Zachariah Peery

Zachariah Peery is an Associate Professor in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Research Affiliate at Moss Landing Marine Labs. He leads a multi-institutional research project funded by the California Department of Fish and Game (>$300K) focused on barred owl ecology in the northern Sierra Nevada. His team investigates the impact of invasive barred owls on native spotted owl populations using advanced tracking technologies.

Research involves:

• GPS satellite tagging to monitor owl movements and habitat use
• Deployment of passive acoustic monitoring units across the Sierra Nevada frontier
• Analysis of multi-terabyte datasets for population distribution modeling

Preliminary results indicate acoustic monitoring effectively surveys owl populations and other forest birds.

Key collaborators include Drs. Rocky Gutiérrez (UWM), John Keane (UWM), Jim Harvey (MLML), California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and U.S. Forest Service. Dr. Peery advises PhD candidate Connor M. Wood and oversees field technician teams conducting data collection.