This fall, the University of Georgia is doubling down on its commitment to researching Georgia’s wild turkeys.
It’s a pretty niche field of study, according to Mike Chamberlain, an ecologist who has worked at UGA for over a decade, teaching about wild turkeys while researching their populations in the wild. These aren’t the ones in the grocery store served for Thanksgiving — these types of turkeys are smaller, deep brown, black-feathered and native to Georgia.
“The number of people out there that do what I do — I can count on one hand,” Chamberlain said.
But the animal expert is working on changing that.
UGA is matching funds with the National Wild Turkey Federation to support an endowed position — meaning that the university has a permanent, funded position for a turkey researcher. Even if Chamberlain retires, the university will hire a new wild turkey expert in his place.
“There aren’t many people out there like me that are training graduate students and postdocs to study this bird and the landscapes that they inhabit,” Chamberlain said.
And that research is now more important than ever.
Chamberlain said that wild turkey populations have been plummeting. He was actually one of the few researchers in the mid-2000s ringing alarm bells.
“It took me literally about a decade to convince people to show them the data and for agencies to realize we had a problem,” Chamberlain said.
That’s because the turkeys seemed to be actually doing well. Harvest numbers were up for hunters, and conservation efforts had reestablished turkeys in their native range throughout the U.S. and improved habitats for turkeys in many places.
But, Chamberlain said that years of data collection and research revealed the severity of the problem. In Georgia, like many other states, the worrisome trend has continued.
“I mean, we’ve seen reductions in harvest in some parts of Georgia. Places that would harvest, you know, 100 birds per spring are harvesting 10,” Chamberlain said.
Throughout his research, he said he and his students and researchers have found that habitat loss and predation, among other variables, are harming wild turkey populations. And, he said, those factors are building on one another, making the problem even trickier to untangle.
“For instance, you know, raccoons and coyotes and birds of prey all benefit from a lot of the things that we’ve done to our landscape,” the ecologist said.
In Georgia, there’s also an added challenge: the state has a spring hunting season for wild turkeys, so hunters are harvesting them during the breeding season.
Chamberlain said wild turkey research needs dedicated, long-term study — which requires financial commitments.
On top of its original contribution, the professor says that the National Wild Turkey Federation has given even more money to his endowment.
In the future, Chamberlain wants to grow the endowment and use funding to pay students and postdoctoral positions who will fill his shoes in the future.
His efforts at UGA have not gone unnoticed by his peers. Universities across the country have already contacted him and the federation to learn how to grow their own turkey programs.
