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By Kieran Braid, Cougar Technician September 14th 2020 I'm a recent graduate from the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) Fish Wildlife and Recreation diploma and Ecological Restoration degree programs and was lucky enough to land a position as a summer field technician on the Southern BC Cougar Project. This summer was by far one of the most interesting of my life. The experiences offered by the job are second to none for students trying to build a career within the realm of wildlife biology. From learning how to identify predator sign to radio-tracking cougars, there was certainly no shortage of excitement and learning opportunity. My job was to ground-truth cougar clusters in the field. Using GPS data from collared cougars, we can tell where a cougar has potentially made a kill or has a den when they spend a lot of time in the same area. The collars transmit a GPS point once every two hours. Typically, when there are > 6 points in one small area (in other words, more than 12 hours spent there), there is a good chance that the cougar has made a kill. When a solitary female has an unusually large cluster and is travelling back and forth from other clusters in the area, she could be returning to a den. Siobhan and I went to investigate one such cluster in mid-July in the Christian Valley and used radio tracking to locate a cougar denning in a slash pile. Siobhan is the PhD student leading the Southern BC Cougar Project, and my field supervisor. We carefully approached the slash pile together and we could see a small gap in the pile. Suddenly, I could see a pair of cougar eyes peeking out at me and it gave me chills! This was the first cougar sighting of my life and my second most memorable wildlife encounter (read on for my most memorable). We worked quickly to set up cameras around her den, but we could hear the tiny meowing of 3-4-day old kittens coming from within! It was an incredible experience that I am sure I will remember for the rest of my days. Even better, the countdown to kitten tagging began that day… By far, the highlight of the summer was when we went out one month later to tag this cougar’s then 4.5-week old kittens. By that time, she had moved her kittens to a new den (cougars move their kittens around for safety and to access prey), so we went out in the morning to her latest large cluster and searched to no avail. Unsure of where they could be, we went and checked out another smaller cluster and again, no luck. We went back to her last known location where my field partner Kayla and I set off radio-tracking her. We narrowed down her position to a much bigger slash pile almost 200 m uphill from her previous cluster.
Kayla, TJ, Siobhan and I grouped together to make noise away from her exit points and in time she came out of a small gap and went down the hill. TJ is a provincial wildlife biologist and leads cougar captures on the project. He and I each crawled into separate entrances to begin the search for the kittens – like looking for a needle in a haystack. After crawling about 10 feet into the slash pile, I spotted two fuzzy lumps hidden in a little hole within the den. Fortunately, the gloves on my hands were fairly thick, as the kittens already had some sizable claws and weren’t too happy to come out of their little hiding spot! We worked quickly to weigh, sex, measure, photograph, ear tag, and collect tissue samples from each kitten. We had to work as quickly and efficiently as possible to minimize our handling time. While working on one kitten, the other is kept in a dark burlap sack to reduce stress. When we were finished the kittens were placed right back in the den where they were found. Now, we will be able to identify individual kittens on the trail cameras we place at the mother's kills! As a field technician for this project, I was able to gain invaluable hands-on experience in many aspects of wildlife biology field work. Checking the cameras and seeing all of the scavengers, especially bears, consume cougar kills was very exciting for me. I'm passionate about bear conservation and I hope to pursue a career working with carnivores in my future!
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Authors
The authors are Southern BC Cougar Project team members & volunteers. Past Blog Entries
September 2023
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