Projects to Support California Deer

The mission of the California Deer Association is to improve California deer populations and other wildlife through financial support from the public. To accomplish these ends the CDA awards funds to organizations, both public and private, which have proposed projects that support habitat restoration and improvement, research, education as well as securing conservation easements and acquiring land in critical deer range.

2008 Project Results
by Jim Lidberg,
Project Committee Chair

The Project Committee faced a daunting task this year: how to allocate the $279,000 available for funding to the best and most worthy projects. We had to sort through and evaluate a total of 30 project applications received from State and Federal Agencies around the State.

After the Project Committee meetings in June, the Project Committee Chairman presented the selected projects to the Board of Directors for discussion and approval. We had some lively discussions about a couple of the projects, but in the end, the Board accepted the Committee’s recommendations with one addition.

Habitat projects (9 approved)

The Van Vleck Subalpine Meadow Restoration Prescribed Burn was approved for a total of $17,000. This is the final phase of a meadow restoration and aspen enhancement project on 183 acres in the El Dorado National Forest that began in October 2007 when small diameter conifers in the project area were cut and scattered. The first phase was described in the Winter 2008 issue of the Newsletter. The project, located in zone D-5, will enhance summer deer forage and improve fawning cover.

A project in Southern California, the Right Wrong Ridge Guzzler Repair project located in zone D-17 near the San Bernardino/Inyo County line, had $5,000 allocated for purchase of an underground water tank. The Society for the Conservation of Bighorn Sheep provided the remaining $7,200 for materials, the Dept. of Fish and Game supplied the equipment for installation and labor was provided by the SCBS and the So. Calif. Chapter of the CDA.

Another spring and guzzler project, located in the Mojave National Preserve, received $3,000 for materials used by a very large corps of volunteers that has the vision of providing water for wildlife throughout the MNP. This group of volunteers has a long history of doing “much with little”, and we were proud to be a part of their work.

A Klamath National Forest-sponsored project, the Greenhorn Habitat Improvement Project in zone B-2, Siskiyou County, had $5,000 approved. The USFS will provide $18,750 of in-kind work, and the National Wild Turkey Foundation is providing an additional $5,000 toward the project. This project is to benefit deer summer and winter range through a combination of mechanical and hand thinning and underburning in decadent shrub, oak woodland and conifer interface habitats.

The Chimineas Ranch Unit of the Carrizo Plain Ecological Reserve received $6,500 to develop a pond to provide year-round water for deer, Tule elk, pronghorn antelope, wild pigs and a host of other species. The money will be used to install a water line that connects to an existing pump. The Rocky Mountain elk Foundation has partnered to provide $7,000 to complete the rest of the development.

The Plumas National Forest was approved $10,000 to conduct a prescribed burn on 204 acres near the community of Mountain House, east of Oroville, in zone D-3. The habitat within the proposed burn area is winter range for the Bucks Mountain deer herd. It has become too poor in quality to provide adequate nutrition due to its age and senescence. Because of the size and complexity of the proposed project area, this project will require partners to enable the forest Service to complete the work. CDA funds will be allocated after the partners have signed on to the project.

A proposal to restore approximately 400 acres of important deer habitat within the Modoc National Forest near Canby has been allocated $28,125 as part of a package totaling $148,175 to remove encroaching junipers and to stabilize a creek to prevent downcutting that was destroying the stream corridor. This project is the first phase of a larger effort to reduce juniper encroachment and to restore meadows, aspen stands, black oak, eastside pine and sage steppe habitat types to increased productivity. This area is within zones X-2 and X-3a.

The Mendocino National Forest has been working for several years within the Grindstone Ranger District in Tehama County to enhance habitat on approximately 2,500 acres. This project, roughly 200 acres in extent, is a continuation of that project. The USFS asked for, and was granted, $15,000 for the work, with another $15,000 coming from matching funds. The money will be used to remove encroaching conifers and to conduct understory burns to continue oak regeneration and stimulate herbaceous growth. The project area is within zone B-5 and is entirely on public land.

The last habitat project approved is a continuation of a long-term juniper removal program conducted by the Bureau of Land Management in Tehama County, zone C-4. Young junipers are encroaching under the canopy of blue oaks and are creating a situation that will kill the oaks when the area eventually burns. The project will remove junipers within 10 feet of the drip line of oaks. CDA approved $3,000 this year as part of the 5-year plan to improve deer winter range.

Research/Equipment/Education (6 approved)

The Calif. Dept. of Fish and Game requested additional funding for the Highway 89 project for the purchase of 5 new GPS telemetry collars and the refurbishment of the original 10 collars so that all 15 can be deployed to gather additional location data on the Loyalton-Truckee deer herd (zone X-7a). This project is trying to determine where and when deer are crossing Highway 89 between Sierraville and Truckee so that better methods can be developed to reduce the roadkill rate. The Highway 89 Stewardship Team hopes to make this a blueprint for roads crossing National Forest lands throughout California. Cooperators area the Calif. Dept. of Fish and Game, the California Deer Association, U. S. Forest Service, CalTrans, UC Davis, UC Berkeley, Sierra County and UC Cooperative Extension Service.

The Calif. Dept. of Fish and Game has been working on the Coachella Canal Ungulate Investigation and Monitoring Plan in Riverside and Imperial Counties, zone D-12, attempting to determine a method of reducing deer mortalities in the canal. The overall project is a very large and intensive effort to document losses to the burro deer, a species unique to the desert regions of the State. The CDA was able to fund a total of 10 cameras ($10,000) for use in the research.

The CDA has been involved with a large research project in the Round Valley area of Inyo County for many years. The past work has focused on population dynamics, migration patterns and so forth. This project is close to the last piece of the puzzle of how this herd reacts to all the variables that beset a deer herd. The plan is to monitor the Age at First Reproduction of Female Mule Deer using expanding radiotelemetry collars that will be put on young female deer (fawns) in the fall or spring. They will be tracked from a fixed-wing aircraft weekly to estimate survival and determine migratory status. The Association has committed $10,000 for this effort this year. The study area is in zones X-9a, D-7, G-39 and J-12.

The Dept. of Fish and Game has begun a study to Assess Reproductive Synchrony, Performance and Physical Condition in Black-tailed Deer in southwestern Siskiyou County. This impressive title might make your eyes glaze over a bit, but the study is extremely important to understanding the apparent decline of black-tailed deer and their habitats in zone B-6, and to perhaps gain insight in how to return this herd to a more robust population. The Association allocated $40,000 for the purchase of 10 GPS collars and the helicopter time to install them.

For several years, the CDA has funded various research projects through the Wildlife Forensic Laboratory (WFL) of the Calif. Dept. of Fish and Game. The results of these studies have made many poaching cases that would otherwise have been impossible to pursue and convict. This project will tie up one last loose end: are there identical twins in the population with identical DNA? At this time, there is no scientific answer to this question, and as a result, guilty poachers may be set free. The WFL has been allocated $5,000 for this final year of the study.

The Mojave National Preserve, located in San Bernardino County, has deactivated many water sources that livestock and wildlife used to depend on. The study will re-activate some springs and wells, and monitor their use by deer using remote cameras. The $15,000 CDA provided to this project will be used to purchase remote-downloadable GPS collars. Information collected during the course of this study may confirm the need for supplemental water throughout the MNP.

As you’ll see if you add up the previous funding amounts, we didn’t actually meet our $279,000 limit because we didn’t have a proposal in one of our categories: the Land Acquisition and Conservation Easement fund. Several years ago the Board decided that it was very important to have a pool of money with which we could partner with Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) or a State of Federal agency if an opportunity to protect or acquire key deer habitat became available. This year, the budgeted amount, $69,819, was added to our LACE fund for future needs.