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/947352
8 over the course of two days at various locations within the study area by project leader David Moskowitz, who is also a sanctioned evaluator for this international certification program. All eight team leaders received a Level III certification, which reflects a high degree of accuracy in the identification and interpretation of a wide range of tracks and sign (Cybertracker 2016), generally consistent with the level of skill required for consistent data collection for wildlife research. Data from this evaluation will be used in conjunction with the photographic evaluation of field observations to enhance our analysis of the project's observer reliability. Our initial assessment continues to be that the reliability of our volunteer observers is exceptionally high. Hyak/Silver Fir Transect This year marked 10 seasons of data collection on the Hyak-Silver Fir transect, the project's only off-highway sample location. Construction of additional ski hill infrastructure began there 5 years ago which has significantly altered the transect location in terms of developed infrastructure and increased human use in winter. The initial impetus for monitoring this site was to assess wildlife use of the location due to proposed development. With five years of pre- development and five years post-development, an initial analysis of data from these surveys was carried out and is summarized here. Development Summary: In 2007, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed by environmental groups and Sky Lifts Inc., operators of the Summit East ski runs (Summit at Snoqualmie 2007). The MOU agreed to construction in the area but deferred construction of an additional lift and crossover trail until mitigation, wildlife studies, and scientific review of those studies could take place. Since that time, ownership of the area has changed hands, making the MOU outdated. In 2010, construction began on the plan that was signed in 2007. In 2011, access to the back side of Summit East opened with the completion of the "Hidden Valley" ski area. A new Silver Fir lodge opened in 2014 and the Rampart Quad chair lift was completed in 2015. The Rampart chair is advertised as giving skiers access to "glade skiing" or off-trail, forest skiing. This brings the count of new ski lifts in the area to four in the last six years. In addition, the Nordic Center reopened in the area several years ago, making 50 kilometers of backcountry accessible to cross country skiers via groomed trails (Summit at Snoqualmie 2016, 2016a). Transect Data: Prior to the addition of the SnoPass transect in 2014, the Hyak-Silver Fir location was the only transect where American marten was detected in the study area. American marten has been identified as an indicator species for a variety of ecological evaluations of late successional forests and landscape connectivity in the Washington Cascades (see below). Perhaps the most interesting finding from the analysis of 10 years of data is the apparent decrease in the detections of this species on this transect. Since species can be present even when they are not detected during a visit, it is important to assess the probability that a species is not there when you did not see it. This is especially true for rare, infrequent and difficult-to-detect species. To calculate sighting rate, a non-parametric equation to test for sighting probability (Solow & Roberts 2003) was used. [(year of most recent sighting- year of second most recent sighting) / (year of most recent sampling event - year of second most recent sighting)]. This equation calculates the probability that a given species will be sighted given another sampling event. For Hyak, 2011 was treated as the first sampling year after development (ski hill expansion,