Presenter: Austin Flynn
Authors: Austin Flynn, Dustin Schaible
Faculty Advisor: Rachel Bolus
Institution: Southern Utah University
Southern Utah contains a large mammalian population that is important ecologically and recreationally. In the best of interest of big game animals, many manmade water sources called water guzzlers have been constructed to collect and store rainwater for the use of wildlife. They were strategically placed in especially arid portions of the Southern Utah region to serve as reliable sources of water in times of drought. However, the impact of water guzzlers on desert ecology is poorly understood. Due to the remoteness of the guzzlers and limited manpower we used camera traps, a widespread tool used to study wildlife. A camera trap takes images when triggered by the motion of animals passing in front of it. The Wildlife Biology program of the Bureau of Land Management Cedar City Field Office began camera trapping the water guzzlers in 2017. Since then, the program has grown in its capacity to make observations at 34 locations across Iron and Beaver counties of the West Desert. Our study aims to provide a statistical analysis of the data collected from these camera traps. This analysis includes describing the species richness and their behavioral patterns visiting water guzzlers. Understanding how wildlife utilize these structures is of increasing importance as humans continue to alter the landscape.