L. Wesley Burger, Jr.

Fire's stochastic behavior caused by vegetation, topography, and weather has caused concern and reduced use among landowners and managers. To better understand fire behavior in fire-absent forest stands, we examined fire characteristics relative to vegetation conditions manipulated with or without a prior herbicide application. We used six replicate stands with four randomly-assigned treatment plots (burn, herbicide, burn*herbicide, control) to assess dormant season burns with a three-year fire return interval. We measured fuel moisture and weather variables pre-burn, residence time, rate...

We estimated survival and cause-specific mortality of 59 raccoons (Procyon lotor) on a wildlife area in Mississippi which was in the early stages of an intensive land management program to enhance northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) habitat quality and populations. Average annual survival of radio-collared raccoons was 0.81 for males (N=47) and 0.79 for females (N=12) from March 1997 to February 1999. We detected no effect of sex, season, year, or age (P≥0.05) on survival. Causes of mortality (N=14) included vehicle collision (N=5), unknown (N=4), harvest (N=2), predation (N= 1),...