Using GIS Tools for Aerial Wildlife Deer Management- Case Study
Background
Maintaining healthy deer populations is an important part of natural resource management. Three Rivers Park District actively works to keep white-tailed deer herds in balance with the available habitat. Without control, deer populations increase to the point where they start to damage vegetation and deer/car collisions increase. Managed archery and shotgun deer hunts, as well as sharpshooters, are used to keep populations in balance with available habitat. As part of its deer management plan, aerial deer surveys are conducted every year in the winter months to help determine where high deer populations reside.
Three Rivers developed its first plan for surveying and managing deer herds in 1978. Over the last 40 years, the deer herd has grown and expanded to the areas outside of the parks, and the need to manage the population has grown with it.
Historically when conducting Aerial Deer surveys the data was collected using pen and paper. The wildlife manager would orient using a printed map while circling survey areas in a helicopter and mark deer counts on the map. At the end of the survey, these counts would then be entered into a variety of programs where the deer totals were tracked. Once entered, at the end of the season the count totals for each survey area were reported to the respective funding organization.
The Rebuild
In 2024 there was an initiative to rebuild the project and streamline the data collection process for 237,000 acres of land using GIS software. The wildlife team was looking for a tool that would fit the needs for quick data entry, ability for the map to orient as the helicopter turns, and a reporting tool for administrators and stakeholder. Our GIS team determined that ArcGIS QuickCapture would be the best tool for the job.
Using QuickCapture wildlife staff are able to collect data with speed through a ‘big button’ interface. When a button is selected a point on the map is created and updates underlying ArcGIS Online Hosted Feature Layer with the ‘Deer Count’ attribute. In addition, Arcade FeatureSets are used to capture the information from the boundary area they're flying over and automatically add those attributes to the point as well.
To ensure the accuracy of boundary information that automatically being captured, the GIS and Wildlife teams needed to address the topology of the Survey Boundary data. The prior boundary dataset was in dire need for cleanup, the data been passed along through many generations of wildlife employees and data quality was not taken into account. Using ArcGIS Pro, both teams determined that hand digitizing was needed and redefined these 114 boundaries to ensure the data being collected was correct.
Deliverables
To visualize final counts, the GIS team is constructing a dashboard for wildlife administrators to view a report of captured counts. Using a series of AGOL Hosted Views and ArcGIS Data Pipelines we ‘ve created a scheduled task that will query the current year’s aerial count locations and joined them to their respective polygon areas. This automation allows us to display and report statistics within the dashboard. We’re still in the process of constructing this but we will update the post once this final portion of the project is complete.
Closing
As we finalize building out the deliverables, we're exited to learn how this new process will improve the collection process and increase efficiency for our wildlife managers and communication to city stakeholders.