💡VMN CE Webinar: Virginia Gray Fox Project

Description: This webinar will include reasoning for, methodology, and preliminary results of the Virginia Gray Fox Project (VGFP). The VGFP is a collaborative project between Virginia Tech and Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources. The project consists of a statewide remote camera trap survey to establish the current distribution of gray foxes and exploration of historical data to assess evidence for gray fox distributional decline. Out of public interest and the sheer size of the project, the VGFP has grown to include a community collaboration in which members of the commonwealth are actively participating in data collection and data processing. The status of these efforts and the plan for our second field season will be discussed.

Presenter: Victoria Monette is a second-year Wildlife Conservation PhD student at Virginia Tech working in Dr. Marcella Kelly’s lab. She is broadly interested in carnivore ecology, movement, and spatiotemporal interactions among carnivores. Her PhD research will include a state-wide camera survey to determine current gray fox distribution, quantify evidence of presumed gray fox decline across VA, and determine the relative impacts of bottom-up (i.e., habitat change) versus top-down (i.e., interspecific competition) ecological pressures on gray foxes using an occupancy modeling framework. She will create a current distribution map of gray fox occurrence across the state and use historic camera surveys to assess evidence of decline. Results will be used to develop conservation management plans for the gray fox across Virginia.