Avalanche Lake

I'm currently in Montana for the Society for Conservation Biology research symposium. But, I'm also here to hike! A photo from one of my favorite places in Glacier National Park. To learn more about Avalanche Lake, go to:  http://www.nps.gov/glac/index.htm .

Missouri Black Bear Project, Part I

This summer I lived and worked in the Ozarks as part of a field crew studying the population dynamics, resource selection, and movements of black bears (Ursus americanus) in Missouri.  The project is being run by Clay Wilton, a master's student in the Carnivore Ecology lab at the University of Mississippi (http://fwrc.msstate.edu/carnivore/students.asp).  The study spans the south central and southeast part of the state and is divided into two seasons, the first having been this summer and covering approximately 20,000 square km. Black bears were extirpated from the state in the 1940's due to excessive and unregulated hunting, loss of forest habitat, and urbanization. Since the 1960's, however, bears have slowly returned to the state, most likely from a combination of better forest management and a successful bear reintroduction project in Arkansas in the 60's. Clay's project, however, will be the first study of its kind on bears in the state, as the population is unknown. Knowing bear numbers and understanding their movements and habitat preferences will be key in future bear management, encouraging expansion, and encouraging positive human-wildlife interaction.

 A bear census is not the same as a human census. One cannot simply walk up to a bear den and ask "how many are you?" A bear census, however, still takes a lot of work, and efficiency is key.  Non-invasive techniques are tools in wildlife research that biologists can employ to save time and gather information on elusive and hard to reach species (or minimize stress on animals). These tools can usually be in the field when we cannot, ie all night and all day, and in several places at once. The methods used in Clay's study includes infrared camera traps and baited, barbed wire hair snares. Camera traps can "capture" and "recapture" animals on film as a means to detect presence and movements of individual animals. Individuals can be identified based on photos, as these cameras are triggered by movement to shoot film and video. In the case of this project, we set up more than one hundred cameras across the study site at hair snare locations. Barbed wire hair snares are a means to collect hair samples from animals for DNA assessment, species identification, and other laboratory tests.  Barbed wire wrapped around trees surrounds a bait pile, usually covered in scent lures or food, to entice an animal to enter the corral and hopefully leave a hair sample in the process.  This method is not painful to animals, as thick fur coats protect the skin from scratching. This summer, we created and managed more than three hundred hair snares.
 
In order to set these snares and cameras, we covered both public and private property in search of probable bear habitat. It took our team four weeks to set all of the snares, and the remaining two months of the study to bait and to check for samples.  Additionally, our field crew was able to attend the radiocollaring of black bears, since the study assesses the movements of individual animals as well.  The GPS collars provide animal locations every ten minutes, so Clay is able to download the collar data via satellite and create maps of animal movements (which is totally cool, because you can watch a bear walk a twenty mile trail and literally pass within feet from your snares and not enter one, or you can imagine that a bear is reading a good book because he/she sat in the same patch of woods for eight hours). Because bears are crafty, we also had to venture out on occasion to retrieve a dropped, or slipped, GPS collar.

Due to the size of this summer's study site, our field crew split up and lived in two different field houses, with Clay traveling between the two each week to cover snare locations.  My field house was on Caney Mountain, an awesome conservation area outside of Gainesville and home to everything imaginable, from wild hogs to bats to skunks. On days off, we often traveled to the North Fork river for kayak trips and fishing, or into town to use the internet, as we had no cable access out in the boonies. We also formed a front porch mountain band comprising of guitars, harmonica, a mandolin, and beer. As the only female on this study, I often reminded myself that although we shared one bathroom, we more importantly shared an interest in carnivore ecology...

Please visit the Missouri Black Bear Project's website for more information and cool photos (look for the hair snare crew!) as I compose Parts II and III of the study: http://www.fwrc.msstate.edu/carnivore/mo_bear/index.asp

Technical Difficulties

Ok, I know it's been two months, I'm sorry! This job has me out so remotely that we don't have phone service or internet access. With a six on, four off work schedule, I never find time to update this site on all the cool things we've been doing this summer.  This will change this week, however.  Check out this photo of an anesthetized black bear until my update:

Art

I was finally able to give my Christmas present to my parents.  My stepfather entered the hospital on Christmas Eve and didn't leave until the end of January.  He spent five of these days in a coma, due to a severe case of double-lobed pneumonia.  Luckily he has, finally, fully recovered.  Because he was so ill over the holidays, and I left for Montana right after he was discharged, I left this painting with family in Charlotte, NC.  On my recent visit to NC I retrieved it and was finally able to give it to them! Chalk pastel rubs like chalk, so it does not travel or ship well when unprotected.  I found a photo of a clouded leopard similar to this painting; the captive animal was standing against a white backdrop and I was stunned at the beauty of the cloud-like pattern contrasted against the blank background, so I did my best to create my own version.  Note the overly-large feet and abnormally long tail characteristic of the endangered species.

Lions, Tigers, and Bears... Literally

Generally my absence from this site means one of two things: I'm either really busy and can't be bothered to upload photos and stories, or I'm not doing anything worth noting.  When I was at the Smithsonian, I didn't discuss the research much, mostly because the clouded leopard project is part of an international consortium and I was only at liberty to discuss my intern project.  However, for the past eight weeks I've been out of the field, but I'm getting ready to go back!

I left Whitefish in the middle of March and returned to Houston.  I love coming home.  I rarely spend a lot of time with my parents, and since my stepfather's near-fatal case of pneumonia this Christmas, I've been looking forward to a few weeks at home.  I was also able to visit North Carolina, where I grew up and went to college (Go Pack), to see family and a few close friends.  Since returning from Whitefish, however, I've definitely missed the deep-snow environment and the anticipation of coming up to a trap in hopes of finding a bobcat.  Roberta has closed her final winter field season and is getting closer to writing her dissertation! Unfortunately M5 and M6 never showed up, so the data from their collars is lost.  Hopefully these two cats are doing well in the forests of the Flathead and have not come to any harm, but that is a likelihood in this field.

I've been in the application and interview process since late January, and I'm so excited to begin the summer season in two weeks.  I came very close to accepting a research position on mountain lion and bobcat telemetry, and I was very interested in a study on bluebirds (birds are under-appreciated, you know).  Instead, I am heading to the Ozarks to work on the Missouri black bear project!  So, I've literally worked with lions, tigers, and now bears (Carolina Tiger Rescue adopted three lions last fall... I need to upload the photos!).

Why bears, you ask?  Isn't this woman like the future crazy cat lady? Well, probably.  I really enjoy carnivore, specifically feline, ecology, but the larger North American mammals share similar habitats as well as drawing parallels in the methods used to study the biology and ecology of these animals.  Ultimately, I'm hoping to collaborate with a research institution within the next year on a master's thesis involving bobcat or mountain lion physiological response and home-range patterns, but the techniques used for such a project can be learned from any mesocarnivore or carnivore project.  Specifically, non-invasive techniques are on the rise for learning about wildlife, and the project I will join in two weeks aims to determine the black bear population in the state of Missouri.  Employed through Mississippi State University, I will be collecting hair samples for DNA assessment to determine the population of resident animals in a study site encompassing about 20,000 km squared (how do you do the superscript on this site?!).  More or less, this project is a bear census. Since we won't be able to walk up to a bear den and ask, " how many are you?" like in a human census, the project is employing non-invasive hair snare collection stations. In summary, these stations involve the use of barbed-wire being wrapped around a group of trees (think geometric shapes) with something to lure them past the wire, such as old donuts or fish oil (I've had extensive experience with fish oil, and let me tell you: next to cheetah feces, there is nothing worse than the smell of fish oil. Unless you ask my cats.).  Don't worry- the barbed wire is not nearly as horrible as it sounds!  Bears, like so many wild animals, have two coats: a thick, dense undercoat that serves to insulate and protect, and a longer outer coat that is water resistant.  If a bear walks under a barb on the wire, then, he or she would not have nearly the reaction were you or I to come across it.  The idea centers around the bears being drawn to the smell of the lure and leaving a few hair samples on the barbed wire for us to come and collect.

Unfortunately, bears were extirpated from Missouri by 1940, mostly due to unregulated hunting and trapping as well as urbanization and intolerance.  Bear reintroductions in Arkansas began in the 1960's and black bears have recolonized north into Missouri since.   The Missouri Department of Conservation, Missouri Department of Natural Resources, United States Forest Service, and the National Park Service have collaborated with the hopes of determining the current bear population in southern and central Missouri in order to mitigate future human-wildlife conflict and to also learn about and encourage the conservation of suitable black bear habitat.

We will be working under Clay Wilton, a graduate student at Mississippi State University.  Per his involvement with this project, he is studying population dynamics, resource selection, and movements of black bears in Missouri.  Although it is not a guarantee, we are hoping to put out the remaining radio collars for his project this summer, meaning that we will be trapping bears in a similar fashion to that of the bobcat project.  I'm quite excited!

For more information about the project, as well as to see some cool photos, visit the project website at:
http://www.fwrc.msstate.edu/carnivore/mo_bear/


Photo credit:  The new photo is from a National Geographic wallpaper. Unfortunately none of my bear photos from Montana are very clear, so I'll have to wait until I get to Missouri to snap some better ones!

Windchill, and Painting

The past few days have been picturesque for how I like to live my life: hanging around town with good friends and good food.  I love Whitefish.  It's the best place to come for a good microbrew, interesting people, and great entertainment.  There are beautiful mountains blanketed in snow, the richness of wildlife (I like to wonder where that weasel is heading based on his tracks in the snow), and an atmosphere where everyone feels exactly the same way.

Friday, Mark and I went to a really cool show by local artists Terabyte and The Battery Eaters.  Terra and Stephen live in Whitefish, and I know Stephen from spending long hours entering bobcat data in the local coffee shop.  With tons of original songs and a sound that makes the soul want to dance, their electro flux style is really awesome.  Plus, Terra has worked on one of the bear DNA projects in Glacier National Park, so I'm definitely up for chatting about someone who loves art and science.

The rest of the weekend was spent in a similar fashion: coffee shop for internet and phone access (yay job applications and phone interviews!), and the brewery for a pint and some good company.  And food.  Whitefish boasts, rightfully so, some of the best food around... get here. Ski. Eat. Etc. We celebrated Bobbie's birthday on Monday with a family/field crew barbeque. Happy Birthday to Bobcat Bobbie!

Today was supposed to be the first day back to work opening traps for bobcats.  However, with one snowmobile refusing to work properly, Mark and I have a free day (two people per snowmobile).  This didn't really matter, though, as today's forecast includes whiteout conditions and snow tornadoes from a nasty wind.  Bobcats are hardy critters, but nothing moves around when the high is 0 F.  So, no working on the mountain for any of us, as frostbite and hypothermia are inevitable with a windchill of -30 to -50 F for the next few days.  I guess M1 will have to wait a bit longer for a free meal.

I spent the weekend painting, and man does it feel good to use a brush again.  Of late, I've taken up chalk pastels, but this weekend I pulled out the acrylics to have some fun.  Here are some of the bobcats:

 

MUNK, or M7. 5 x 7 acrylic on canvas.

M1, or Old Faithful. 5 x 7 acrylic on canvas.

Hopefully we can get out soon to see some more of those bobcats! I've got to move my flight... I think I'm staying here a while longer.  How can I not?

MUNK

Tomorrow is the last day of the ten day hitch.  We are trapping and tracking bobcats in Flathead National Forest in Montana, and the study site encompasses 250,000 acres.  Roberta Newbury (Bobbie) has two cats left to trap in order to retrieve their GPS radio collars, which unfortunately failed and did not drop off like they were supposed to in October.  She waited until bears went into hibernation to begin trapping, and I'm here for February as part of her field crew to chase cats and figure out what they're up to.  This week has been extremely busy for the bobcats; we have caught, almost caught, and missed several animals.

After my experience with M1 last week, I was eager for another cat, and hopefully one we could process (specifically, M5 and M6, who are still attached to GPS collars).  The same day we caught M1 for the first time, we missed who we think is M3, an older male Bobbie finally trapped in January and removed his collar.  He is an enormous cat, weighing in at 32 lbs, and a seasoned male with a wily ability to break out of traps.  When Bobbie was trapping cats to radio collar them in Winter 2010, M3 busted out of a trap once before she trapped him a second time; however, he was halfway out of the trap when she found him, stuck between two layers of fencing and working hard to tear the trap to pieces.  Last week, we again saw his handiwork: a small hole at the base of the trap he had worked over for maybe an hour to escape the have-a-heart style trap.  I imagine his gums were sore from working the metal fencing, but then again, bobcats are hardy, and M3 did it again earlier this week, so he must be in top shape.  His nickname is Houdini because he vanishes from traps, but when he has, he hasn't taken the meat with him.  My guess is he's just a little too stressed when that door slams shut to hang out for long; the PhD lady might come back and stick him again or put another necklace on him (always good when wildlife is wary of humans).  Also on the line up of bobcats this week was M2, a young male entering his third year.  When Bobbie collared him last winter, he was a little guy and very scared of her.  After catching him a few more times last year, she noticed his transformation as he became braver, depicting that classic bobcat attitude.  When we trapped him at the end of last week, I was so excited, because he was so much bigger than the pictures I'd seen from summer!  And he was unhappy to see us, too, growling and bluffing us with his snarls as he inched forward.  We let him go.

 M2.

M2 is not as happy as I am.

Presumably both M2 and M3 have raided our traps this week; some of the trap doors froze with some wet snowfall early this week, and the only evidence we have are perfect little bobcat prints in the trap, and the meat pilfered.  Tricky!

The most exciting part of this week was MUNK. MUNK is the unknown male bobcat Bobbie and Jodi have trapped three times, but not anesthetized for samples prior to Monday (one time, the drug froze!).  I was not the only one ecstatic to see him.  For me, MUNK is the first bobcat I've ever touched.  MUNK, once processed, is M7, more appropriately the 007 bobcat.  Akin to James Bond, this cat is all attitude.  I've never seen anything so ferocious.  MUNK, absolutely furious with our presence, put up a nearly half hour fight with the four of us before we could even get the needle near his haunches to administer the temporary anesthetic.  I don't think I've ever seen a ninja movie where any character can keep an eye on four people at once the way this cat did.  Stressing an animal is never the goal, but MUNK was definitely over stimulated as we tried to maneuver about the trap and distract him enough for one person to sneak the needle into his muscle.  Not easy on anyone, especially a bobcat with a huge superiority complex.  We all breathed a sigh of relief when I managed to inject most of the drug, and we backed off to wait for the cat to go under.

What an assumption.

We figured it was human error the first time we gave him a booster, that when he backflipped at the last of the injection I had missed the last cc's.  He just wasn't going down.  The second time Mark gave him a carefully measured booster, we were surprised but figured he was over stimulated.  We hid behind the snowmobiles so he would stop staring at us.  The third time Bobbie gave him a booster, however, it was clear that this bobcat had enough attitude coursing through his veins to burn through not only our souls with his fiery stare, but the telazol as well.  Finally, however, MUNK went down. Sorda.  Bobbie just gave up and scruffed the semi-anesthetized cat and brought him up the hill for us to begin working with.

Briefly, Bobbie's research focuses on the movements and daily energy requirements of bobcats (Lynx rufus) in a deep snow environment in northwestern Montana; field data will be used to model bobcat movements, energy balance, and home range dynamics to better inform bobcat management and elucidate potential interaction with the federally threatened lynx in Montana.  With hair samples, skin biopsies, and body measurements of resident animals in her study site, including animal without radio collars (such as MUNK), she can better assess the population with identified individuals.  Collecting this data includes beginning with an anesthetized cat; I held him down while the drug finally kicked in.  We use heated pads to maintain body temperature, as the anesthetic lowers body temperature.  Eye drops keep eyes lubricated since blinking is stopped under the drug's influence.  MUNK was weighed, measured in length, girth, height, etc, and after we took a skin biopsy of the ear, a metal ID tag was placed in his ear.  How long this remains in place remains up to the animal's rambunctiousness, but it enables us to identify him should we catch him again (surprise, we caught him again yesterday in the same trap!).  While this cat is an absolute terror, a formidable predator of solid muscle with dangerous teeth and lightning quick claws, he is absolutely one of the most beautiful cats I have ever seen.  The dense undercoat of the bobcat, overlaid with fine, long hairs provide perfect insulation for this animal in the harsh environment.  Everyone on the field crew is easily mesmerized with the luxury of the coat, and I relished the moments with him in my lap as I stroked his fur and marveled over the size of his paws (as large as the palm of my hand).  Careful to avoid putting my face near his (the cats are stoned out of their minds, but still mildly aware), I got some funny pics with the guy:

 MUNK, or M7, aka 007, not looking at the camera

 Passing an anesthetized 007 to Mark.

This process, minus the war of trying to anesthetize this particular cat, takes all of twenty minutes, and afterward MUNK was placed back into the trap to recuperate for a few hours.  The cats need to be 100% aware before released, as they would be vulnerable to other predators otherwise.  We came back to a bobcat who had the munchies: MUNK was chowing down on the deer leg that had lured him into the trap in the first place, and he refused to leave when we opened the door.  Clearly, he wasn't taking freedom without a full belly, and he was rather possessive over the meat when Bobbie and I edged closer for some good photos (thank goodness for a good zoom lens!).  We left him to his own devices, and when we came back by on the snowmobiles, he had gone about his way.  

Tomorrow we close traps.  We've seen M1 twice, MUNK twice, lost M3 twice, and caught M2 once and possibly lost meat to him another time.  I'm learning these cats' habits and learning to identify their tracks in the snow (coyotes look similar).  In addition to the sneaky ermines and tree squirrels stealing the meat in the traps, there are bobcats in these mountains.   It's just a matter of time before we catch some more.  Although we don't need to see MUNK again, I'm sure we will... and I can't wait.