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March 18 2022 By Siobhan Darlington The Southern BC Cougar project team had the incredible opportunity to conduct a day of fieldwork by helicopter thanks to the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development. We started our day at the Penticton airport and took off flying transects across the West Okanagan study area down towards Keremeos. Our objective for the day was to scan for the VHF frequencies of 3 offline cougars, C6, C16 and C1. Their collars stopped transmitting GPS locations prematurely, however the radio signal continues to function and can be detected using a handheld receiver and antenna. While we normally drive roads and scan for cougars on the ground, flying high above the cougar's territory and scanning from a helicopter is much more efficient to pick up a signal. We input the collar frequencies and listen for the sound of methodical beeps - the louder it gets, the closer we are. We scanned the better part of the entire West Okanagan and detected a signal. Excited, we flew closer until we were sure we were hovering above cougar 16 "Bobtail". While searching below for cougar tracks in the snow, or a visual of the cougar herself, we finally laid eyes on the creature. A GPS-collared mule deer sporting the same frequency as our cougar. Blast. We retreated, covering another area of the cougar's home range. Again, we detected a signal coming from the north near the Garnet Valley. We honed in to the signal, scanning the snowfree mountainsides until to our dismay, spotted a second GPS-collared mule deer! We couldn't believe our luck. Given the extensive overlap between SBC cougars and the SIMdeer project, several of our animals apparently share the same radio signal. We didn't have much luck tracking down our cougars in the morning, so we switched gears and investigated some hard to reach kill sites. The pilot was able to land within 50 m of a fresh kill shared by C8 and C25, a mated pair. We hiked down and found a cow moose, quickly collected samples and installed a trail camera, then headed to another kill made just 120 m away. There, we found a mule deer buck with some meat left. We installed another trail camera and collected our samples before scurrying back to the landing spot to get picked up. These two kills were situated at the top of an incredibly steep mountain with plenty of snow at the top. We will surely have a big day ahead of us when we return for the cameras in the summer. While the entire day didn't go quite as planned, we were very appreciative of the opportunity to view the landscape from above. The study area included tall mountains with intact forest, recent burns, highways, mines, urban sprawl and agriculture in valley bottoms, and cutblocks as far as the eye could see. The landscape for cougars and their prey is a mosaic of disturbance, a patchwork of cleared forest that they must navigate to find food, mates, and reproduce. While the people below us looked small, the impact of people on the environment certainly wasn't. We hope to uncover just how much we influence the lives of cougars in BC in the years to come.
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Authors
The authors are Southern BC Cougar Project team members & volunteers. Past Blog Entries
September 2023
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