by Aaron Wirsing

On the 24th of March, while on sabbatical leave, I travelled to Sydney, Australia to begin a six-week research sojourn sponsored by two of my colleagues at the University of Sydney: Thomas Newsome and Chris Dickman. Over the next few weeks, I'll be updating this post with dispatches from down under.

Overlooking Australia's "Red Center", on the outskirts of the Simpson Desert in western Queensland (taken April 1, 2016).

We reached the Desert Ecology Research Group (DERG) camp, in the Ethabuka Nature Reserve, on the 1st of April, after three grueling days of driving through New South Wales and Queensland. Now in its 26th year(!), Chris Dickman's longitudinal study in the Simpson Desert has become one of the world's signature explorations of the controls on animal behavior and abundance in arid environments. Among many other pursuits, Chris is currently examining whether cover augmentation, in the form of artificial tunnels, might mitigate the impacts of predation by introduced cats and red foxes on native marsupials, including his favorite species the hairy-footed dunnart (Sminthopsis hirtipes).

The Ethabuka campsite, at sunset. Sunsets were a favorite time for me in the Simpson Desert because they set the red sands ablaze. 

On the 7th of April, I said goodbye to the Simpson, but not before taking in more of its savannah-like landscapes and another sunset.

From April 14-16, I had the pleasure of spending a few days in Melbourne (Victoria). Much like the the rivalry between Seattle and Portland for top honors in the Pacific Northwest, Sydney and Melbourne are engaged in an eternal contest for the title of Australia's trendiest city. Both have their charms, with Sydney sporting spectacular scenery and Melbourne a vibrant central business district (CBD). I was there to give an invited talk at Melbourne's Deakin University, where Tom has a postdoc appointment. My talk titled, "Ecological impacts of gray wolf recolonization in managed landscapes of the western USA" was well received. Many thanks to Euan Ritchie and the Centre for Integrative Ecology for hosting!

Melbourne's famous central business district (CBD), along the Yarra River.

Yesterday (April 21), I gave a guest seminar at Sydney's Taronga Zoo, as part of the Youth at the Zoo (YATZ) program. The crowd consisted of about 20 high schoolers, aged 13-19, to whom I lectured about wolves and my wolf-prey research in Eastern Washington. At the same time, Tom Newsome drew parallels to Australia's top canid predator, the dingo. The students ate it up and asked lots of great questions. I hope at least one of them left with renewed appreciation for top predators, and especially for dingoes, whose perception down here definitely needs a makeover.

On ANZAC Day (April 25th), we set forth to the Tanami Desert, where Tom Newsome conducted his dissertation research on dingoes nearly a decade ago. We first flew to Alice Springs, the fabled Australian city with the shortest average distance to coastline, and then drove to the remote town of Yuendumu, one of central Australia's largest indigenous townships. There, we were joined by four members of the Central Land Council, which administers much of the area around Alice Springs on behalf of region's Aboriginal communities. Our goal was to explore dingo diets across the Tanami region by sampling scats, or "gunna". Upon reaching the Desert, we were joined by several more helpers from the local Newmont Mine, at which point the gunna sampling team was complete!

The Tanami Desert features the striking contrast of huge, bright red termite mounds, some more than two meters tall, set against meadows of verdantly green spinifex grass. I found the combination to be spellbinding, particularly with the right lighting. Interestingly, termites are the only herbivores that can digest spinifex, which is high in silica.

On our first day of scat sampling (April 27th), we were lucky enough to encounter some dingoes that, presumably because of past reliance on anthropogenic subsidies (garbage), had lost much of their fear of humans. Instead, they allowed us to get close enough for some really great pictures, and one even ran off with a roll of our garbage bags. Here, a resting dingo allowed me to snap a few photos, with no magnification, before running off. 

​The next day, we sampled Mount Davidson, a remote area of the Desert that is free of human food subsidies and, consequently, where dingoes must make use of wild foods. Our arrival startled three dingoes, which unlike the previous group quickly retreated into the bush. Hence, no pictures, but happy to have spotted truly wild dingoes.

Mount Davidson in the distance. Because of its remote location, the Tanami Desert is home to among the purist dingoes in Australia, with almost no genetic evidence of interbreeding with domestic dogs. Better yet, the dingoes at Mount Davidson exist far from any current human activity and must therefore make a more 'natural' living off of bush tucker.

Our final day of sampling in the Tanami took us to the area surrounding Sangsters Bore, which is of genuine personal and conservation significance. In 1958, Tom's father Alan, a renowned Australian ecologist and expert on dingoes and other denizens of the Red Centre, discovered a remnant population of Mala (rufous hare-wallaby, Lagorchestes hirsutus), which at the time were believed to be extinct. The site of this momentous find was a large sand dune (below, behind me), rare for the region and sporting distinctive vegetation. The reason why Mala held on at this peculiar dune while being wiped out by feral cat and fox predarion elsewhere remains a mystery.

Later, beginning in 1980, other scientists returned to the dune site to initiate a last-ditch Mala rescue operation. Working out of this lonely caravan and surrounded by seemingly endless (albeit enchantingly beautiful) desert, they captured the last few Mala to start a captive breeding effort that continues to this day. Today, no Mala live in the wild on the Australian mainland, though small reintroduced populations do exist on a few offshore islands (e.g., in Shark Bay). All that remains of their memory in the Tanami is contained inside the caravan, in which you can still find a white board tallying the biologists' final efforts to eradicate foxes.

At the conclusion of our Tanami endeavor, we were seen off by another desert sunset.

With my Australian sojourn winding down, I shifted into tourist mode and spent a few days south of Alice Springs visiting iconic Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. On the way, we passed by Mount Connor, a formation so often mistaken for Uluru that it has been dubbed "Fooluru".

Mount Connor is indeed impressive, but it pales in comparison to Uluru. Uluru, or Ayers Rock, is the world's largest "cleanskin" rock and among the oldest rocks in existence. Rising majestically out of surprisingly verdant surroundings, it is utterly mesmerizing. For me, Uluru is among a very small number of places that are truly unique and special. I cannot wait to return, in particular because cloudy weather robbed me of prime sunset and sunrise viewing.

Behold, Uluru! Thank goodness for "panoramic" mode. The hike around its base is 10.6 km, and an absolutely must for all lovers of adventure.

Less appreciated but just as stunning, Kata Tjuta (sometimes called "The Olgas") offers better hiking and one absolutely breathtaking overlook (#2). The cloudy weather may have diminished the area's myriad colors, but neither the rocks' splendor nor my enjoyment.

One the eve of my departure (May 7), I returned to Bondi Beach for one last run along the headlands. Gazing out over the Pacific Ocean at an overlook along the way, I experienced a bittersweet moment, saddened that my unforgettable stay in Australia was coming to a close but also eager to begin the voyage home. Seattle, here I come!

Well folks, that's all. See you back in the office!

by: Apryle Craig

The 2016 Graduate Student Symposium (GSS) is coming up on Friday, March 4 in the Forest Club Room (AND 207). We have four presenters from our lab. The preliminary presentation times are listed below, but please check with coordinators day-of to confirm times:

11:30am, Shannon Kachel
Snow leopards, wolves and the ecology of fear on the roof of the world

1:30pm Apryle Craig
Wolves, deer, & fear: how top predators shape prey behaviors

3:45pm Christine Phelan
Terrain tactics: topography-dependent vigilance in deer

4:45pm Clint Robins
Investigating the role of managed landscapes in cougar foraging ecology along the urban-wildland gradient of western Washington

Open to the public and everyone in the SEFS community, GSS is a friendly gathering to share student work and hone presentation skills. As is tradition, the symposium will be followed by a Dead Elk party—the perfect opportunity to discuss the presentations and posters over food and drinks.

​By Shannon Kachel

I'm excited and relieved to check in once again from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. This time I'm on my way home to Seattle. I return far from empty-handed, bringing non-invasive genetic samples of wolves, snow leopards and brown bears, as well as thousands of camera trap photos for some unfortunate undergraduates to plow through, and most significantly, for the next 20 months, five daily updates on the movements of F1, a 38 kg female snow leopard, who my partners and I at Panthera fit with a GPS collar, and by so doing kicked off our study of the ecological and behavioral dynamics among snow leopards, wolves and their shared prey. This was a first here in Kyrgyzstan, and came only as the result of months (and in some cases years) of dedication from an entire team of individuals from all over the world. With this hurdle behind us, we can finally get to the gnitty-gritty of the day to day science that will help us to understand and conserve this enigmatic species and the high mountains ecosystems it calls home. 

My collaborators and I will use camera traps and fecal genetics to estimate a range of population parameters for both wolves and snow leopards in a spatially explicit context - we will literally map the density of these animals as a changing variable across the study area, almost like a heat map in a weather forecast. Then, like any other landscape covariate, we can compare numerical patterns with the behavioral observations of our collared animals (again in a spatially explicit context). Behavior in turn will help us create maps of potential or naïve predation risk to ungulates based on the hunting and kill rates we observe. Taken together, these behavioral and numerical insights will help us to predict, test and understand patterns in prey behavior and numbers, as well as those of both carnivores. In an applied context, this information has potential prescriptive value to reduce carnivore-human conflicts and to identify key habitat components and configurations necessary for high mountain predators to survive. 

By: Apryle Craig

This summer, fires cut our field season short and threatened some of the vegetation plots we installed. While these possible impacts to our research were a concern, they were overshadowed by our concern to for lives, property, and livelihoods of the communities impacted. 

Since the fires subsided, I was able to assess the impacts of the fire to the study. Some sites were highly impacted, others remained untouched. Many of the fences remained in place but will need reinforcing. The sites that were impacted by fire can no longer be included in the study in the same way. The plants may grow differently in the burned areas compared to unburned areas. I may use these sites to study the impacts of grazing on a fire-impacted landscape. 

The natural world is always changing. It's one of the exciting and challenging facets of studying ecology.

By Aaron Wirsing

This past August, I once again joined colleagues from Florida International University and the Tetiaroa Society to learn more about the ecology of reef sharks in Tetiaroa, a remote French Polynesian atoll. Specifically, along with FIU biologists Kirk Gastrich and Jimmy Kilfoil, I deployed baited remote underwater video cameras, or BRUVs, to monitor the presence and behavior of blacktip reef (Carcharhinus melanopterus) and sicklefin lemon (Negaprion acutidens) sharks throughout Tetiaroa's inner lagoon. Some of our BRUVs detected lots of shark activity (e.g., see the video posted below of a blacktip investigating one of our baits). Ultimately, we'll use the data we collected over two weeks to model when and where these shark species are active in the lagoon. In future years, we hope to expand our BRUV work to Tetiaroa's outer reef, where the ocean is much deeper and we might detect more and larger shark species. For now, we thank the Seeley family for their generous support of our research in Tetiaroa and encourage you to stay tuned for more findings! 

by: Apryle Craig

This summer, I started installing deer exclosures to investigate the impact of wolves on plant communities in Northeastern Washington. 

Each fenced exclosure plot is paired with a nearby unfenced plot. The only differences between these two plots is the exclusion of deer, so the unfenced plot acts as a control plot to assess what the plants would be like in the absence of herbivory. Using this paired plot design in wolf-recolonized and wolf-absent areas, I can compare vegetation characteristics including plant height, species composition, percent cover, and age class.

Some studies have shown that the presence of predators may cause prey species to be less sedentary. When deer or other large herbivores move around more, the herbivory is dispersed and vegetation does not get browsed heavily in one spot. Alternatively, the risk of predation may have lead to concentrated herbivory if the presence of wolves causes deer to spend more time in "safe spots" such as near roads. If deer remain in one spot, the herbivory is concentrated and vegetation may become overbrowsed. In both of these two scenarios wolves could have an indirect effect on the plants by altering the behavior of their prey. A third possibility is that wolves may alter the behavior of deer, but those changes are not having any impacts on the vegetation community. 

The fences are approximately 36 square meters and 6 feet tall, with a small gap at the bottom to allow smaller animals to pass through.

Along with my team of volunteers this summer, we were able to install 21 sites across our study areas. 

by Aaron Wirsing

For the fourth year running, I've joined professor Tom Quinn (SAFS) at Lake Aleknagik in southwestern Alaska to sample brown bears exploiting the legendary Bristol Bay sockeye salmon run. Our study is noninvasive, relying on barbed wires strung across small spawning streams (see picture) to collect hair samples from passing bears. We then send the hair samples to Professor Lisette Waits, another of our collaborators at the University of Idaho, for individual genoptying, enabling us to determine how many bears use each stream. As we add more years to the investigation, we'll be able to ask a variety of exciting questions, including whether individual bears return to the same stream each year and if there is matrilineal transmission of foraging behavior (i.e., do cubs match the spatial hunting patterns of their mothers?). For now, we're off to check the wires!

Photo by Dean Adams

By Aaron Wirsing

The Washington Wolf Project is now entering its fourth year! This winter, beginning in December, we'll again be collaring deer to monitor their responses to recolonizing wolves. We'll also be testing whether the presence of wolves in eastern Washington is shaping the impacts of deer herbivory on plant communities and easing predation on fawns by suppressing coyotes (a major fawn predator). 

For the first time, you can help us to understand the ecological and economic impacts of wolves here in Washington through tax-deductible donations to a University of Washington gift account that is specific to our lab. Your contributions will be used exclusively to support graduate student research in field. For example, gift funds will support aerial helicopter captures of mule and white-tailed deer for GPS and camera collar deployment, the analysis of wolf scat samples so that we can determine what the wolves have been eating, and the purchase of GPS collars for cougars so that we can monitor responses of these top feline predators to the renewed presence of wolves. We thank you for your support!

Graduate student Carolyn Shores and her research assistant Christina Bankert out monitoring radio-collared deer fawns (photo by A. Wirsing).

Canyon Creek, Snoqualmie Forest

“Do not try to fight a lion if you are not one yourself."
      - African proverb

Cougars, also known as mountain lions, pumas, or catamounts, are opportunistic hunters that typically stalk their prey before taking it down from behind.  Cougars rely on cover to hunt successfully, and frequently make kills near forest edges.  My research explores cougar kill site locations and their habitat characteristics to determine the extent of understory cover associated with successful cougar foraging along western Washington’s urban-to-wildland gradient.   Results from the project will be used to assist wildlife managers in identifying habitats in residential areas that are associated with cougar hunting behavior as part of ongoing efforts to minimize cougar depredations and human-wildlife conflict.

The Cougar project’s 2015 field season is underway, with data collection taking place in the Snoqualmie and Markworth Forests.  The study site’s proximity to Seattle (30 miles) allows undergraduates and volunteers to readily contribute to data collection.  Currently, there are seven assistants working on the project.  Volunteers learn how to locate cougar kills, navigate rugged terrain, use prey remains to determine prey age and condition, and quantify forest characteristics.