The makah tribe is dependent on black-tailed deer (odocoileus hemionus columbianus)to help meet cultural and subsistence needs within the community

This $247,545 federal Project Grant awarded by the U.S. Department of the Interior Fish and Wildlife Service under the Tribal Wildlife Grants program (CFDA 15.639) supports a 2-year research project conducted by the Makah Indian Tribe in Washington. The project aims to improve the Tribe's capacity to monitor and manage its black-tailed deer populations, which are important for cultural and subsistence needs. Key activities include collaring and tracking deer, implementing fecal DNA capture-recapture methods, comparing traditional and modern deer population estimation techniques, and engaging tribal youth in field data collection. The results will help the Tribe make more informed decisions about managing impacts from predation, hunting, and land use activities on deer populations. The project also seeks to strengthen collaborations with wildlife co-managers and disseminate findings to the local community and scientific community.

The makah wildlife divisionis responsible for providing accurate population data and management recommendations totribal committees and council leaders to make important decisions, based on the best availabledata. Black-tailed deer populations have been challenging to estimate accurately because of thedense cover in coastal temperate rainforests. Methods used to collect data on deer have eitherrelied on traditional techniques such as composition and harvest data, or more expensivetechniques such as capture, collaring, and monitoring. Researchers over the past several yearshave been developing and refining more accurate and cost-effective methods to collect andanalyze data on black-tailed deer populations. These methods include non-invasive cameratrapping and fecal DNA capture-recapture population modelling. Our proposed project willcompare several methods, using a combination of traditional and modern techniques todetermine the best options and to calibrate models being developed from camera trappingmethods. Results from the proposed project will increase the tribes capacity to determineimpacts of predation, hunting, and land management activities on deer populations to betterinform management recommendations provide opportunities to engage members of the tribalcommunity contribute to the makah tribes research on wildlife interactions inform makahwildlife and forest management plans and improve CO-management capacity by evaluatingcurrent and potential methods for long term deer monitoring strategies applicable to wildlifemanagers on the olympic peninsula. We propose a 2-year study beginning january 2024 thatintends to achieve objectives associated with 5 primary goals: 1) estimate deer home ranges andhabitat use and observe interactions among adult deer and cougars. 2) compare several methods, using a combination of traditional and modern techniques to estimate deer abundance anddetermine the best long-term monitoring strategies. 3) increase tribal capacity and improvemanagement self-sufficiency. 4) provide education and outreach through presentations, newsletter articles, online postings to the tribal community, and by involving tribal youth infield data collection and population monitoring activities. 5) strengthen collaborations withwildlife CO-managers by contributing to deer population monitoring and calibration of modelsdeveloped from camera trapping methods. We will conduct our research on the northwest cornerof the olympic peninsula, washington. We will accomplish our objectives by collaring andmonitoring 24 deer using GPS technology, estimating annual population parameters such assurvival and home range use, and implementing deer fecal pellet collection transects for dnamark-recapture estimates of abundance within our study area. We will build our capacity tomanage black-tailed deer populations on the olympic peninsula, provide information to localand scientific communities in our region, and collaborate with our partners and CO-managers toensure success and broad application of results.