• Tuesday-What'sUP July 13 - 05:20 pm

E. Neil Harri is a proud Uncle and Great-Uncle, too. He alerted us to today's photos and information, sent to him by his niece, Danise Jarvey. Who in turn had her daughter, Julie Jarvey send us more photos and a short report about what she is working on. That's Julie in the first shot, with two fawns that have just been collared. Julie is a senior at Michigan Tech majoring in Wildlife Ecology and Management and is working this summer on a Predator/Prey study in Menominee County. The second photo is of Julie and another technician, ear tagging a fawn and the third photo is a fawn found before they collared it. I questioned Julie about the study and what it will tell them. And also about what happens to the collar as the fawn grows. Here is her reply:

"The fawns are collared to study their survival rates. Their locations and life/death status are monitored constantly. When a fawn dies, we locate it and investigate the cause of death, if it was a predation, the species of predator is determined. Some of the fawns we have collared are from collared does, so we can obtain locations relative to their mother. The collars are expandable and will break off when they outgrow it."

What a great picture and lesson today! The fawns are very cooperative for this procedure.

Neat job...the fawns look like a pair of pet Chihuahuas in the first photo.

Very interesting and great photos, way to go Julie, keep it up!

In my humble opinion, humans mess around too much with the free-roaming nature of our wildlife by collaring and tagging them. Just let them be.

There are a lot more photos of the predator/prey study on the link posted above. You can also read the objectives and other info about the study.
I am pleased to see the field work going so well after its first full year of operation, and second spring of collaring and locating animals.
Great work by all involved.

Those baby deers are so precious. Thanks 4 sharing.

It is good to hear that these students care enough about wildlife to conduct these type of studies, and hopefully the study will provide information that may help us to improve the deer's chances of survival.

Good call David, Shirley they're just trying to help!

Hats off to these people! This is the equivalent to what we've been doing/involved with for years with wild birds----research surveys, counts, Atlasing, banding, photographing, etc. for the USFWS/USGS, Cornell University, Audubon Society, DNR and others.
Very fun, satisfying work, necessary but grueling at times.

Just expressing my opinion, Uncle Chuck. I have heard (in the past) of incidences where the collars have gotten hung on tree/brush branches and the animals starved to death. Not very humane treatment in my book.

I'm sure that if these fawns were getting hung up by their collars, the researchers would quickly find out about it and alter their methods. The purpose of this study, after all, is to study cause of death.

I have a Bachelor's in Biology from Michigan Tech, but not using it today; This kind of work is what I sure wish I were doing now. Kudos to Julie and the other researchers involved in this project!

Evidently these 'methods' have not always worked, otherwise the animals would not have starved to death or broken their necks trying to get free. We as pet owners have a right and an obligation to protect our domesticated animals but I do not believe we should interfere with God's 'natural plan'. "Born Free".