Description
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Region Seven (7), Alaska, intends to award a sole source, firm-fixed price purchase for six (6) months to Wright State University. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Region Seven (7), Alaska, requires the services of caribou antler surveys and bone data analysis. Back Ground:Access to calving grounds and migration routes are important to the health and survival of arctic caribou herds. However, caribou management (especially for the Porcupine Caribou Herd - PCH) is complicated by the high geographic variability of calving ground localities observed from 1972 to 2010. Particularly for establishing the climatic influences on calving ground choice and other broad biogeographic patterns, management of the PCH and other herds could benefit from an extended historical observation window. Such observations can come from surveying and analyzing distributions of shed caribou antlers on landscape surfaces. This contract will produce such a survey and test our current understanding of caribou calving grounds by acquiring a longer temporal perspective. As part of this research, it is also important to understand the duration over which antlers survive on arctic landscapes. Antlers are removed from the system through slow weathering processes and direct consumption by local mammal populations. The nutritional value of antlers (and changes in nutritional value through time) and to determine the overall survival duration of antlers in the arctic refuge, nutrient analyses and radiocarbon dating will also be performed. Work Description:The contractor will survey up to three sites on the Arctic NWR for shed antlers according to specific methods designed by the contractor as outlined in Miller (2010, 2011). Samples of antler bone will be collected from the refuge for radiocarbon dating and nutrient analyses. Specific responsibilities and analyses include: (1) the definition of study areas for survey transects that include areas of variable use across the last 40 years of calving history, (2) survey transects for bones according to methods outlined in Miller (2010), (3) identify bones and bone fragments to species, ontogenetic age, gender, scavenging damage (carnivore, ungulate, or bird), and proportion remaining, (4) identify antlers and antler fragments to gender (using the proprietary antler database: Miller unpublished data), (5) using a unique technique (Miller 2009, 2010, 2011) determine weathering stages of antler bone (thus, providing relative postmortem duration) and determine weathering stages of all encountered bone remains, (6) determine the ratio of newborn to adult/sub-adult caribou for each transect, (7) calculate differences in the geographic distribution of calf:non-calf caribou in different regions of the refuge, (8) calculate concentrations between different genders of antlers in different areas of the refuge, (9) Recalculate all of the above using bones in different weathering stages to test for changes in historical calving use patterns through time, (10) compare historical calving ground use with current patterns of calving (as determined by modern survey data), (11) establish the duration over which antlers survive on the landscape (using radiocarbon dating), (12) characterize the nutritional value of antlers and changes in those values during the decay process (based on weathering stages), (13) incorporate nutritional value of antlers through post-shed time to establish consumptive pressures of antlers on the landscape and any biases caused by variability in consumptive pressure over time, and (14) produce final report on all methods and findings. This notice is not a request for competitive proposals and the Government does not intend to accepts proposals received.