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Migration Routes of Mule Deer in the Paunsaugunt Herd in Utah

Metadata Updated: July 6, 2024

The Paunsaugunt Plateau in southern Utah is home to around 5,200 mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus). Ongoing research by the Utah DWR has continued to shape our understanding of their annual migration. In contrast to the Volume 1 report (Kauffman et al. 2020), the Paunsaugunt Herd in this Volume includes the addition of 25 individual mule deer, 127 migrations, and 161 winter range sequences. Beginning in early October the mule deer migrate south an average of 36 mi (58 km) to winter range along the Utah-Arizona border. Approximately 20–30 percent of the Paunsaugunt Plateau herd reside in northern Arizona during the winter, sharing winter range also used by deer from Arizona’s Kaibab Plateau herd. Beginning around mid-April, the deer return north to their summer range on the Paunsaugunt Plateau. The most significant challenge for these deer is U.S. Highway 89 which bisects this migration corridor and winter range, where deer-vehicle collisions have historically been a problem. In 2012, the Utah Department of Transportation and partners placed 12.5 mi (20.1 km) of wildlife exclusion fence between existing and new crossing structures to reduce deer-vehicle collisions and provide connectivity for deer and other wildlife across the highway. These mitigation measures have been a tremendous success, facilitating more than 78,600 successful mule deer crossings and a 77 percent crossing success rate (Cramer and Hamlin, 2019). These data provide the location of migration routes for Mule Deer from the Paunsaugunt Herd in Utah. They were developed from Brownian bridge movement models using 244 migration sequences collected from a sample size of 77 adult mule deer 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
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Identifier USGS:620e4b45d34e6c7e83baa3ba
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 8bddac0c-8e42-4646-8169-959a55a151ed
Harvest Source Id 52bfcc16-6e15-478f-809a-b1bc76f1aeda
Harvest Source Title DOI EDI
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -113.0764,36.7996,-111.8986,37.9271
Publisher Hierarchy White House > U.S. Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 8c5e0e73bcfc9bc3b853b1860d8bdc560bfa9ad8abcfd1cd0829cee86aec59c8
Source Schema Version 1.1
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