NWRC personnel participate in a World Rabies Day 4K fun run/ 

 walk to promote awareness about rabies and its impacts on 

 people, domestic animals, and wildlife. 



eliminated. Sponsored events occurred world- 

 wide, including educational programs in Africa, 

 dances in Brazil, special television programs in 

 Asia, and races run competitively in Europe. 



2006 Publication Awards 



NWRC's Publication Awards Committee selected 

 these two journal articles as outstanding research 

 publications for 2006: 



Blejwas, K. M.; Williams, C. L.; Shin, G. T.; 

 McCullough, D. R.; Jaeger, M. M. Salivary DNA 

 evidence convicts breeding male coyotes of 

 killing sheep. Journal of Wildlife Management 70: 

 1087-1093. 



Kitchen, A. M.; Gese, E. M.; Waits, L. P.; Karki, 

 S. M.; Schauster, E. R. Multiple breeding strategies 

 in the swift fox, Vulpes velox. Animal Behaviour 71: 

 1029-1038. 



Both publications highlight the value of genetic 

 testing as a new tool in wildlife damage research. 

 Kitchen and coworkers used a combination of 

 genetic analyses and observational data to closely 

 examine the genetic relationships and social 

 interactions within a population of free-ranging 

 swift foxes. The authors documented, for the first 

 time, extrapair paternity and mate switching in 

 swift foxes. The paper by Blejwas and coworkers 

 describes the use of a DNA analytical technique 

 that permits the identification of livestock-killing 

 predators and distinguishes between individual 

 animals that killed wildlife and those that merely 

 scavenged wildlife. 



Supporting Student Research 



Ecological Effects of Coqui Frogs — Utah State 

 University graduate student Nathania Tuttle 

 completed her master's thesis on the potential 

 ecological effects of coqui frogs on Hawaiian 

 invertebrates, plants, and forest nutrient dynamics. 

 Her research was supported by NWRC. Coqui 

 frogs, native to Puerto Rico, have rapidly spread 

 across the Hawaiian islands in the 15 years 

 since they were first documented there. Frog 

 populations in Hawaii have exceeded 55,000 per 

 hectare. Tuttle found that the frogs were affecting 

 plant growth and that they may also affect insect 

 communities. Typically, predators may affect 

 plants by limiting herbivores. However, she found 

 that frogs were recycling nutrients by eating a lot of 

 insects, converting them into accessible nutrients, 

 and then releasing the nutrients for plants to 

 absorb. Her research is critical because nutrient 

 availability for plants may influence the competitive 

 balance among native and invasive plants. 



52 Valuing and Investing in People 



