Findings

Did you know that over 13,000 deer are hit by vehicles in Illinois each year? In Jackson County, around 250 to 300 deer are in vehicle collisions every year. While annual variation in the number of deer-vehicle accidents can inform managers if deer populations in an area is increasing or decreasing, these accidents often result in damage to property or vehicles, and even cause personal injuries, including fatalities.

Hello, I’m Nicole Gorman, a Zoology grad student at SIU. I study the spatial ecology of predators in southern and central Illinois, focusing on bobcats and coyotes as my study species.

Have you seen a weird looking fence at Touch of Nature or in the Union Hill neighborhood? Do not waste time trying to find what creature is being enclosed within these 100m² fences.

Hello, my name is Christian Gonzalez, and I am recent graduate from Southern Illinois University with a bachelor’s in zoology. I joined the project during the summer 2020, where I was assisting in finding white-tailed deer fawns to monitor their survival.