Tennessee Tech’s Wildlife Town Hall Tuesday part of an eleven-stop statewide forum series.
Associate Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Management Bradley Cohen will present at the event. His research lab at Tennessee Tech specializes in white-tailed deer, wild turkey, and waterfowl.
“The worst thing that can happen as an academic in my opinion is that your research stays in an academic journal,” Cohen said. “The whole idea is to get it out to the public and so forums like this give us a chance to show not just why we’re collecting the data but why it’s important to people.”
Cohen said he uses data to assist TWRA with annual regulation packages. Cohen said his presentation will highlight methods to increase offspring survival rates as regional turkey numbers face structural landscape challenges.
“I’m a passionate turkey hunter, and I’m passionate about working with state agencies on applied management questions and I work almost exclusively with game animals and right now turkey populations across the state seem to be in decline or maybe stabilizing at a relatively lower level than they historically were,” Cohen said. “I’m really interested in what we can do on the landscape to produce better conditions for turkeys.”
A collaborative tagging initiative conducted alongside neighboring state agencies serves as a primary metric to track male harvest frequencies across the region.
“The whole goal is to use that data so that it’s applied across the state, not just applied into some kind of journal somewhere and a line on my CV,” Cohen said.
The regional expansion of Chronic Wasting Disease remains a critical biological threat due to its fatal nature and lack of medical treatment options, Cohen continued.
“Hunters need to make sure that they report their harvest and report it reliably, and make sure that when they can that they submit CWD samples,” Cohen said. “It’s the places that do not think that they have CWD that rarely submit samples and it becomes an issue that if we’re going to detect it early, we need people to be making sure they submit tissue samples whenever they can.”
Rapid municipal growth across the plateau is also altering traditional regional migratory paths, forcing game animals to seek refuge within local suburban environments.
The interactive public forum will provide area landowners with specific land management strategies to improve local habitat conditions.
The public Wildlife Town Hall will take place on Tuesday inside the Tennessee Tech University Stonecipher Lecture Hall.
