DISTRIBUTION OF WILD TURKEY IN NEW BRUNSWICK
On this page, we describe our wild turkey in New Brunswick project. Please read the executive summary on this page, or the full report via the PDF link below.
Edward J. Czerwinski, Graham Forbes, and Joe Nocera
Figure 1. Wild Turkeys
Executive Summary
There is great interest in the eastern wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris), with its recent arrival into many areas of New Brunswick. The nature of the relationship between wild turkey populations and environmental conditions remains poorly studied at the northern edge of their distribution, where climatic factors are most severe. As such, it was unknown how viable a population of wild turkeys would be in the province. This project has three goals: to establish the current distribution of wild turkey in New Brunswick, based on citizen science reports of observations; to document the naturalized establishment using brood surveys as an indicator of reproduction; and to predict where eastern wild turkeys may persist on the New Brunswick landscape based on availability of suitable habitat and favorable environmental conditions.
To establish the current distribution of wild turkey in New Brunswick, two sources of information were used to obtain historical observational data on wild turkeys - eBird, and iNaturalist. A review of historical observations in these two datasets disclosed that their first observation of wild turkeys occurred on Deer Island, Charlotte County in August 1998, where three birds were recorded. In the 21-year period since (1998 – 2019), 97 reports totaling 477 wild turkeys were reported into the eBird database from nine counties in NB. Most of the observations and reports were from Charlotte County, representing 76.9%, or 367 of birds sighted. Reports of wild turkey sightings obtained from iNaturalist database disclosed only seven different reports from five counties. The earliest record of wild turkeys in the iNaturalist database was in 2016, and during the period, 2016 - 2019 a total of 36 wild turkeys were recorded.
Figure 2. Graph depicting summary of reported wild turkey reports in New Brunswick by year (1998-2019). Source: eBird Basic Dataset, 2019.
Current information of wild turkey distribution was obtained through citizen science reports obtained through the social media platform Facebook. We also implemented an on-line submission form through JotForm. This platform was used for both initial reporting of wild turkey observations and then later it was used for reporting observations of turkey broods during surveys designed to document the potential of breeding evidence.
Through the two social media sites, NB Wild Turkey Research Facebook page, and JotForm, 476 contributions were received, totaling 3,100 wild turkeys reported in the period January 1 – May 7 (Facebook), and January 1 - June 4 (JotForm), 2019 (Figure 5, and Appendix 3). This result does not indicate that the population of wild turkeys is 3100 in New Brunswick because an unknown animals were likely re-sighted. This project did not address population size.
Reported flock size ranged in size from 2 to 70 birds. Most of the observations (82.7%) were of groups of birds in flocks < 10 birds. The overall average number of birds reported in a flock was 6.5 birds, and the largest reported flock of wild turkeys totaled 70 birds, which was in Charlotte County during the winter of 2019.
Figure 3. Historical reports (iNaturalist and eBird) of wild turkeys in New Brunswick.
Figure 4. Locations of wild turkeys reported by citizen science in New Brunswick in 2019.
Figure 5. Recorded movement of seven wild turkeys through northside Fredericton, April 13-17, 2019.
A total of 19 volunteers contributed to the brood survey data. In all, 47 routes were completed of various lengths and time commitment. There were 38 occurrences where poults were observed with hens on 26 of the 47 routes. In total, 425 birds were observed and identified as poults (ranging in groups from 1 to 42) and overall, the average number of poults per hen encountered was 4.99/route. Based on these results, reproduction seems evident, which is an indicator of naturalized establishment, particularly in Charlotte County. In May 2019, 13 fresh eggs were found in a burned forest area near Waweig (Wilson 2019).
Table 1. Summary of wild turkey numbers recorded from 47 brood survey routes, in New Brunswick, August 2019.
Part of this project focused on quantifying the area of suitable habitat for wild turkeys to occupy in New Brunswick. We used a GIS-based model described by Donovan (1987), as a habitat suitability index, and using open-sourced data from NBDNRED, to determine habitat composition for wild turkeys. The model incorporates seven variables, grouped into three components: habitat composition, the spatial arrangement of habitats, and human occupation to quantify habitat quality.
Results of the study disclosed that New Brunswick contains 1.66 million hectares of ‘good’ habitat, 1.54 million hectares of ‘moderate’ habitat, and 3.2 million hectares of ‘marginal to poor’ habitat. Definitions of habitat quality are noted in the report. The amount of available suitable habitat is however not the only consideration for wild turkeys to persist in a landscape. Survival of wild turkeys through harsh winter conditions and predation are also important, particularly at the northern edge of their range.
Figure 6. Map of New Brunswick depicting suitability of habitat for wild turkey.
Harsh winters for turkeys include snow accumulation on the ground >30cm for more than 10 days and temperatures colder than -16.2◦ C. In this study, we examined average snow depth for the most recent 5-year period (2015-2019) for 5 months (December through April) for each square kilometre in New Brunswick, and applied the equation derived from Lavoie et al., (2017) threshold effect of snow depth, to estimate winter survival of wild turkeys. From this, we obtained the predicted survivability of wild turkeys for each square kilometre in New Brunswick.
Based on average snow depth over the previous 5-year period, 2015-2019, wild turkeys are more likely to persist in Queens, Albert, Saint John, Westmorland, Charlotte, and Kings Counties, and less likely to persist in Northumberland, Restigouche, Gloucester, Victoria, York, and Madawaska Counties (Figure 9). We lack predictions on future snow depths and do not attempt to project future conditions.
Figure 7. Threshold effect of snow depth used to estimate winter survival of female wild turkeys, southern Quebec. Source: Lavoie et al., 2017.
Figure 8. Map of New Brunswick depicting area where wild turkey will likely persist, based on winter snow depth as limiting factor expressed as a percent of survivability.
The origins of the recorded wild turkeys remain unknown. They may be naturally expanding from the State of Maine’s reintroduced program (Wilson 2019); and/or they may originate from unsanctioned releases by people in New Brunswick wishing to see a turkey population here; or they may be birds that have escaped from captive raised populations.
Recommendations that flow from this project include:
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Wild turkey brood surveys should be more standardized with respect to length and location of route, time of day, time spent observing, number of times a route is travelled when completed by a volunteer.
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More work needs to be done on the actual properties of snow, depth of snow, and survivability of wild turkeys at the northern limit of their range to completely understand this aspect of limiting factors on range.
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A comprehensive study to assess anticipated climate change effects on New Brunswick snow levels would be of value to predicting future location and production of wild turkey in New Brunswick.
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This study did not generate data to estimate population size and viability, as it was not the purpose of this study. To determine population size, pertinent information would require mark-recapture studies, demographic work on age class, as well as predation and survival rates of wild turkeys.
This project was funded in part by the New Brunswick Wildlife Trust Fund, in partnership with the Southwest NB Chapter of Canadian Wild Turkey Federation, New Brunswick Chapter of Wild Turkey Federation, and the Fish and Wildlife Branch, Department of Energy, Resources and Development, NB.
Acknowledgments
Much of the work in this report was done by the first author, Ed Czerwinski; Drs. Nocera and Forbes co-supervised the project, and we had ongoing advice from members of the Canadian Wild Turkey Federation and the NB Department of Energy, Resources and Development. This study could not have been accomplished without a great number of participants and to each of these people we are grateful and acknowledge their contribution.
We received 476 reports of wild turkey observations from 379 people through Facebook (132) and JotForm (228), and 19 people that contributed to the brood survey dataset. The complete list of contributors (398) is found in Appendix 1. The contributions from members of the New Brunswick Chapter of the Wild Turkey Federation are also greatly appreciated, specifically Jim Martin and Terry Smith.
This project would not have been completed without the tremendous help of Jae Ogilvie for his Geographic Information System assistance and Philip Wiebe and Brittany Hartery advice on provincial snow accumulation.
This project was funded by the New Brunswick Wildlife Trust Fund, in partnership and support of the Southwest NB Chapter of Canadian Wild Turkey Federation, New Brunswick Chapter of Wild Turkey Federation, and the Fish and Wildlife Branch, Department of Energy, Resources and Development, NB, and is gratefully acknowledged.
