Usage of Network Analysis in Wildlife Damage Management

Purpose:

Identify shortfalls in the South Dakota Wildlife Damage Management program (location of staff stations, amount of damage staff, hotspots locations, etc.) through identifying drive times and hotspot locations. This was done using Network Analysis in ArcGIS Pro, a toolbox not often used by natural resource professionals. This project also sought to evaluate the effectiveness of the Network Analysis Toolbox for the wildlife management problems field.

Abstract

It is well known that the amount of human-wildlife interactions is increasing as cities and suburbs continue to expand into wildlife habitats. Wildlife Management Departments are responsible for dealing with these interactions, including those related to damage from wildlife (coyotes eating chicken, deer taking out fences, etc.). Using geospatial software such as ArcGIS Pro and ArcMap (Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., Redlands, CA, USA) wildlife management specialists can analyze, assess, and evaluate their current management programs to understand the shortfalls of the current programs, make recommendations for adjustments and use these evaluations as guidance when creating new programs. Spatial analysis is often used in wildlife management and this paper intends to explore the effectiveness of network analysis in the field of wildlife damage management. General thoughts are that the ‘Network Analysis Toolbox’ available through ArcGIS Pro will prove effective in solving route times and distances between wildlife damage specialist duty locations and the areas with the highest density of complaints.

Final Manuscript

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Steps:

1. Project Proposal

2. Data Acquisition

3. Data Analysis

4. Maps and Figures