Leading the future of turkey management

The Boone and Crockett Quantitative Wildlife Center, along with the Quantitative Fisheries Center and Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR), recently hosted a structured decision making (SDM) workshop in East Lansing, MI to inform future directions of wild turkey management in Michigan. This was the second in a sequence of four workshops aimed at integrating management stakeholders, agency biologists, and university researchers into the process of jointly identifying turkey management objectives and potential management options, as well as using advanced statistical modeling to understand spatial-temporal dynamics of turkey populations and predict likely outcomes of management decisions. This highly collaborative project involves a team of modelers and facilitators from Michigan State University, managers and researchers from DNR, and representatives from stakeholder groups, including: Michigan Association of Conservation Districts, Michigan Audubon, Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, Michigan Farm Bureau, Michigan Natural Resources Commission, Michigan United Conservation Clubs, Michigan Wild Turkey Hunters Association, National Wild Turkey Federation, The Nature Conservancy of Michigan, and the Saginaw-Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan.