A Pork Filled Day

We are the dream team, and we plan on living up to our name.

It all began with a common interest to learn more about the animal population in the woods we have been exploring during the Summer Institute of our Environmental Education graduate program at UNH. We are interested in examining how various mammals use three different habitats - managed farm land, woodland, and the fringe area in between - and how/if the present species are moving between these habitats. In order to accomplish this goal, we are using a variety of methods including locating mammal tracks, examining scat, setting up mud and soot traps, and utilizing a motion-sensor camera. When we see signs of mammals, we take pictures and/or make molds of the tracks we see. We are noting track/scat size, stride length, direction, medium in which we found the track, weather, date, and time. Once we collect all of our data we can identify which animals prefer which habitats, and therefore determine the importance of maintaining these different habitats in the interest of biodiversity.

Our success thus far has been surprisingly great! Yesterday we had the privilege of working with Dan Gardoqui again, who is a master at tracking animals and noticing the nuances of the woods. He was able to show us things we never would have even looked for before, like mice and chipmunk tracks. While these were very cute and important in their own right, we also ran into signs of larger mammals, as well. We saw two separate coyote scat samples, moose prints, and our biggest find... bobcat tracks!

Not only did Dan give us great advice and hands-on learning, but he also gave us insight about our project goal. Initially we wanted to investigate corridors and how heavily different ones were used. However, Dan informed us that corridors are difficult to find outside of winter. So instead we are looking at absence and presence of different mammals in three different habitats, which should turn out to be a very interesting and exciting study. It's all part of the research process, and we are definitely learning a ton along the way.

We accomplished a lot today. First of all, we knew we wanted to set up our soot traps before the weekend, so we needed bait. We looked for the dead woodchuck on Main Street, but it was no longer there. Our quest for roadkill on Route 4 was also unsuccessful, so we made a pit-stop at Market Basket where the butcher was kind enough to donate leftover pork fat to us. Let's hope that attracts some cool creatures!

Now that our question was clearly defined, we decided to set up our line transects. We did one each on the farmland, in the fringe, and deeper in the woods. We measured them out, found their direction, got GPS points at the start and end, and set up soot traps next to them. We also hauled water from the farm out to all of our transects to wet down the mud and left some of our meat there in hopes of getting new, clearly defined, tracks by Monday. Finally, we set up the motion-sensor camera and left meat around the area it is covering. It would be fantastic to snag a shot of something chewing on our bait over the weekend.

After all that work our time was up, so we stopped by the vegetable stand to let the farmer's wife know about our traps, and then we left our study site for the long weekend. We are all really looking forward to what we will find there when we come back in three days!