Pyrodiversity Matters: Wild Turkey Habitat Selection in a Fire Managed Landscape

Throughout North America, prescribed fire is becoming a common technique to manage natural landscapes. How this management tool affects wildlife remains poorly understood by land managers and biologists. Wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) thrive in heterogeneous forests with a diverse understory structure which can be achieved using prescribed fire. However, our understanding of how burning influences turkey habitat selection during the reproductive period remains unclear. We sought to answer two questions: 1) does prescribed fire influence habitat selection among wild turkey hens? And 2) how does burn regime influence hen habitat selection? During 2015 – 2017 we monitored the habitat use of 47 hens in Illinois using micro-GPS tags. We first compared the selection of burn vs. non-burn forest by hens to determine if prescribed fire influences hen habitat selection. We then evaluated hen selection of forest areas with different burn regimes. Both questions were examined at the scale of the individual-annual range and the individual-seasonal range and were compared to the flock-annual range and the individual-annual range, respectively. We found that hens selected burned and non-burned habitat in proportion to availability at the annual landscape scale, however the analysis of seasonal habitat selection revealed that non-burned forest was selected over burned forest. Burn regime influenced hen selection among burned areas at both scales. Within their annual range, hens selected areas that had experienced at least one growing season since burning. During the reproductive period, hens generally selected younger burns (1-2 years old) over older burns (2-3 years old). Our results demonstrate the influence of prescribed fire on wildlife, such as the wild turkey, and the importance of considering both temporal and spatial scale in analyses of habitat selection. Furthermore, the diversity of habitat selection within a fire-managed landscape emphasizes the importance of pyrodiversity for wildlife in a forested landscape.