This winter, graduate students and science staff with the North Cascades Institute (NCI) will be helping us conduct American marten surveys in the Highway 20 region of the North Cascades. This exciting collaboration will help boost our efforts to collect hairs from martens in this remote area, which is especially difficult to access once the snow flies. Martens have proven to be elusive during the summer months, but we’ve had notable success in sampling them during the winter in the central portion of our study area. NCI field assistants will also be deploying remote cameras at a subset of sites. Maybe we’ll get lucky and photograph a new wolverine in the area!

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One of the advantages of our noninvasive method for collecting hair from bears is that other wildlife sometimes visit our hair-snagging stations (i.e., “corrals”) as well. Recently, a wolverine was captured by a remote camera deployed at one of our corrals in the Entiat region of the North Cascades. Wolverines are very rare and have huge home ranges, so detections such as this one are fortuitous indeed. Click on the link below to view the video.

Rare wolverine captured on video

Rare wolverine captured on video

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As the days grow shorter and temperatures begin to drop in the mountains, CCCP partner groups are making the final push to collect noninvasive genetic samples from bears throughout Washington’s North Cascades Ecosystem. Thus far, we’ve collectively deployed nearly 200 corrals, the barbed-wire devices used to snag hair from visiting bears. The map below shows our efforts for this year (pink dots), as well as the locations for black bears genotyped from samples collected over the past three summers (orange dots).

CCCP Bear Corral Map, 19 September 2011

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Recently, an adventurous journalist from High Country News spent some time in the field with CCCP researchers working to collect hair samples from bears. Read the story on his blog.

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Please see the following link to Paula MacKay’s guest editorial in the Seattle Times, entitled “A long road for recovery of Washington’s grizzlies and wolves.” The piece highlights the need for large-scale habitat connectivity for wide-ranging carnivores, and specifically describes CCCP’s research efforts pertaining to highways and carnivores.

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Over the past few months, several CCCP partner groups working in central Washington have captured remote camera photos of canids–images that helped confirm the presence of wild wolves (see photo below). These wolves, which are currently inhabiting the Teanaway region, represent the latest of four confirmed packs in the state. A lactating female was recently collared by state officials, meaning that a litter of pups is hopefully in the area. This is an exciting development for wolf recovery in Washington, where wolves were exterminated in the first half of the 20th century.

A wolf in the Teanaway is photographed by a remote camera deployed by the Western Transportation Institute.

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For the first time since 1996, expert biologists have confirmed a grizzly bear sighting in the North Cacades! The confirmation was based on photographs (including the one shown below) taken by a hiker, who was compelled to share the images with authorities. This is a very exciting development as we prepare to continue our bear surveys in the North Cascades this summer.

Read the story in the July 1, 2011 issue of the Seattle Times.

A hiker in the North Cascades captured this photo of bear that experts have confirmed to be a grizzly bear. Photo: Joe Sebille

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Our 2011 summer field season is off and running, with bear hair having already been collected at numerous corrals. The sow and young cub in the remote camera image below were photographed near Newhalem Creek in North Cascades National Park, where we’ll be conducting extensive surveys for both black bears and grizzly bears in the coming months.

A black bear sow and cub visit a corral in North Cascades National Park

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We’re pleased to announce that support from Seattle City Light, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and other funders will enable us to continue our bear surveys in the North Cascades Ecosystem during summer 2011. Several teams of biologists will be working throughout the NCE to collect noninvasive hair samples from black bears and to try to detect rare grizzly bears in the region. Please stay tuned as the summer unfolds!

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Thank you for visiting our new website. We’ll continue to make updates as the project proceeds, so please take a look around and visit again soon!

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