Masters Thesis: Examining Landscape-Scale Movement of Snowshoe Hare (Lepus A.) in a Managed Forest

ABSTRACT: Snowshoe hares (Lepus americanus) have been well-studied in their most northern extent using VHF radio telemetry; however, they have not been as well studied at their southern extent or with GPS collars. Here we examine snowshoe hares in a heavily managed forest that contains dense regenerative growth stands of lodgepole pine, surrounded by old-growth lodgepole pine, recent clear cuts, and riparian habitats. We estimated the home range size and extent of snowshoe hares using GPS collars and an area-corrected autocorrelated kernel density estimator. We wanted to test how much of the hares' home range contained regenerative growth stands, and what factors were driving snowshoe hare movement. The average estimated home range was 80.97 acres (95% CI 58.22-108.20 ac, s.d. = 141.72 ac). On average, home range within regenerative growth stands was 47.25%, 34.54% for old growth lodge pole pine, 15.03% for recent clear-cut, and 2.1% for riparian habitats. The average number of regenerative growth stands per hare home range was 2.47 (+/- s.d. = 1.91). There was no significant difference between male and female home range size (p-value = 0.27), nor was there a significant difference between the percent of regenerative growth that composed male and female home ranges (p-value = 0.84). We used a linear mixed effects regression model to understand the effects of habitat, time of day, temperature, sex, and weight on snowshoe hare speed. The variables that significantly affected speed were the time group midnight (p-value < 0.001, increase of 0.34 meters per second m/s), sunrise (p-value < 0.001, increase of 0.24 m/s), temperature (p-value < 0.001, decrease in speed of 0.04 m/s as temperature increases), and weight of an individual hare (p-value < 0.001, increase in speed by 0.0003 m/s as weight on individual increases). There was also a significant increase in speed from midday in regenerative growth stands to midnight in old growth lodgepole stands (p-value = 0.03, increase of 0.13 m/s). These results show that snowshoe hares are using regenerative growth stands as well as the habitat around these stands. We recommend that forest managers maintain mature lodge pole pine stands near clearcut stands and help support the dense regenerative growth in the clearcut stands to produce cover vegetation to support snowshoe hare.