Habitat University

Our tour of Aldo's Tools comes to a close in this episode as we consider the last tool: the gun. From controlling certain game populations to engaging hunters in habitat conservation efforts in their own backyard or across the continent, Patt Dorsey, Director of Conservation Operations in the west for the National Wild Turkey Federation, breaks down how the gun does a lot of good for habitat in this wide ranging discussion with Adam. Patt's long career in conservation and life-time passion for hunting offer insightful, and often humorous, perspectives on how the gun is a critical tool for wildlife habitat management!

National Wild Turkey Federation: https://www.nwtf.org

Learn more about the Conservation Leaders for Tomorrow Program Patt, Adam, and Jarred all participate in to teach natural resource professionals and students about hunting: https://clft.org/

More on "PR Program" or more formally the "Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program" as discussed in the show: https://www.fws.gov/wsfrprograms/home.html

Hug a Hunter video from Colorado Wildlife Council: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FTuNGX-VvY

Help us improve the podcast by taking this Habitat University Listener Feedback Survey: https://purdue.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5oteinFuEzFCDmm

Through large expanses of the U.S., wildlife live alongside, or are strongly influenced by, the footprint of crop production practices; what Leopold was referencing when he spoke of 'the plow.' In this episode, Adam talks to Ryan Heiniger from Pheasants Forever about the challenges and opportunities for wildlife habitat conservation with 'the plow' and how a more precision imagining of its utility and place can be good for the farmer AND wildlife. Ryan is the Director of Agriculture and Conservation Innovations for Pheasants Forever, a farmer himself, and nuts about wildlife and wildlife conservation. From food plots to autonomous tractors, this conversation covers it all!

More about Ryan: https://www.pheasantsforever.org/Newsroom/2017-June/Pheasants-Forever-Quail-Forever-Promotes-Ryan-Hein.aspx

Pheasants Forever: The Habitat Organization: https://www.pheasantsforever.org/Habitat/Why-Habitat.aspx

Pheasants Forever's Precision Agriculture program: https://pheasantsforever.org/Conservation/Precision-Agriculture.aspx

Link to the Iowa Geographic Map server with historical aerial images of farms back to the 1930s: https://isugisf.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=47acfd9d3b6548d498b0ad2604252a5c

Help us improve the podcast by taking this Habitat University Listener Feedback Survey: https://purdue.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5oteinFuEzFCDmm

How can the axe – or forestry – be used as a habitat management tool? Jarred talks with Jordan Nanney, a Wildlife Forester with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, about how he uses forestry to creatively manage wildlife habitat. As you'll learn in the episode it can really be a balancing axe {act}.

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Resources discussed during the episode:

Hardwood Ecosystem Experiment - https://heeforeststudy.org/

Short-term response of breeding birds to oak regeneration treatments in upland hardwood forest

Managing your Woods for White-Tailed Deer

Creating a Wildlife Habitat Management Plan for Landowners

A Template for Your Wildlife Habitat Management Plan

Iowa's Forest Birds

Everything from grasshoppers to a bison graze and can have drastic impacts on vegetation on which many other wildlife species depend. Unsurprisingly, many wildlife managers are therefore interested in understanding and using grazing animals to create the unique places where animals, or in the case of the blowout penstemon, unique plants, thrive. In this wide-ranging discussion, Adam talks to The Nature Conservancy's Marissa Ahlering about how grazing impacts wildlife and how we can creatively use grazing to manage wildlife habitat.

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More on Marissa Ahlering: https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/who-we-are/our-people/marissa-ahlering/

Find Dr. Ahlering's research here: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=86moVcEAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

Including her research on cattle grazing and grassland birds. - https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jwmg.1049

More on blowout penstemon - http://outdoornebraska.gov/blowoutpenstemon/

More on patch burn grazing from our friends at Fire U: https://fireuniversity.libsyn.com/episode-04-patch-burn-grazing-as-a-strategy-to-manage-grassland-communities

How can prescribed fire be used creatively to create and enhance habitat for wildlife? Dr. Marcus Lashley, Assistant Professor and Extension Wildlife Specialist at University of Florida and host of Fire University, joins the podcast to tackle this question, and we take a deep dive into prescribed fire as a habitat management tool.

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Dr. Marcus Lashley - @DrDisturbance - @ufdeerlab

Resources discussed in the episode

Fire University Episode 3 – Where to get information, experience, and collaborators to meet prescribed burning objectives - https://fireuniversity.libsyn.com/episode-03-where-to-get-information-experience-and-collaborators-to-meet-prescribed-burning-objectives

Fire University Episode 4 – Patch-Burn-Grazing as a strategy to manage grassland communities - https://fireuniversity.libsyn.com/episode-04-patch-burn-grazing-as-a-strategy-to-manage-grassland-communities

Natural Resources University - https://naturalresourcesuniversity.libsyn.com/

Southern Fire Exchange - https://southernfireexchange.org/

Coalition of Prescribed Fire Council - http://www.prescribedfire.net/

Prescribed Burn Associations - https://research.cnr.ncsu.edu/blogs/southeast-fire-update/prescribed-burn-associations/

Enroll now in our free wildland fire course. Available to all!

This podcast is supported by listener donations - thank you for being a part of this effort.

For as long as people have been interacting with wild animals, they have been manipulating the places where wild animals live. So, is habitat management the oldest job in the world? Join Adam and Jarred as they chat about the history of wildlife habitat management, dig deep into the central premise of habitat management – plant succession – and introduce the five tools for habitat management that Aldo Leopold described in his 1933 book, Game Management.

Learn more about plant succession and its relationship to wildlife habitat by checking out the resources below:

Iowa's Forest Birds - https://store.extension.iastate.edu/Product/15963

Managing Your Woods for White-Tailed Deer - https://edustore.purdue.edu/item.asp?Item_Number=FNR-596-W

Grassland Successional Chart - https://extension.purdue.edu/pondwildlife/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/GrasslandSuccession_wFNR.png

Wildlife Habitat Education Program - https://fwf.tennessee.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2020/07/1_2020-WHEP-Intro-Acitivites.pdf

What do you picture when you hear "habitat"? Habitat is one of the most important concepts in wildlife management, but what does it actually mean? Join Adam and Jarred as they define "habitat" and discuss why its use is a "panchreston problem." We'll explain what the heck "panchreston" means and discuss why we should be careful about how we talk about habitat to minimize confusion and clarify objectives. Jarred and Adam will also explore why defining and using habitat correctly is important in helping landowners and managers construct and achieve their management objectives.

Learn more about habitat as a panchreston problem in Kirk et al. 2018. Our use, misuse, and abandonment of a concept: Whither habitat.Ecology and Evolution 8:4197–4208. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5916312/).

Welcome to Habitat University! In this introductory Episode, Habitat University co-hosts Jarred Brooke and Adam Janke discuss the vision for the podcast and how it fits into the new collaborative science-based podcast series called Natural Resources University. Jarred and Adam share information about their background, what they do as state wildlife extension specialists, and where they plan to take this new podcast exploring the in's and out's out of wildlife habitat management and conservation in the U.S.