| Description |
With expanding urbanization and development, human encroachment on wilderness areas continues to increase. In Utah, much of the once pristine and untouched mountain ecosystems of the Wasatch Front have been developed for recreation and other human use, and this increasing human-wildlife interaction could lead to problems in conservation and management. Red Butte Canyon Research Natural Area, located only 6 km east of Salt Lake City, is one of the last relatively undisturbed watersheds in the Wasatch Front. With the canyon's near pristine habitat, Red Butte Canyon provides an excellent opportunity to generate baseline data for monitoring wildlife behavior, activity, distribution, and relative abundance throughout the Wasatch mountain ecosystem. This dataset will, in turn, provide much needed reference information for future studies in the region. For this study, 14 motion-triggered camera traps were used to gather data on medium and large mammals throughout the research area from March through September 2015 for a total of 1457 camera days. In total, 11 mammal species were detected. Using rapping rate as an indicator of relative abundance, mule deer and elk were the most common species surveyed (51.133 and 9.029 photos/100 camera-days, respectively), and North American porcupine, American mink, and American black bear were the least common (.063, .063, and .437photos/100 camera-days, respectively). Of the 11 species detected, site occupancy values meeting all sampling criteria were obtained for 9 species. These values were obtained using week long sampling periods, summing to 18 total sampling occasions. Further more, the recommended sampling effort of 100-130 days needed to ensure accurate detection records was assessed as a reference for any future studies along the Wasatch Front. These baseline data will provide an extensive dataset for other researchers interested in monitoring the wildlife communities of the Wasatch Front, as well as provide valuable information on the variability of species-specific mammalian distributions through habitat types. |
