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Annual Reports

Tasks accomplished in calendar year 2004

  • 14 January—Rob Fletcher and Ty Smucker presented summaries of 2003 accomplishments to PPL-MT Wildlife Technical Advisory Committee in Bozeman MFWP regional office.
  • 19-22 January—Hutto attended a symposium on establishing a research network to study the en-route ecology of western migratory landbirds in the Southwest.  He presented a paper, which he was asked to submit to a symposium at the Cooper Ornithological Society meetings in Madison, WI in May 2004.
  • Jan-Feb—Rob Fletcher and I updated ornithology lectures and labs.
  • 28 January—Hutto and Per Sandstrom held an initial meeting with Lloyd Queen about working cooperatively on some fire GIS data layers.
  • 1 February—Anna Noson finished report to DEQ re: 2003 accomplishments.
  • 6 February—full Avian Science Center proposal received a first reading by the faculty senate.
  • 10 February—met with Henning Stabins about permission to work on Plum Creek land for fire research.
  • 10 February—met with Andy Hansen re: cooperative use of USFS database in modeling bird occurrence through the Northwest.
  • 18 February—met with Lloyd Queen again and received permission to use data layers they had for the Black Mountain fire.  Queen also agreed to help with funding for a joint effort to understand bird distribution in relation to high resolution information they have on fires.
  • 19 February—met with Keila from the Missoula Independent about the Avian Science Center.
  • 26 February—presented a paper at the Wildlife Society state chapter meetings in Bozeman on the proposal to enter into an agreement with numerous partners to establish a cooperative statewide bird monitoring program through the ASC.
  • 6 March—Avian Science Center proposal received approval from the Faculty Senate for submission to the Board of Regents in March.
  • 9 March—Jock Young finished report to MTFWP and another to USFS re: 2003 accomplishments; Rob Fletcher and Ty Smucker finished report to PPL-MT re: 2003 accomplishments.
  • 12 March—met with John Marzluff on getting an urban avian ecology project up and running in Missoula.
  • 17 March—presented a guest fire ecology lecture in Ecology class.
  • 19 March—gave a dinner presentation to the Glacier Fund at Khandahar Lodge in Whitefish; they promised $20K in support for getting the park on board with a bird monitoring project.
  • 19 March—We recruited 16 students for a May 2004 undergraduate field training course involving bird ID, point count methods, and other field techniques.  About a dozen are committed to attend. 
  • 22 March—met with T.O. Smith re: nature of MTFWP support for statewide monitoring effort.
  • 25 March—Avian Science Center proposal was approved by the Regents of the University of Montana.
  • Summer—We conducted the annual regional landbird monitoring effort, including (a) hiring technically and physically competent field technicians; (b) revising field manuals and data forms, and developing new or enhancing existing teaching/training materials, (c) training field technicians, (d) supervising field crew during the field season; (e) supervising the entry, cleaning, and transfer of field data for analysis; (f) providing biologists and forest managers access to results and data from 1994-2004; (g) providing a summary of results from the 2004 field season.
  • Overall—A “Birds as Monitoring Tools” education program is now in place, with some theoretical training offered through a graduate seminar on census methods, which was offered spring 2003, and through development of an IBI program with MT-DEQ; practical training offered through ornithology field trips, an undergraduate course on field methods (to be offered in spring 2004), bird identification seminars in collaboration with Five Valleys Audubon, and a training session for seasonal field workers; operations skills through the hiring of field workers who collected data in 2003; and analysis and information transfer through a fall 2003 graduate course in habitat selection, and a workshop for USFS biologists.
  • 12 April 2004—met with Ken Wall and Skip Kowalski to discuss interface of monitoring program results and PIF information with existing wildlife web page partnership.
  • 15 April 2004—participated in Crown of the Continent workshop for park managers.
  • 20 April 2004—public field trip to Black Mountain
  • 26 April 2004—meet with Ken Wall to further discuss construction of web interface
  • 29 April 2004—presentation at the Five Valley’s Audubon birders workshop
  • 17-21 May 2004—conducted undergraduate course in Avian Field Methods
  • 24 May 2004—conducted fire ecology module in the field with Big Sky High School students
  • 26 May 2004—met with Bitterroot coordinating committee to select sites for the Montana Birding and Nature Trail
  • 30 June-4 July 2004—participated as bird expert on Smith River expedition with Fischer Outdoor.
  • 14 July 2004—public field trip to Black Mountain
  • August 2004—article about our fire research at Black Mountain http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2004/08/01/news/top/news01.txt
  • Fall 2004—Vision magazine article about our fire research at Black Mountain http://www.umt.edu/urelations/vision/2004/14black.htm
  • 10-11 September 2004—TNC Board of Trustees meeting, Missoula, MT.
  • 18-22 September 2004—“Nest success increases with density of riparian vegetation along the Madison and Missouri Rivers in Montana” presented by Ty Smucker (speaker) and Richard Hutto at the Wildlife Society Annual Conference, Calgary, Alberta.
  • 20-24 September 2004—“Northern Region Landbird Monitoring Program—a USFS-University of Montana partnership designed to provide both short-term and long-term feedback for managers” invited presentation (with Skip Kowalski) at the Monitoring Science and Technology Symposium, Denver, CO.
  • 6 October 2004—“Habitat use of wintering birds in Sonora, Mexico:  Are we learning enough?” presented by Fernando Villasenor at the OBE seminar series, University of Montana.