Translocation projects are often hindered by frequent or long-distance movements made by released animals. Studies identifying how and why animals move after release can inform future translocations and supplement the growing body of literature on translocation biology. We used radiotelemetry to compare movement behavior in 58 resident and 54 translocated endangered greater prairie-chickens (Tympanuchus cupido) that were collected approximately 500 km from the release area. Translocated birds tended to traverse larger areas than resident birds and their movements were elevated immediately following release. We found no evidence of directional orientation in the movements of translocated birds, and thus concluded that prairie-chickens were not homing toward their original capture locations. Rather, post-translocation movements of greater prairie-chickens were more likely associated with exploration. Our results also suggested that 54% of translocated females and 19% of translocated males may permanently emigrate from a release site. We recommend that greater prairie-chicken conservationists consider summer releases and larger release cohorts to account for the individuals that emigrate from the establishment site. Based on our findings, we further suggest that a greater number of future translocation projects consider the utility of evaluating post-release movements as a means of informing translocation decisions. bs_bs_banner Animal Conservation. Print ISSN 1367-9430 Animal Conservation 16 (2013) 449-457

The extraction of oil and natural gas from reserves in the Bakken Formation has increased from 2004 to 2017 in North Dakota and northeast Montana, USA. High development areas overlap substantially with wetlands and grasslands identified as high priority for waterfowl conservation in the Prairie Pothole Region. To test for anthropogenic disturbance on waterfowl brood abundance, we conducted repeat‐visit waterfowl brood surveys during 2014–2017. We tested hypotheses about disturbance and brood abundance using hierarchical zero‐inflated Poisson models and a spatially and temporally explicit disturbance index within 3 radii (0.32 km, 0.64 km, 1.51 km). Model selection supported detection and abundance parameters that were consistent with previous research and suggested that brood abundance was higher in landscapes with high densities of small, shallow wetlands. Our analysis also demonstrated a negative relationship between abundance and the disturbance index for the smallest spatial radius (0.32 km); however, the effect size was small and predictions suggested that <1% of the broods in the sample population were affected. Considering this relatively weak negative relationship and the continued role of wetlands as the primary factor influencing brood abundance, we recommended that managers continue to focus conservation efforts in landscapes with high densities of small, unprotected wetlands, even in the presence of oil and gas development. © 2019 The Authors. Journal of Wildlife Management Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of The Wildlife Society.

Aim Traditional approaches for including species' distributions in conservation planning have presented them as long‐term averages of variation. Like these approaches, the main waterfowl conservation targeting tool in the United States Prairie Pothole Region (US PPR) is based primarily on long‐term averaged distributions of breeding pairs. While this tool has supported valuable conservation, it does not explicitly consider spatiotemporal changes in spring wetland availability and does not assess wetland availability during the brood rearing period. We sought to develop a modelling approach and targeting tool that incorporated these types of dynamics for breeding waterfowl pairs and broods. This goal also presented an opportunity for us to compare predictions from a traditional targeting tool based on long‐term averages to predictions from spatiotemporal models. Such a comparison facilitated tests of the underlying assumption that this traditional targeting tool could provide an effective surrogate measure for conservation objectives such as brood abundance and climate refugia. Location US PPR. Methods We developed spatiotemporal models of waterfowl pair and brood abundance within the US PPR. We compared the distributions predicted by these models and assessed similarity with the averaged pair data that is used to develop the current waterfowl targeting tool. Results Results demonstrated low similarity and correlation between the averaged pair data and spatiotemporal brood and pair models. The spatiotemporal pair model distributions did not serve as better surrogates for brood abundance than the averaged pair data. Main conclusions Our study underscored the contributions that the current targeting tool has made to waterfowl conservation but also suggested that conservation plans in the region would benefit from the consideration of inter‐ and intra‐annual dynamics. We suggested that using only the averaged pair data and derived products might result in the omission of 58% ‐ 88% of important pair and brood habitat from conservation plans. [Correction added on 5 February 2021, after first online publication: ‘Results’ text has been modified and the ‘Main conclusions’ omission percentages have been corrected.]

Over the past decade, the United States has seen a rapid increase in oil and gas extraction from areas where resources were previously thought to be unrecoverable, particularly the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota. The Bakken overlaps with the Prairie Pothole Region, the most critical habitat in North America for breeding ducks, where oil and gas extraction through hydraulic fracturing has the potential to impact more than a million duck pairs in the United States alone. Here, we evaluated the effect of oil and gas development on nesting ducks in 2015–2017 across 5 counties in North Dakota. Using data from ~4,000 nests we found that nest survival was higher at sites composed of a higher percentage of grassland, and for nests found closer to major roads. We found no effect of any metric of oil and gas extraction activity on duck nest survival. Using survival-corrected estimates of nest density, we found higher densities of nests closer to roads, but lower nest densities at sites surrounded by more wells. Our top-ranked model indicated that nest density was predicted to decline by 14% relative to sites with no development, given the average number of wells (3.15 wells) within 1,500 m of a site. However, within a nesting field, we found no evidence that ducks were avoiding petroleum-related infrastructure at smaller spatial scales. Our results indicate mixed effects of oil and gas development on nesting waterfowl, and highlight both the resiliency of dabbing ducks to environmental change and the need for additional research on other aspects of duck breeding biology.