The hanging jug. Part 1

Here's a new video showing how some of our common mammals reacted to an empty plastic detergent jug suspended over a game trail near our house. 

I had a couple of reasons for doing this. One reason was to see if a harmless jug  interested the critters as much as my trail cameras. I really don't think it did, except that the jug was suspended. This imbued it with movement, depending on the breeze and how the animals treated it. Have a look.

Return of the Fisher

The football game wasn't going my way; so I decided to get physical and pull 3 cameras that had been soaking in the rain.

I headed up Skyway, parked the truck, mountain-biked a couple miles, surmounted a blow-down across the trail, and fell on my butt on the way down the ravine.

The first camera was dry, but three bears had bumped it off target during a  bumble-fest of scent-rubbing.

The news from the second camera was good and bad.

The bad news was the water in the case; it shorted a circuit and shuttered pictures like a machine gun.

The good news was a photo of a radio-collared fisher.

And the camera in the next ravine had more pictures of the same critter.

Discovering the scent lure

A good thing has happened.

California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI) have joined forces to restore the fisher to the northern Sierra Nevada.

This radio-collared animal might be one of 40 fishers that were translocated from the northwest corner of the state to SPI land near Stirling City.

But it could also be one of the 48 offspring born to the colonizers over the past three years.

The historical occurrence of fisher in California has been a puzzle.

California's great academic naturalist, Joseph Grinnell, assumed fishers ranged throughout the Sierra Nevada.

Since Grinnell's time however, fishers were found to be missing from a 420 km section of the northern Sierra Nevada.

This "dead zone" is an enigma, because the habitat seems to have everything a fisher needs . . . a fisher-friendly climate, lots of trees, water, cover, squirrels, and maybe even a few porcupine.

Biologists have assumed that logging and trapping divided the population, leaving one in the southern Sierra Nevada and the other in the Trinity Alps and coastal mountains of NW California.


A recent study based on DNA from museum specimens and living animals tells a different story.

California's fishers became divided populations about 1000 years ago.

In other words, we can't blame the fisher gap on the Spanish colonization of California and the gold-lust-mayhem of the 49ers.

Fur trapping and intensive logging in the early 1900s, however, caused the continued decline of fishers across North America, and in 1946 California was the last fisher range state to enact protective legislation.

The two populations are now genetically different, which raises questions about their conservation.

Like, should we connect the northern and southern populations, and risk genetic pollution of their gene pools?

Or should we colonize the gap with fishers and brace the population against future environmental unknowns?

I rather like the idea of filling the fisher gap. California's just an experiment, isn't it?

Having a few more fishers around makes the place more interesting.


References

Grinnell, J. 1913. A distributional list of the mammals of California. Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, 3:265-390


Grinnell J, Dixon JS, Linsdale JM (1937) Fur-bearing mammals of California: their natural history, systematic status, and relations to man. University of California Press, Berkeley. 375 p.

Powell, RA. 1993. The Fisher, life history, ecology and behavior. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. 237 pp.


Powell, RA,  RC Swiers, AN Facka, S Matthews, and D Clifford. 2013.  Reintroduction of Fishers into the Northern Sierra Nevada of California,  Annual Report for 2013 For the period of October 2009 to December 2013, 35 pp. 

Tucker, JM, MK Schwartz, RL Truex, KL Pilgrim, and FW Allendorf. 2014. Historical and Contemporary DNA Indicate Fisher Decline and Isolation Occurred Prior to the European Settlement of California. PLOS One 7(12):1-13
http://yubanet.com/regional/Population-declines-isolation-of-fisher-in-California-pre-date-European-settlement.php#.VJECaShpCc8

Gabriel, MW,  et al. 2014.  Anticoagulant Rodenticides on our Public and Community Lands: Spatial Distribution of Exposure and Poisoning of a Rare Forest Carnivore. PLOS One 7(7): e40163. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0040163

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0040163

Zielinski WJ, Kucera TE, Barrett RH (1995) Current distribution of the fisher,

Martes pennanti, in California. Calif Fish Game 81: 104–112.

A fisher stopped by the other day

Fisher on an ancient stump in the redwoods of Humbolt County

Long ago when the Earth was wintry and game was scarce,  fisher summoned his friends to break into Skyland. 
   
Only wolverine had the brawn to tear the sky open, and through the hole warmth and birds swept down on the frozen earth below. 


The intrusion so displeased the Sky People that they shot fisher with bow and arrow. 


But as fisher was dying they realized the great hunter from Earth, fisher, was a good guy looking out for his friends. 


So the Great Spirit took pity, nursed fisher's wounds, and hung him in the sky. 


The next time you gaze at the Big Dipper, remember that you are also looking at fisher.

* * * * *

I was blithely basking in January's seductive weather, occupying myself with dog-outings and garage projects, when my thoughts drifted to Humbolt's redwoods and a sobering vision assaulted my reverie.

I saw my stoic sentinels, the clear-eyed cameras of November past, listing on their posts, draped in soggy spider webs, and speckled with splash-dirt.

I saw a prostrate camera -- disemboweled and filled with water.

This worrisome vision ignited a burning flame under the codger's skinny butt.

The cams had been there for over two months, and soon the long-overdue storm would dump its Pacific payload and close Rt 299 through the Trinity Alps.

The cams could be stranded for another month or two, or an impatient codger could get marooned in Sasquatch country.

I emailed Lowell and Terry, got the green light for a visit, and a few days later did the 5-hour drive.

The next day we checked and serviced the cams which were indeed draped with spider webs, and at the end of the day we viewed the pixeled fisher -- ah, the sweet thrill of camera trap victory.

Upon checking the EXIF data, we found the road-killed squirrel had cured for a month before fisher scented the delicacy just before noon on a sunny December day.

It groomed a bit before digging in,

Revealing a spotted throat and a bit of a white tush. 

then ate at a leisurely pace.

It finished in 10 minutes, and the cam captured 31 photos.

There were enough images to see that this fisher has a white spot on the underside of its right wrist, which means we may be able to recognize it in the future.

I have now cam-trapped all but two of California's slinky mustelids -- northern otter, mink, short-tailed and long-tailed weasels, badger, American marten, and fisher.

Wolverine and sea otter remain.

I'm not after the sea otter, nor the state of California's only wolverine.

If I camtrapped the wolverine, however, I could boast a Grand Slam of the golden state's terrestrial mustelids.

Does anyone know the whereabouts of Buddy the bachelor wolverine this winter?

Kids and camera traps

Question: How do you make it fun for kids to learn about ecology and  modern technology, and develop respect for nature?

Answer: Give them lessons in camera trapping.

That's what’s happening at Afton-Lakeland Elementary School near Minnesota's twin cities.

Dawn Tanner is developing a trail camera curriculum there for school kids.

Dawn is a University of Minnesota PhD candidate. Her baptism in wildlife research was in the Galapagos Islands and Malaysian Borneo.

She loved fieldwork, but decided that she wanted to get elementary school kids turned on to science, biodiversity, and conservation.

And how did that happen?

Well, she got an NSF fellowship that sent graduate students in ecology and conservation biology to Minnesota's metropolitan schools. Their mission there was to work with the teachers to improve science lessons and incorporate science more broadly into the school curriculum.

[Coyote at Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve]

Many Minnesota kids have formed positive attitudes about the environment by the time they reach the fifth grade.

"The kids' attitudes and their receptivity to environmentally responsible behavior is right on track. They score very high with respect to their attitudes about the environment, but they don't know what to do with it yet.”

"The problem is that city kids in particular are short on environmental experiences. The temptation to play with high tech toys in front of a TV screen is powerful. Enter trail cameras!"

Unlike many computer games that cultivate couch potatoes, trail cameras are an alternative "techie gadget" that is fun to use outdoors.

Trail cams can lure kids into the field, teach them how to monitor wildlife, and give them an exhilarating outdoor learning experience. They can even imbue them with a love of nature.

[Fisher at Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve]

At the moment, Dawn is testing the curriculum.

She and the kids have been using 8 trail cams at Afton State Park and Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve.

The word is out and teachers are interested.

“Quite a number of teachers have contacted me already because they've heard about the testing we're doing at Afton-Lakeland Elementary. They want to get involved right now." 

"I wish I could have the curriculum ready sooner. There’s a strong desire to teach with remote cameras and get kids out there doing biodiversity science.”

To date Dawn and the kids have photographed 12 species of mammals and birds.

"I'll monitor these two sites again this spring and add 2-3 new sites over the summer. We are aiming for about 140 trapnights per site".

"The folks at Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve have been so supportive to have me doing cameras there that they have volunteered to host a teacher training workshop in May, 2009."

"By summer we hope to have a web presence through the MN Project WILD website, so teachers can access data collected in protected areas around the state. This way they can compare monitoring results from their schoolyard with other areas."

The project has support from MN Project WILD, Gander Mountain, Stillwater Area School District, the Conservation Biology Program and the Bell Museum of Natural History (University of MN), MN DNR, and the MN Trappers Association.

If you are interested in the curriculum you can email Dawn at tann0042@umn.edu.

[Opossum at Afton-Lakeland Elementary School]