How would you like to have this Bull Moose stomping around your campsite?
This September ASC partnered with the USDA Forest Service and the Sierra Club’s Military Veterans and Families Initiative to track grizzly bears in the Tobacco Root Mountains. There have not been any recorded signs of grizzlies in this area, but the Tobacco Root Range has been deemed one of the most important corridors through which bears need to move. Our data helps inform wildlife biologists and officials about the presence and use of the area by grizzly bears and help to highlight the increasing importance of this area as high quality and essential grizzly bear habitat. We spent three weekends out in the mountains with our volunteers collecting DNA evidence to be analyzed in a lab, which will take a little while to come back to us.
We decided to set up a wildlife camera as well, which would hopefully capture photographic evidence of bears. Wildlife cameras are becoming increasing popular with nature enthusiasts and hunters alike. The cameras are housed in weather proof casing and have a motion detection system that activates the camera when movement or heat is sensed. While we didn’t capture any bear pictures, it was neat to find out who else was lurking in the woods. Check out the photos below to see what we found with our wildlife camera.
This coyote visited the camera site often.
This little deer was curious of the camera
