Inventory of terrestrial wild mammals at Mammoth Cave National Park

Thomas, Steven

Among the least manipulated environments in our country, the national parks provide sources of baseline information on relatively undisturbed areas and refuges for declining species in America’s changing landscape. In 1999, the National Park Service’s Natural Resource Challenge identified a set of basic inventory data essential to understanding species richness, abundance, and distribution within national parks. Mammals were recognized as one of 7 basic taxonomic groups targeted for initial park biological inventories. An inventory of the volant mammals (i.e., bats) at Mammoth Cave National Park began in 2004 as a stand-alone research project. Although some large- and medium-sized terrestrial wild mammals were well-documented, no comprehensive effort had been made to inventory the entire terrestrial wild mammal community at Mammoth Cave National Park. Since the 1930s, mammal species lists had been generated by various park naturalists based on observations of live/dead specimens or sign. Twenty-five terrestrial mammal specimens, representing 18 species, were housed in the park’s museum in 2005. All specimens, except one, were collected during the mid to late 1930s. Three small mammal trapping studies between 1988 and 1998 yielded only three small mammal species total. Thus, in 2005, a comprehensive inventory was needed to locate, identify and derive terrestrial wild mammal vouchers, and to describe species richness and abundance within the park. This report summarizes the results of a comprehensive effort aimed at documenting the occurrence of at least 90% of the terrestrial wild mammal species potentially present on the park from 2005 to 2013. Documentation of mammal occurrence was accomplished via visual encounters and trapping. Visual encounters included methods like sighting individuals, conducting spotlight surveys by boat, locating mammal sign (e.g., tracks, cuttings, scat), hearing mammal calls, and finding dead individuals. A variety of trapping methods were used, including remote “trail” cameras, live traps (e.g., Sherman live traps, cage live traps, foothold traps), pitfall traps, drift fence-pitfall arrays, and an assortment of other opportunistic capture methods (e.g., snap traps, hand capture, snake traps). A total of 792 terrestrial wild mammal records was documented by visual encounter or some trapping method representing six orders, 15 families, and 33 species. Of the 37 species either confirmed present (n = 22) or possibly present (n = 15) in 2005 at the park, 33 species (89%) were confirmed present in 2013. Total trapping effort (# of trap-nights) was 118,567 and only included effort from remote cameras, Sherman live traps, pitfalls, drift fence arrays, and snake traps. A total of 165 specimens was collected as vouchers to be stored in the park’s museum. No federal or state listed species of terrestrial wild mammals were documented. Hopefully, the results of this inventory will contribute to a better understanding of the diversity and distribution of park mammals to help inform management decisions.

Inventory of terrestrial wild mammals at Mammoth Cave National Park

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