habitat management

Management of northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) commonly focuses on creating cover and food for bobwhite throughout the year. Numerous studies have addressed these management practices and their impacts on bobwhite, but few have assessed the quantity of resources they pro- duce or the associated management cost per unit of production. My study assesses three common bobwhite habitat management practices (prescribed fire, roller chopping, and food plots) on the Cecil M. Webb-Babcock Wildlife Management Area in Charlotte County, Florida. I estimated production of the most common natural...

Providing a suffcient quantity of nutritional forage should be an integral component of any white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) management plan that aims to maximize deer condition and quality. Deer managers generally attempt to meet the nutritional needs of their herd through some combination of habitat management, food plot production, and/or supplemental feed provisioning. However, nutritional demands of deer and forage quality and abundance fluctuate throughout the year, creating nutritional stress periods and a dilemma for managers regarding how to maximize the nutritional...

In 2005, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission implemented a team approach to guide holistic management of Orange Lake, Florida (5100ha). In 2007, 2010, and 2013, we evaluated the lakewide composition of aquatic plant communities and quantified their habitat benefits for focal fish and wildlife taxa. We found that habitat conditions in Orange Lake varied with changes in water level and all three years exhibited an excess of shrub swamp habitat (400-481 ha) and a shortage of shallow marsh habitat (65-160 ha). Overall habitat value for the group of focal taxa was greatest in...