RGS & AWS activity in Midwestern states will increase with Steigerwaldt’s expanded capacity
The Ruffed Grouse Society & American Woodcock Society announced today that Jon Steigerwaldt, Forest Conservation Director for the Great Lakes and Upper Midwest, will now oversee work in both the Lower and Upper Peninsula of Michigan in addition to Ohio and Indiana.
[Read more…] about Jon Steigerwaldt promoted to oversee forest conservation across Lakes States and Midwest
July 15, 2020
For Immediate Release
Coraopolis, Pa. – The nation’s top 50 hunting conservation organizations today released their policy recommendations for the next White House Administration and the next two Congresses. The groups that participate in the American Wildlife Conservation Partners (AWCP) developed Wildlife for the 21st Century: Volume VI to provide specific actions that could be taken to improve wildlife conservation and management. The 10 recommendations made by the AWCP focus on conservation funding, access and management of federal lands, habitat conservation in a changing climate, integrating wildlife goals into energy planning, private land and species conservation, wildlife disease management, and big game migration corridors. All of the recommendations encourage collaboration and cooperation between federal agencies, state fish and wildlife agencies, and private landowners.
[Read more…] about American Wildlife Conservation Partners Share Conservation Policy Recommendations in the Sixth Edition of Wildlife for the 21st Century
Mongaup Valley Wildlife Management Area (WMA) is nestled against a part of the Delaware River that slithers between New York and Pennsylvania. In 2016, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) completed a project to create new wildlife habitat at Mongaup Valley as part of its Young Forest Initiative (YFI), an ongoing effort launched in 2015 to increase habitat within 93 WMAs for species dependent on early successional forests and whose populations are in steep decline.
[Read more…] about Young Forest Initiative Creating Habitat for Grouse and Woodcock in New York – RGS
Earlier this month, the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board (NRB) voted to approve the states very first ruffed grouse management plan. The impetuous and need for this plan was set forward after the NRB voted on an emergency rule to shorten the 2018 ruffed grouse season. Support for this plan was extensive with 15 members from 13 different government and non-government organizations making up the planning committee. Including two familiar faces: Current RGS Regional Wildlife Biologist Jon Steigerwaldt and past RGS Wildlife Biologist Gary Zimmer.
[Read more…] about Wisconsin Approves Ruffed Grouse Management Plan – RGS
The coalition has now grown to 50 organizations, representing the interests of America’s millions of hunter-conservationists, professional wildlife and natural resource managers, outdoor recreation users, conservation educators, and wildlife scientists. As a coalition of organizations ranging from the Archery Trade Association to the Wildlife Management Institute, individual AWCP organizations have their own primary areas of interest, but we share a commitment to coordinated engagement with federal agencies and Congress to promote wildlife conservation and provide for sustainable public use and enjoyment of those resources.
[Read more…] about Building a Conservation Network – RGS
There’s something special about that feeling you get in the grouse woods in springtime – that moment when you pause and can’t quite hear anything, but actually feel something thumping in your chest (besides your heart). Finally it becomes clear that it’s actually a grouse drumming from a hundred yards away. Drumming is done by male grouse as they beat their wings from an elevated log, stump, rock, or other platform. Contrary to what many people believe, they’re not hitting their wings against their breast – it’s actually caused by the vacuum of air left behind from their rapid wingbeats. Scientists use this behavior to conduct drumming surveys each spring.
Most hunters keep tabs on drumming surveys when they come out each summer, and get excited (or dismayed) about the results. The surveys have been used reliably for several decades. But in recent history, there seems to be somewhat of a disconnect between spring drumming counts and fall harvest numbers/observations. So what is their purpose and what can we still learn from them?
[Read more…] about What We Can Learn from Grouse Drumming Surveys
