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
Issue link: http://conservationnw.uberflip.com/i/542696
2 | P a g e Table of Contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .......................................................................................................................... 2 PROJECT OVERVIEW .............................................................................................................................. 3 METHODOLOGY ...................................................................................................................................... 4 Study Area .............................................................................................................................................. 4 Field Methods ......................................................................................................................................... 5 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ................................................................................................................. 5 Transect Data .......................................................................................................................................... 5 Trailing Data ........................................................................................................................................... 6 Observer reliability ................................................................................................................................ 7 Citizen Science ........................................................................................................................................ 8 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR NEXT FIELD SEASON ......................................................................... 9 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................................ 9 APPENDICES ........................................................................................................................................... 10 Appendix I: Advisory Council ........................................................................................................... 10 Appendix II: 2015 Photo Highlights .................................................................................................. 11 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Citizen Wildlife Monitoring Project uses trained volunteers to record the presence and movement of wildlife, through snow tracking surveys and remote camera installations, in the Washington Cascades and other wildlands across the state. This report summarizes snow- tracking efforts for the winter. The 2014-2015 winter field season marked the ninth winter of snow-tracking along Interstate 90, east of Snoqualmie Pass. The entire second half of the snow- tracking season was cancelled due to lack of snow cover on all of the project's transects, making this season's snowpack the worst in project history. While several of the transects were visited three or more times, snow conditions were often extremely poor or inconsistent. Besides making detection of tracks difficult, these conditions also limited teams' ability to trail wildlife. Only one observation of an animal crossing the interstate, a raccoon entering an interstate underpass, was documented over the course of truncated field season. Due to the lack of consistent snow cover and poor snow quality, a higher percentage of observations were made from sign other than footprints than in past years. We