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strategically important locations. Since its inception, CWMP has remained an asset to wildlife agencies and
professionals by providing valuable data from monitoring efforts in areas identified as potential core habitat
for some of our region's rarest wildlife. Our main project objectives are:
1. To engage and educate citizens about wildlife species and monitoring in critical habitat areas;
2. To record wildlife presence in the I-90 corridor and along the I-90 Snoqualmie Pass East Project in
strategic locations and in core habitat through remote camera monitoring and snow tracking;
3. To record the presence of rare and sensitive species that regional and national conservation efforts
aim to recover including fisher, gray wolf, grizzly bear, lynx, and wolverine;
4. To facilitate the exchange of information about wildlife, including data from monitoring efforts,
between public agencies, organizations, and interested individuals.
Due to the number of partners in the Cascades ecosystem, CWMP operates in the Cascade Mountains through
a collaborative effort, formalized in 2006, between Conservation Northwest, the I-90 Wildlife Bridges Coalition,
and Wilderness Awareness School. Throughout each monitoring year, all three organizations lead a faction of
the project: Conservation Northwest acts as the main volunteer coordinator for all efforts and leads remote
camera monitoring beyond the I-90 corridor in the North and South Cascades. The I-90 Wildlife Bridges
Coalition and Wilderness Awareness School provide in-kind and financial support to the project for activities
associated with the I-90 corridor.
CWMP has enhanced its positive impact through an Advisory Council (listed in Acknowledgements) made up of
project partners, government agency biologists, and professional researchers. Our Advisory Council provides
valuable input to the review of our program; it also steers our yearly monitoring objectives and survey area
locations. Council members assist in developing our protocols, confirm identification of priority images from
the season, and provide a scientific audience for results gained in the field, ranging from hair samples to tracks.
These collaborations between project partners and advisers are crucial to the success of the program year to
year. Collaboration keeps our efforts scientifically informed and relevant, ensures coordination rather than
duplication of monitoring efforts statewide, and adds valuable, on-the-ground information to the conservation
community.
CWMP's monitoring efforts are broken into two projects: remote camera monitoring (annual monitoring with
heavier effort from May-October) and snow tracking along I-90 (December-March). At the culmination of each
project a monitoring report is prepared and made public through Conservation Northwest's website
(http://www.conservationnw.org/what-we-do/wildlife-habitat/wildlife-monitoring). This report focuses on our
results from the 2015 remote camera monitoring year.
This year, we concentrated our study area in two distinct landscapes – the Cascade Mountains in Washington
and the transboundary Kettle River Range. Within the Cascade Mountains, we have divided the study area into
three regions:
1. North Cascades: North of I-90
