Migration, seasonal home range and habitat use of pronghorn in southwestern North Dakota.

My name is Jesse Kolar and I'm researching migration, seasonal home range and habitat use of pronghorn in southwestern North Dakota.  To study movements, I have monitored over 100 VHF collared pronghorn and 70 GPS collared pronghorn in the past four years.  We collect locations on the VHF collared pronghorn every 10 days, and download stored data from the GPS collars that release at the end of the year.

The project was initiated by the North Dakota Game and Fish Department (NDGF) to assess current survey and hunting units, critical habitat, and population fluctuations.  I was accepted to the University of Missouri in August of 2006 to further my research as a Master's student under Josh Millspaugh.  The findings of this study will help the NDGF to distribute hunting tags more appropriately and to protect critical fawning and wintering areas.

I will be in the field for all of 2007, mainly tracking pronghorn via aerial telemetry, entering data, and collecting GPS collars after they automatically release.  I will finish my thesis and coursework during the Spring and Summer 2008 semesters.