Disappearing turkeys

Disappearing turkeys

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
National Wild Turkey Federation or NWTF, informative conversation with their National Director of Conservation Services, with Mark Hatfield. I was talking to the editor in chief of Field and Stream, and he articulated some fear about the possibility that turkeys in the wild are disappearing at an unusual rate. Is that true? I wouldn’t say they’re disappearing on an unusual rate since 2004, 2005, So in the past 15 years, we've seen about a 10 to 15% decline in overall Turkey population number. And so we feel that the health of the Turkey population has declined over the past 15 years. We do still have areas in the country where we have a growing population, we have areas of the country where we have stable populations, and then we also have areas of the country where we've seen a decline in population numbers. And so overall we've seen about a 10 to 15% decline. It is concerning that we've seen this trend and it's now a little over 15 years that we've seen this trend occur. And so many of the states, many of the turkey biologists and researchers are now starting to try to wrestle with what could be the cause. And so that was some of the research that we helped fund here recently at the past symposium where we announced funding for about $360,000 to support seven projects from around the country. Speaker1: Great group. Great mission.
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