Ready, Set, Gulo!
Photo: Woodland Park Zoo
Field season.
For most of the wildlife biologists I know, this term is packed with emotions, from worry and panic to excitement and pride. By the time we’re finished, the balance has tipped toward the latter. Otherwise, we wouldn’t keep doing what we do.
Robert and I take a divide-and-conquer approach to our summer field season, which currently centers around wolverines (Gulo gulo). Two decades of working together as a married research team have made us sorely aware of our own strengths and weaknesses. I’m a habitual planner. I like to handle travel logistics and shop for camping food—most of which I carry. Robert hauls our heavy survey gear, mixes up scent lure, and climbs crazy-tall trees to install the equipment. He doesn’t enjoy organizing trips or meals. I’m averse to heights and stinky stuff. It all works out in the end.
Our method for surveying wolverines and other wildlife entails attaching a motion-triggered camera to a tree and pointing the lens at a scent dispenser attached to a second tree. The dispenser releases a few drops of foul-smelling liquid each day to draw passing animals to the site, where the camera snaps their photo. Since our survey stations operate all winter, we need to install both camera and dispenser about 12 feet off the ground so they won’t be buried in snow. (Reminder: Height + Stink = Robert’s Strength, not mine!)
This spring and summer, we’ll be checking and rebaiting 30 camera stations that we and others distributed throughout the North Cascades last year. We officially launched our 2020 field season earlier this week by day-tripping to a trail off the scenic Mountain Loop Highway, where one of our stations is hidden on a steep slope anchored by old-growth trees. Because the highway is still closed for the winter, we parked our vehicle at the gate and bicycled 3 miles to the trailhead.
After two months of quarantine, biking the carless Mountain Loop Highway was a gulp of fresh air. Robert and I pedaled slowly to set a safe pace for our husky-mix, Alder—the three of us burbling along like snowmelt water, paralleling the salmon-supporting Stillaguamish River. Leafed-out maples, bobbing dippers, boundless views of distant glaciers; everything felt so alive at a time when death is never far from our collective minds. There’s something about traveling a closed road that feels especially hopeful, as though we’re offered a glimpse of what can happen if we quiet our lives.
Before we knew it, we were ditching our bikes in the brush and hiking an overgrown path toward our destination. The forest floor, too, was bursting with spring—red trillium, vanilla leaf, a well-fed western toad resting woozily on the path.
An hour or so later, we left the trail behind and ventured upslope toward our camera station, only to discover that our GPS coordinates were significantly off. The slope was too sheer and treacherous for us to roam around aimlessly, so I stayed put with Alder while Robert conducted a targeted search.
Sitting on a mossy log, Alder by my side, I contemplated the unusual field season to come—how we will go about planning in light of COVID-19. Out here, social distancing is a sacred gift, but what about the campgrounds, the ranger stations…our favorite bakery stops along the way? Should hikers wear masks? Can Robert and I get to all the places we need to? And will I be able to relax knowing that people I love are more vulnerable than me, without the good fortune of working in the wilderness?
“I found it!” Robert’s words of relief drifted down from above, bringing me back to the moment and the mission at hand. Miraculously, he’d dug up an old photo on his iPhone showing our station’s surroundings and was able to pinpoint the site by looking at the trees and the sun.
“Ready to go, bud?” I needlessly asked Alder, who had jumped to his feet when he heard Robert call. He woofed and bolted off, and I prepared myself for the rocky scramble ahead.
