Hello all, my name is Nathan Redon and I’ll be working with Logan as a technician for the Wood River Wolf Project this year! I am an experienced field biologist and hope to bring a fresh pair of eyes to the project, brainstorming ways in which we can further promote coexistence while being an accessible resource for the community.

My work has taken me all over the West and beyond. Since graduating from the University of Washington I’ve sought projects that feature human-wildlife conflicts and necessitate careful consideration of both sides of the issue. I assessed remaining lynx habitat in Washington, translocated sage grouse to a declining population in Utah, captured pronghorn fawns to assess survival following wind energy development in Wyoming, and tracked down reintroduced fishers midwinter in the Cascades. I also managed the Guassa Gelada Research Project in the highlands of Ethiopia, monitoring gelada monkeys and Ethiopian Wolves and their oft-negative encounters with farmers and shepherds. The common thread tying these projects together is the need for coexistence through collaboration with local communities.

It has been a busy first month on the project for me (see Logan’s last blog post). As we ramp up our camera trapping efforts for this season, I wanted to talk about our methodology and would welcome any critique from readers! With a general idea of the sheep’s routes over the next few months, we’ve designated several priority areas to target. Camera traps are cameras which are remotely triggered by changes in radiant heat (hopefully a wolf walking by) in their fields of view. Using our knowledge of wolf locations in the study area, we strategically place cameras along game trails with wolf fecal sign or tracks as well as “terrain traps” within their predicted home ranges which they may pass through. These sorts of features include low passes, tight ravines, easy stream crossings, valley forks…places that might funnel animal movement.

This camera lies four miles up a trail and is positioned on a low somewhat-forested pass

Here’s an example of how I’d look at a topographic map and consider camera locations from a previous study area in Washington:

Same map but with potential areas of interest highlighted.

Of course, sometimes these locations don’t look as great once we hike out there in person. There are no set rules! After identifying a spot we’re happy with we need to find a tree pointing at our target area from the side (preferably perpendicular to the direction of travel). If we setup a camera head-on it won’t trigger as well when an animal crosses the field of view and could also draw their attention more easily, provoking a fear response and altering future travel in the area. Ideal camera traps are non-invasive and will document photos of blissfully unaware creatures passing by.

A Rocky Mountain Red Fox visits a camera station

To minimize photos of other species, we set our cameras to only take photos at night. With only two people and a lot of hiking to do, we can only check them so often, and the many thousands of daytime photos (likely not of wolves) would fill our SD cards and be too much to comb through. Thanks again to all the volunteers who have agreed to check some of our cameras! Ideally, we would program our cameras to only take photos around dawn and dusk (when wolves are most active – known as being crepuscular) but unfortunately lack that ability on our equipment. Nighttime is a solid compromise.

I hope this has been informative and interesting and hope to see you out there.

Nate, Wood River Wolf Project Field Technician