Wildlife Tracking at Gold Creek by Julia

I participated in the wildlife tracking field trip on February 2^nd along the Gold Creek snowshoeing trail by Snoqualmie pass. We made it to the Gold Creek trail by 1pm. The weather was a bit wet but not too bad, and the sun even shined on us a few times! I chose to go on this field trip because I’ve been to the zoo and the aquarium many times before, and I wanted to do something new. I also don’t have much experience in tracking wildlife and I thought this trip would be a chance for me to learn more about the animals that live around us.

Figure 1. Domestic dog prints found in the snow

It didn’t take long for us to find some prints in the snow. Our first mystery was Figure 1. It was hard to tell exactly what animal left those prints because they look a bit sporadic, but upon closer examination we could see paw prints. It was determined to be a domestic dog print. The second site to see was that of a beaver, seen in Figure 2. It was fairly easy to see the gnaw marks from teeth along the tree (a close up picture of the teeth marks can be seen in Figure 3), and it’s well known that beavers eat wood. We had also seen something that looked like a dam further up in the water. Something I learned about beavers is that they eat cambium off of trees, and can knock an entire tree over and use it for dam building. The tree they knocked over was eaten with their faces sideways and their teeth scraping into the side of the tree in a horizontal fashion, while the tree they had gnawed on only a little bit was bitten straight into. Beavers’ teeth are one of their adaptations that allow them to survive. They have really strong teeth in order to tear up the trees, and I learned that their teeth are continuously growing in order to make up for the wear and tear caused by such heavy use.

               

Figure 2. A tree knocked down by a beaver

                   Figure 3. A chunk of wood gnawed on by a beaver, with teeth marks visible.

Some tracks that were easier to identify were seen in Figure 4. Everyone was able to narrow it down to either a rabbit or a squirrel, and it turns out that it was a squirrel. I learned from Tom that the tracks of a bunny tend to be longer and the front feet leave deeper holes in the snow than the back feet do. This is because a rabbit’s movements are to propel itself forward, and in doing so they put more of their weight on their back feet. It’s possible that their feet are longer to help support their weight during the hopping movement.

                                                       

Figure 4. The tracks of a squirrel in the snow

Adaptations like the teeth of a beaver or the feet of a rabbit play a huge role in evolution, and therefore pertain to all biology courses. What I found to be more centered around 212 material had to do with animal migration and how our highways impact wildlife. A big part of the trip was understanding the influence we have on animal populations. We talked about how highways can cause geographical division between populations, which got me thinking about allopatric speciation, since building a road can suddenly cut off contact between individuals in a population. We also discussed how separating populations can make them more fragile because they have less resources for things like food and shelter, and because we create a smaller population size. As we have learned, genetic drift causes a lot of problems for small populations. It’s possible that lack of genetic diversity and stability in wildlife populations may be attributed to the development of infrastructure, which wasn’t something I had thought about before.

Wildlife tracking is important in understanding how different organisms interact with one another on a day to day basis. This information is particularly useful when we have land that we want to build on, or animals that we want to hunt for food. Wildlife tracking has been crucial in the development of the I-90 corridor because it’s allowed us to build I-90 around the lives of the animals we need to protect in order to maintain our ecosystems. When we apply tracking to the development of interstates, we can design overpasses and bridges that animals can use to move from one side of the road to the other. In this way, we can still build what we need without cutting off food supply or reducing population sizes of different species. This also protects humans from hitting animals like deer while we drive.

Aside from the time spent wildlife tracking, I also learned about several organizations, one of which is Conservation Northwest. What’s really cool about this organization is that they bring together scientists and citizens to monitor regions of Washington that federal and state organizations do not have the funding to maintain. As they collect information through wildlife tracking, they report that information so it may be considered in the development of interstates like 1-90. This is incredibly valuable because federal organizations do not monitor all wildlife or even all areas around I-90 that need to be considered, and having a group that connects civilians and scientists while working to maintain biodiversity in Western Washington has helped workers build I-90 in a more thoughtful manner.

The societal aspect of this trip was the problem of needing to connect the Eastern and Western portions of Washington state while the science portion was really about migration and being able to sustain healthy populations around where we live. Sometimes in my studies I feel torn in a battle between trying to please humans and blissfully living the life I want to live, or trying to be considerate and knowledgeable of the other organisms I live with, like plants and animals. My relationship between these two things has been changed because I realized that it’s possible to find a middle ground, and it’s possible to get people to work together on both sides of the argument to produce something remarkable. The most important thing I learned was really the importance of those migration bridges that allow animals to travel back and forth. Beforehand I knew that building roads influenced animals, but I had never thought about it in terms of speciation, genetic drift, or cutting off food and resources to those organisms. After having taken this class I can understand a bit better what the consequences are for those populations when we build without thinking.