Student: David Wolfson, Ph.D. candidate in Conservation Sciences
Principal Investigators: David Andersen and John Fieberg; Sushma Reddy is collaborating on the genetics component of the project
Funding: Minnesota Environmental Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislature-Citizen’s Commission on Minnesota Resources; GPS/GSM transmitters purchased by collaborators for deployment within their jurisdictions
Collaborators: Minnesota Department of Natural Resources; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Three Rivers Park District; University of Minnesota Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology; Trumpeter Swan Society; Michigan State University; Michigan Department of Natural Resources; Ohio Department of Natural Resources; Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources; Iowa Department of Natural Resources; Nebraska Game and Parks Commission; Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission; Manitoba Conservation; Canadian Wildlife Service.
Beginning in 2019, David Wolfson and our collaborators captured and equipped Interior Population trumpeter swans across their distribution with GPS/GSM tracking devices affixed to neck collars. At the time of capture, we also collected blood and feather samples for genetic analyses and to assess lead exposure. During 2019–2020, we deployed transmitters on 98 swans. In 2021 we redeployed several transmitters recovered from swan mortalities, and plan to deploy 4 transmitters on swans wintering in Arkansas later this year. Movements of individual swans can be viewed on our project website (https://trumpeterswan.netlify.app/index.html).
This project has received considerable public interest, and was the subject of press releases by the Department of Natural Resources in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa during summer 2020. These press releases were picked up by local and regional media and highlighted in both print and broadcast outlets. Our project website (https://trumpeterswan.netlify.app/index.html) has received over 21,000 page views by over 7,000 users. David Wolfson has also made several presentations about the project to general and scientific audiences, and recently won the Best Student Presentation Award at The Wildlife Society Annual Conference, where he presented his work on applying recently developed statistical approaches to identifying changes in biotelemetry data time series, including changes in movement patterns of trumpeter swans.