Conservation Northwest

2018MonitoringReport_Final_WithAppendices

Conservation Northwest protects and connects old-growth forests and other wild areas from the Washington Coast to the British Columbia Rockies, vital to a healthy future for us, our children, and wildlife. Since 1989, Conservation Northwest has worke

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4 British Columbia. With the assistance of Conservation Northwest program staff, contractors and our Advisory Council (listed in Acknowledgements), survey areas were established for each of our project objectives. Program volunteers managed two grizzly bear survey areas, 13 wolf, 15 wolverine and three multi-species areas in the I-90 corridor. There were also three survey areas in northeast Washington's Kettle River Mountain Range for lynx monitoring, with our partners at Selkirk College in British Columbia also maintaining one lynx survey area in southern British Columbia's Rossland Range. Highlights from this field season include: ● The continued documentation of wolverines in the Cascades. Our citizen science teams documented wolverines in the North Cascades in five survey areas on multiple separate occasions. One team observed two individuals in close proximity to a monitoring installation. ● Although our teams recorded no Canada lynx on the Washington side of the border this year, the efforts of our volunteers have contributed to a larger study by our partners at Washington State University. Dr. Dan Thornton's Mammal Spatial Ecology and Conservation Lab has been able to add our data to their larger study focused on distributions and population density of the Canada lynx in the Kettle Range and Columbia Highlands of northeast Washington. They have developed a methodology for large-scale, long-term monitoring of lynx in Washington state (Appendix VI). Dr. Lui Marinelli's students at Selkirk College, working in southern British Columbia's Rossland Range, were successful in documenting Canada lynx. These efforts contribute to furthering our collective knowledge and conservation efforts to protect this rare and sensitive species. ● Our volunteer teams documented fishers at two survey areas in the South Cascades, both locations are in close proximity to where reintroduction efforts have taken place in Washington state, led by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), National Park Service and Conservation Northwest. The photo documentation provides our partners with visual evidence of the health of the animal at the date the photo was taken. Reintroduced individuals have internal radio transmitters providing location information via overhead telemetry flights, however, these devices will not provide information on the following generation 1 . In the coming years, we plan to expand our fisher monitoring in the Cascade Mountains and expect our efforts to play a role in documenting the presence of offspring and provide further evidence of an expanding population. ● American martens were recorded at 14 different survey areas in the Cascades. While not a target species for our project, data collected on martens is shared with our Advisory Council members carrying out research on these animals. ● Animals documented at Interstate 90 survey areas for the 2018 season were of particular interest due to the completion of 11 wildlife crossing structures of varying sizes and functions between Gold Creek and the 1 Lewis, Jeff. Restoring fishers in Washington State. Wildlife Seminar at UW Jan 22, 2018.

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