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By Shannon Werden, Cougar technician September 3 2021 My name is Shannon Werden and I’m a graduate from the Selkirk College Recreation, Fish, and Wildlife diploma, and I’m currently a BSc undergraduate student in Wildlife and Fisheries at the University of Northern British Columbia. As someone who has always had pet cats, and an interest in wild felids, I feel very fortunate to have landed a position as a summer technician on the Southern BC Cougar project. This summer has been one of the hottest on record in British Columbia with extreme heat beginning in June, and we technicians certainly felt the effects! I am originally from the west coast where temperatures are milder than the interior. This summer temperatures in Kelowna reached 45 °C for a week straight. Our days are spent as cougar crime scene investigators, but it’s not as dramatic or glamorous as the television show “CSI”. When a GPS-collared cougar spends a few days in one area, forming a cluster of points, we hike in and investigate. One noteworthy day this summer was during the middle of the heat wave in June, on a Monday (of course), and Brooklyn Maher, my field partner, and I went to go investigate a recently formed cluster. It’s always exciting hiking into a new cluster because you never know what you’ll find! We hiked into a forestry cutblock in the early stages of regeneration, so there wasn’t much cover to offer solace from the heat, and we started searching for a potential cougar kill. Finally, we found it; an adult mule deer that was covered in thousands of maggots, with flies and mosquitoes buzzing all around. This is the glamorous part of the job that I previously mentioned. We cut off the femur and lower jaw to bring back to the lab for bone marrow and tooth extraction, took hair samples for DNA analysis, and captured photos of the scene. We worked quickly and were glad to return to the sanctuary of the air-conditioned truck. This kill was easily the ripest of the summer and combined with the extreme heat, smell, and the thousands of insects, it made for a memorable experience! The heat wasn’t the only obstacle we faced this summer. The hot, dry conditions early in the season made for a smoky, fiery field season later on. The majority of our work occurs in the backcountry where fires start from lightning strikes, campfires, or other causes and easily reach out of control status. Brooklyn and I prepared for the heat by loading up on ice cubes and electrolytes in our water bladders, lathering up in sunscreen, and sporting good brimmed hats before departing on our backcountry outings. Each morning we would check the BC Wildfire app to ensure we weren’t heading into a restricted area or an alert zone. Throughout the summer, several fires occurred within cougar territories, restricting our field access. The Brenda Creek fire in particular overlapped at least three of the cougars we were monitoring, including a female that gave birth in August, denning within a few kilometres of the fire boundary. Since the cougar collars transmit data every 2 hours, we can see how each cougar responds to these new fires in almost real-time. Some cougars fled the area to a different part of their territory while others made clusters near the edge of the fires. We weren’t able to investigate potential kills near the fire perimeters for safety reasons, however we hypothesized that the cougars might be predating animals fleeing the fire. The ability to monitor these behaviours will help Siobhan and the rest of the Southern BC Cougar Project team to better analyze how wildfire disturbance affects cougars and their prey. The few studies that have been conducted on cougar response to wildfire showed that they avoid burned areas. Jennings et al. (2016) found that cougars in California used recently burned areas 24% of the time while preferring unburned, intact forest 70% of the time. Jennings et al. surmised that more frequent, intense fires would negatively impact cougar populations over time due to changes in prey availability. Whether cougars in British Columbia respond the same way is not yet known, however the data collected on this project will help us find out. This summer has provided me with valuable field experience, and I am very grateful to have been a part of the team. The position gave me the opportunity to discover Okanagan’s beautiful backcountry, meet like-minded people who are passionate about wildlife, and insight into the mind and powerful abilities of a cougar. I will be in Prince George for the next two years to finish my BSc at the University of Northern British Columbia, and I look forward to exploring more of BC’s rich ecosystems. In the future I hope to be a part of more research projects, as I enjoy gaining in-depth knowledge about a particular species.
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Authors
The authors are Southern BC Cougar Project team members & volunteers. Past Blog Entries
September 2023
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