Illinois Natural History Survey Reports

              1
I LLINOIS
NATURAL
HI STORY
S U R V E Y R e p o r t s
September/
October 1999
No. 359
I N S I D E
Education Outreach at
the Survey: Bringing
Science to the People
2
Looking Before We
Leap: All in a Day's
Work at INHS
4
Species Spotlight:
Monarch Butterfl y
5
The Naturalist's
Apprentice:
Insect Survival Strate-gies
6
Continued on back page
Turkeys on the Edge of the Prairie
Patrick Hubert releasing Wild Turkey after capture and radio tagging.
Because of habitat loss
and unregulated hunting,
wild turkeys (Meleagris
gallopavo) were extir-pated
from Illinois by the
early 1900s. However,
successful restoration has
demonstrated the adapt-ability
of these birds.
Once thought to require
extensive tracts of forest,
turkeys now exist in areas
of the Midwest with less
than 20% forest cover.
Restoration in Illinois,
which began in 1959, has
now been so successful
that reestablished turkey
populations exist in nearly
all 102 counties. Of these,
81 counties are open to
turkey hunting. However,
despite successful rees-tablishment
and apparently good
habitat, turkey populations remain
low in some areas.
Previous research has shown
that turkey populations are sensi-tive
to variation in hen survival,
nest success, and poult survival,
and that these factors may fl uctu-ate
widely between years. How-ever,
much of this research was
conducted in other parts of the
Midwest with more forest cover
or a lower percentage of row crop
(corn and soybean) cover or both.
Managers in Illinois need infor-mation
on the effects of Illinois’
mix of agriculture and forest on
turkey population performance to
better manage prairie state turkey
populations.
With this need in mind, the
Illinois Department of Natural
Resources (IDNR), Federal Aid in
Fish and Wildlife Restoration, the
National Wild Turkey Federation,
and the Illinois Chapter of the
National Wild Turkey Federation
provided funds to allow research-ers
at the Illinois Natural History
Survey to study wild turkey ecol-ogy
at the interface of agriculture
and forest in Illinois. For this
study, we selected Cass County
in west-central Illinois and Clark
County in southeastern Illinois.
Despite similar release histories,
county size, and similarities in
gross habitat characteristics, Cass
County supports a larger turkey
population than Clark County.
We began capturing turkeys
using rocket-nets during the win-ter
of 1997-1998. Since then we
have captured 101 turkeys and
radio-tagged 76 hens. We are
monitoring radio-tagged hens to
determine survival, nest success,
poult survival, range size, and
habitat use. We are also taking
data on body condition, causes of
mortality, and vegetation charac-teristics
at nest sites.
Annual survival of hens has
been similar in the two counties
but below 50%. Most deaths
have been related to predation,
with coyotes suspected as the
major predator. Other sources of
mortality include poaching and
storm-related deaths. Most hen
deaths occurred during the nest-
Photo by James Seets, INHS Center for Wildlife Ecology