their digestive systems. Lead pellets have been banned from use in waterfowl hunting in the United States since 1991; however, residual pellets may remain in wetlands and be available to foraging waterfowl. The purpose of this study was to evaluate changes in lead pellet distribution over time and to determine effects of soil disturbance (disking) on the prevalence of lead pellets in surface and subsurface soils of a 423-ha managed wetland in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley of...