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Migration Routes of Mule Deer in Sheep Mountain Herd in Wyoming

Metadata Updated: July 6, 2024

Mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) within the Sheep Mountain herd winter in the East and Northeast foothills of the snowy range mountains in Southeastern Wyoming. The sheep mountain herd is mainly migratory with very few individuals staying on winter range year around. Winter ranges are a mix of grassland and sagebrush hills, often free of snow from wind. During migration, animals that have been tracked with GPS collars (n = 56 females) travel an average one-way distance of nearly 20 miles (32 km), with some animals migrating over 50 miles (80 km). The herd, which numbers around 7,600 has a variety of summer destinations. Some individuals migrate across the snowy range to the west. Others migrate into Colorado, summering in the Rawah mountains. Others migrate short distances into higher elevation foothills of the Snowy Range. Many individuals traverse the eastern front of the snowy range, particularly West of Sheep Mountain and West and Southwest of Jelm Mountain. Summer ranges generally consist of lodgepole pine forests inter-mixed with aspen and riparian habitats. The forests of these summer ranges have been severely impacted by bark beetle over the last decades. More recently, large forest fires have burned some of the summer ranges of this herd. Fawn recruitment most years meets the bare minimum needed for the population to remain stable. The majority of the herd residing north of highway 130 crosses Interstate 80 to access winter range. Successfully crossing Interstate 80 is essential to the persistence of these segments of the herd. Some crossing locations have been successfully mitigated, but most have not. Besides Interstate 80, urban development of private lands on winter range is a concern. Much of this herd’s summer range is on USFS and BLM lands, but most of their winter range is on private lands. In the southern portion of this herd there has been an expansion of housing development built in critical winter range habitats, which removes critical forage, adds stress, as well as increases disease transmission due to homeowners feeding wildlife. These data provide the location of migration routes for mule deer in the Sheep Mountain population in Wyoming. They were developed from 166 migration sequences collected from a sample size of 56 animals comprising GPS locations collected every 2 hours.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date July 6, 2024

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI EDI

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date July 6, 2024
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
@Id http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/99f775a1b8df6ed5adcc8a531f7346bc
Identifier USGS:620e4b5fd34e6c7e83baa3cc
Data Last Modified 20220407
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://datainventory.doi.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 9495cf1b-c6a4-4468-b0fc-5733ed8b051f
Harvest Source Id 52bfcc16-6e15-478f-809a-b1bc76f1aeda
Harvest Source Title DOI EDI
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -106.43,40.97,-106.3,41.16
Publisher Hierarchy White House > U.S. Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 53f69cd0663eaa204181b4065a34dd4c5103faa7d6d4469e0329c9ccfb865451
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -106.43, 40.97, -106.43, 41.16, -106.3, 41.16, -106.3, 40.97, -106.43, 40.97}

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