PARENT SESSION

INVENTORIES OF THE MAMMALS OF NATIONAL PARKS IN THE PIEDMONT (MID-ATLANTIC) REGION OF VIRGINIA. Avinash M. Sareen, Janet M. Mulligan, Cheryl L. Tanner and Ronald E. Barry. Frostburg State University Biology Department, 101 Braddock Road, Frostburg, Maryland, USA.

ABSTRACT- The National Park Service (NPS) has identified the need for surveys of mammals in national parks in compliance with the Vail Agenda mandate to the Natural Resource Inventory and Monitoring Program of the National Park Service (NPS 1998). The objective of Phase I of the inventory program in the Northeast Region is to document the presence of > 90% of all mammal species in the parks. To supplement historical records we initiated field surveys of mammals in two mid Atlantic parks in Virginia, Richmond National Battlefield Park (RICH) and Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County Memorial National Military Park (FRSP). Trapping began in late spring 2003 in RICH and early 2004 in FRSP. Grids, transects, or arrays of Sherman, Tomahawk, and pitfall traps were used for stratified random sampling of small mammals. Larger mammals were observed directly, identified from sign, and/or sampled with Tomahawk traps and remote cameras. To date field surveys using >7,000 trap nights have documented 18 species at RICH (11 new records, 7 confirmed records), and very preliminary trapping and observation at FRSP have verified 7 species (all new records). In RICH, not surprisingly, Peromyscus leucopus was the most abundant small mammal captured at every site. The southern flying squirrel, Glaucomys volans, was abundant at Cold Harbor in habitat dominated by an oak-conifer forest. Additional findings will be presented. In addition to species lists of all mammals present, this study will provide measures of park and habitat-specific species diversity, distribution, and relative abundance of small mammals and describe the effects of recent controlled burns on the mammal fauna of the two parks. Information generated will be useful in monitoring programs to track changes over time and enable future researchers to determine the causes of these changes.

KEY WORDS: mammal survey, national parks, Virginia