Conservation Northwest began monitoring for grizzly
bears in the North Cascades decades ago, placing film cameras
out in grizzly habitat and hooking them up to sensors. is
effort was less standardized than our current Citizen Wildlife
Monitoring Project, but the ultimate goal was the same: to
document grizzlies in the North Cascades, and in so doing, to
add momentum to plans for grizzly bear restoration.
e Citizen Wildlife Monitoring Project (CWMP) has
been sending volunteers into the North Cascades of both
Washington and British Columbia in search of wildlife, for
almost two decades, and for grizzly bears specifically, since
2008. By 2008, the remote cameras being deployed were digi-
tal, easier to use, and more efficient, much to the joy of every-
one involved in the project. Protocol for grizzly bear moni-
toring has varied slightly from year to year, and beginning in
2014, our CWMP began to work in coordination with the
Cascades Carnivore Connectivity Project (CCCP).
Working closely with biologists who lead the CCCP, our
CWMP now follows strict protocol when determining where
and how to set up grizzly monitoring sites. Teams of volun-
teers are assigned to survey hexagons specified in the CCCP
protocol, many located in some of the most beautiful and
remote parts of Washington. Installing and checking griz-
zly monitoring sites requires an overnight backpacking trip,
bushwhacking, strenuous hiking, excellent navigational skills,
and very stinky scent attractant ("grizzly goo," a mixture of fer-
mented cow blood and dead fish). Teams scout extensively to
find the perfect location for their monitoring site, construct
a pile of woody debris, pour the scent attractant over it, and
set a camera aimed to capture photos of curious bears as they
come to investigate.
In 2016, we are sending two teams of volunteers into some
of the most isolated terrain in the North Cascades. Snow has
prevented our teams from installing their cameras before July.
Each team will set up a camera monitoring site, check the im-
ages on the camera aer a month, uninstall that site, and then
install a new site in a second, designated hexagon.
We are thrilled to begin yet another season monitoring for
grizzly bears in the North Cascades. And we're hopeful that
someday soon our volunteers will document one of the last
"ghost bears" of this wild place!
Grizzly bear search
citizen wilDlife monitoring ProJect
Top: One of our wildlife monitoring volunteers hangs a remote
camera. Bottom: A young black bear photographed at a North
Cascades grizzly bear camera site. Photos: CWMP
aleah Jaeger Citizen Wildlife Monitoring
Project Coordinator, aleah@conservationnw.org
Monitoring for grizzly bears
Keeping the Northwest wild Summer 2016 9
