Let's get the technical part over with... sorry, it's a long one!

I figured it would be a good idea to give a basic background explanation about what I am doing for my thesis project.  I will try to keep it as brief as possible so that you don't all get too bored and lose interest in this blog after only the second post!  So, basically the purpose of this project is to determine whether or not the large carnivores in the Trans-Pecos (black bears and mountain lions specifically) would be good candidates as umbrella species for conservation.  The idea behind an umbrella species approach to conservation says that by managing for one or two species you could potentially be managing for all the other species that fall within the range of the umbrella species.  In other words, if you managed the particular habitat for a black bear, you would also be managing all the plant, mammal, bird, and herpetofauna (reptiles and amphibians) species that also fall within that same habitat area.  This can also be called a multi-species approach for conservation.  Many agencies, such as the US Fish & Wildlife Service (the agency that is responsible for the Endangered Species Act) are really starting to advertise using this strategy for conservation.  It is more efficient and less costly to include several species in one management plan instead of creating several management plans for many different species all occurring in the same area!  Large mammals such as most carnivores, or even ungulates (deer, bighorn sheep, etc...) are often candidates for umbrella species because they have much larger home ranges (areas they utilize) which would mean more additional animal and plant species would fall within the same range.  Confused yet?  I hope not.  It is a fairly simple concept to understand, I am probably just making it more complicated than it needs to be... I'm good at that sometimes.  Take home message: Manage for one large bodied species (usually) and you'll be managing for all the other plant/animal species that occur within the same range.  Now why couldn't I have just said that in the first place??  I am actually pretty excited about the implications this study could have.  As an undergrad there were a few different times that I had to write papers or participate in talks about the multi-species approach to conservation (thanks Dr. B! - hopefully if you read this everything I said up there is correct... hehe), and I always really enjoyed doing the background research for those projects.  It was not difficult for me to write the proposal for this project because I already had a pretty thorough understanding of the concept and was (and still am) genuinely interested in the topic.

Ok, so that is the reasoning behind my study - now for the actual field research I am doing to help determine the above question (whether or not black bear and mountain lions would make good umbrella species - figured I'd remind you incase it got lost in all the technical jargon up there).  To attempt to answer this question, as some of you may have already guessed, I will be doing research within black bear and mountain lion habitat of differing suitability (some good habitat and some not so good habitat).  I have already started this.  I am currently trapping small mammals, conducting bird surveys, and using trail cameras to capture the medium sized mammals, in order to determine biodiversity within the different habitat strata of the two carnivore species.  Starting this month, I will also be conducting herpetofauna surveys (since most of these species hunker down for the winter, it was unnecessary for me to conduct these surveys during the colder months).  I am also doing some vegetation work, but that is not really the focus of my project, and it's kind of boring...  Anyway, I have 3 sites, each divided into 4 different habitat strata and I have to do these samples on each habitat strata.  It takes me about 2 weekends to do one whole site (since I have class during the week in between).  We have also divided the year into 3 seasons (each 4 months long), and I have to sample each site every season.  So altogether that is about 12 areas to sample in 4 months, 3 times a year (and I will do this for 2 years).  It sounds like a lot, but I should be able to spread it out enough that I won't get too overwhelmed (although some of you were lucky enough to hear about how I had to cram 4 months of field work into 1 month!  But I made it!)  We are assuming that there would be higher biodiversity (greater number of different species) within the better habitat strata of both bears and lions - which would mean they could be good umbrella species candidates, however, I have only just begun, so it will be a while before we can start drawing conclusions from the data I collect.  Oh, and I almost forgot!  I am also attempting to capture some black bears in one area down here.  It has proven to be more difficult than I thought, since there are not nearly as many here as I am used to in PA (they are a state threatened animal here in TX)!  Back in December I had 5 bear traps out, trying to catch one stinkin' bear that I knew was in the area (I had seen him in person, and captured pictures of him on my trail cameras), but he refused to go in any of my traps (unlike the foxes who kept stealing my bait...)!  So that will also be an ongoing part of the project.  If captured, the bear would receive a radio collar and PIT (passive integrated transponder) tag that will help us learn more about the movements of black bears in the Trans-Pecos, and their movements across the US/Mexico border.

Whew, I hope you've hung in there long enough to get this far in the post!  Now for the less boring part - I'll post a couple pictures showing the more hands-on parts of my project :)

This is a picture from one of my trail cameras.  They are set up to take a picture whenever movement is sensed.  There is a bit of a delay which is why I don't always get full body pictures of the animals I captured on camera.  Any of you cat owners out there should be able to tell right away that this is definitely a cat ear!  I love playing with my cat's ears so when I saw this I knew immediately it was a cat - a much bigger one than I'm used to though!  So far this is the only mountain lion picture I have captured.  But that's still better than none!

This is the bear that I was trying to capture back in December.  I was pretty surprised that I captured this picture on this particular camera because there were so many areas that I was trying to decide where to put this camera that I didn't really expect to get anything.  Thankfully I was wrong in my expectations!

After the picture above this one was taken I had to give up on trapping for a little while so that I could go home for the holidays.  But I did leave one camera set up right next to a road that I had seen bear tracks on at two different times.  Luckily I captured this second picture (I am assuming this is the same bear).  You should also know that this location is pretty close to 2 of the traps I had set... but still he refused to go in them...

Ok, I'll let you take a break now.  That was quite a long one... hope it wasn't too bad for everyone.

Until next time (which probably won't be too long), Laura