By: Aaron Wirsing

​This past week, Sarah Colosimo joined a team of biologists and wildlife veterinarians from the Oregon and Washington Departments of Fish and Wildlife to capture and tag male California sea lions using Astoria, Oregon's mooring basin as a haul out. I was lucky enough to visit and participate on Tuesday, the 1st of September, at which time I took the video below of a release. The whole capture and tagging process has been honed over the years and is a marvel to behold.

This summer, after a 4-year hiatus, I once again joined Professor Tom Quinn at the Aleknagik site of the Alaska Salmon Program to co-teach a weeklong section on bears and salmon for FISH 497 (AERA, the Aquatic Ecological Research in Alaska summer field course offered by SAFS every other year), and to launch a new study of brown bear foraging using motion-activated cameras set to video mode. 

The UW AERA class, at the mouth of Happy Creek, July 2026 (photo: Tom Newsome).

For the new project, we were joined by Professor Tom Newsome, a longtime PEL collaborator from the University of Sydney in Australia paying his first visit to Aleknagik. Our goal is to use video cameras to systematically record bear behaviors (foraging tactics, success rates catching salmon, diet patterns of activity, social interactions) in relation to variability in sockeye salmon abundance and stream morphology (depth, flow, width) on four streams (Happy, Hansen, Bear, Yako), with five cameras per stream. This will be the first-ever effort to understand brown bear foraging in relation to these variables in a system of small streams where these ursids are difficult to observe directly. We hope to continue monitoring bear behaviors on these streams over the next few years, and in the meantime want to express our deep gratitude to the 2026 AERA undergraduate student cohort, the 2026 Aleknagik technicians, Jackie Carter, and especially TA Emma Christman, a SAFS graduate student who went above and beyond to make things go during our stay, for assisting with our fieldwork. Please stay tuned for results!

The 2026 UW AERA class, here with AW and Tom Newsome at the mouth of Hansen Creek, with the aptly named Bear Mountain in the background (photo: Tom Quinn).

A sow and cub forage for sockeye salmon in Happy Creek.

By: Aaron Wirsing

Starting last year, and culminating this June, we embarked on the unenviable task of cleaning up Winkenwerder 110 (the home of the Predator Ecology Lab). For the uninitiated, 'Wink' 110 has spent probably the last five decades accumulating research gear, specimens, dust, grime, and memories without any concerted effort on the part of its occupants (including those who used the space before us) to get things organized. Thus, before we initiated the cleanup, it was quite the mess...and not very conducive to working on research.

Here, we are pictured celebrating the completion of the last major task - cleaning out and sterilizing the chest freezer and two refrigerators, all of which are now ready to be surplussed. Frances was thoughtful enough to bring us fresh strawberries as much needed fuel (yum!), and Sarah surprised everyone by baking a lamington, Australia's iconic sponge cake, for us all to enjoy. Sidebar - I am a huge fan of laminations, have travelled all over Australia seeking them out, and have written about this delicacy in a previous post. You are a legend, Sarah!

What will we all do now that the lab is (mostly) cleaned up???

View from the mouth of Whitefish Creek. A great example of what we deem "everyday Alaska".

By: Aaron Wirsing

This year, we returned to Bristol Bay, Alaska for our 8th year (!) of non-invasive brown bear population sampling. 2017 and 2018 had been slow years, with relatively little bear activity, but so far 2019 has been busy. During our first foray up 
Happy Creek, for example, we felt as if bears were all around us, as evidenced by high numbers of fresh salmon carcasses, prints, and 'kitchens' (areas along the creek bank where bears have flattened down the vegetation for easy access to the fish). The picture below features a a particularly impressive kitchen, where it seemed a bear (or bears) had been using a ramp to slide into a pool full of sockeye salmon. We'll soon be putting this idea to the test with a camera trap. 

We've weathered a bit after eight years (photo by Liz Landefeld).

Just what we're looking for as far as a bear-wire encounter! Here, a bear that is very likely to deposit hair on our first Eagle Creek wire.

By: Aaron Wirsing

Since 2012, we have been sampling brown bear hair with barbed wires strung across sockeye salmon spawning streams feeding into Lake Aleknagik (Bristol Bay, AK) for the purpose of generating noninvasive genetic population estimates. So far this year, the bear activity has been a tad slow (not much hair snagged on the wires), but this wire deployed on the aptly named Bear Creek was recently visited by an immature bald eagle (see below)!

As usual, sampling will run through the end of August, after which we'll send our hair specimens to the lab at the University of Idaho for analysis, hoping for lots of individual IDs (genotypes).

Every so often, when our barbed wires and motion-activated cameras work in perfect harmony, we get a moment like this one (on upper Hansen Creek).

By: Aaron Wirsing (for Shannon Kachel)

PhD student Shannon Kachel is back in Central Asia, where his groundbreaking research on interactions between snow leopards, wolves, and their scared prey in Kyrgyzstan is beginning to wind down. Shannon's study is the first ever to examine the ecological consequences of shared predation risk from these two top carnivores for prey decision making. He recently chronicled his progress in a blog for Panthera that can be found here. Nice work, Shannon - we are green with envy!

By: Aaron Wirsing

This past summer, we partnered with the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), professor Josh Lawler (UW), and Dr. Michael Case (UW), to initiate a wildlife survey targeting the lands around the John Day Dam known as the John Day / Willow Creek Property. Using a combination of camera and live-trapping, our technicians Erin Morrison and Emily Schafsteck braved the heat and spent three months (June-August) sampling the project lands for mammals, reptiles, and amphibians. Their hard work really paid off, for it resulted in a number of interesting detections, including a black-tailed jackrabbit (Lepus californicus, below)! 

Erin Morrison (left) and Emily Schafsteck (right), after a great day of small mammal trapping.

We are grateful to Tim Darland and the USACE for this exciting research opportunity, and look forward to 2018!

By Linda Uyeda and Aaron Wirsing

The California condor (Gymnogyps californianus) is listed federally as an endangered species. With a 9.5 foot wingspan, and weighing up to 25 pounds, it is the largest land bird in North America. ​California condors are carrion feeders, with common food sources including carcasses of large mammals such as deer and cattle. Challenges to the condors’ survival in the wild include habitat loss, complications resulting from the ingestion of microtrash, and electrocution from power poles, but lead poisoning from consumption of lead-contaminated carcasses remains as the greatest obstacle to overall population recovery. 
 
The primary aim of the Recovery Program, a multi-organization collaborative effort led by the USFWS, is the recovery of the California condor to a self-sustaining, free-flying population. There are many partners involved in the California condor recovery effort, with some organizations focused on captive populations, and others tasked with management of the free flying population throughout the species’ range. The USFWS Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge complex based in Ventura, California, is responsible for the management of the southern California population of California condors.  Management activities include monitoring wild condor nests to assess chick development and to remove microtrash, tracking day-to-day condor activity, and conducting biannual health checks of the entire free-flying flock to monitor for lead exposure. Captive-bred individuals are also introduced to the free-flying population each year, and are monitored to ensure their successful integration into the flock. 
 
Since 1982, when there were only 23 California condors worldwide, recovery efforts have increased the population to over 450 birds, including over 250 flying free in the wild! Of this total population, the free-flying southern California condor flock with which Linda works currently numbers ~80 individuals.
 
After spending multiple seasons tracking and handling water monitor lizards in the dense tropical forests of Indonesia, learning the proper handling and management of California condors has been a fun new challenge for Linda. These days, she spends a lot of time tracking and observing condors in the open grasslands, steep canyons, and rocky cliff areas that this species calls home. “It’s great to play even a small part in the recovery of the California condor, and to contribute to such a longstanding and successful recovery program.”

Content by Michael Havrda, edited by Apryle Craig

An increasing number of researchers are using trail cameras as a non-invasive method to study wildlife. Trail cameras are easily deployed by citizen scientists and collect data round-the-clock, giving them an edge on direct observation studies. It's easy to end up with thousands of photos, but don't be overwhelmed. Here are a few tips to organize and analyze your trail camera photos:

Do you have any additional tips? Feel free to email them to Apryle at uw [dot] edu and I will review them and add them as time permits.