Scott D. Klopfer

Southern Fox Squirrel and Eastern Gray Squirrel Interactions in a Fire-maintained Ecosystem

SEAFWA Journal Volume 11, March 2024

Southern fox squirrels (Sciurus niger niger) have been declining due to habitat fragmentation, cover type conversion, and fire suppression in the Southeast. A decrease in growing season burns has led to hardwood encroachment and forest mesophication that benefit the competing eastern gray squirrels (S. carolinensis). In the southern Coastal Plain and Piedmont of Virginia, these pattern raises the question of whether gray squirrels are competitively excluding southern fox squirrels in these altered landscapes. From October 2019 to October 2020, we conducted continual...

Predicting Landscape Quality for Northern Bobwhite from Classified Landsat Imagery

Wildlife Outstanding Technical Paper

A detailed understanding of the spatial arrangement of northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) habitats would allow more focused efforts by wildlife managers. We used a 4-year average of northern bobwhite call-count data in conjunction with remotely sensed habitat maps to study landscape-level habitat associations. Landscape metrics were calculated for the landscape surrounding each stop and were used in 2 modeling exercises to differentiate between high and low northern bobwhite populations. Both pattern recognition (PATREC) and logistic regression models predicted levels of northern...