Service Learning: Wildlife Monitoring in Mukilteo

Name: YU CHIEH LIN

Monitoring wildlife by using the traditional ecological knowledge to identify tracks and sign of common animals in urban environments and to set motion-sensitive camera traps to photograph the animals movements. This relates to animal biology by having a knowledge of animals habitat and behavior in order to speculate the type of animal when we track the footprint or some evidence of living organisms left. This project was sponsored by Edmonds Anthropology Department and Center for Service-Learning, and monitoring for approximately three hours in Mukilteo with the organizer, Grace Coale,on March 3rd, 2017. The organizer’s contact phone number is 425-640-1882 and her e-mail is grace.coale@email.edcc.edu. The purpose of the project was to help the city balance human and wildlife, and support the evaluation of the influences of forest management. We were finding the clues of animal movements, and research the tracks from the common mammals. Also, it’s necessary to know how to open the protection of motion-sensitive camera in order to change the memory card. The protection are used for protecting from bears.  

The motion-sensitive camera was set up on the trunk, and we adjusted the camera by the branch to get a better angle of facing the path.

We found the small cave covered by moss, there are some even pinnate leaves that were cut oblique shape on petiole. This is a behavior that mountain beaver will have and the cave was located 2 meters away from a river. As a result, we assumed it was a mountain beaver habitat.

The track with three toes with estimated size in centimeters, 3 x 3, and it had thin sole of the foot. It might be a bird’s footprint, and the picture was taken beside the river, so the bird was trying to get water.

There were some small craws mark in the hole, the animals with small craws are probably rat or shrews. We were thinking they were digging the hole to find earthworms.

This is a footprint from a bear, which has estimated size, 10 x 9.5. This was located on a riverbed.  

This was the first time doing service learning and identifying the tracks by considering where the tracks are located, what does it look like, how big they are .. etc. In my view, this is a great project, because the location we did this project is actually nearby houses, and we monitored the location in order to get a better understanding of wildlife, also, give an idea to people who live nearby that what the community look like.

The questions I have are..

How does humidity affect Annelids?

What makes bear survive in an environment that has only small river without fish inside, and is surrounded by development zone?

Does moss have any influences on beavers?

Can bear sense the electromagnetic wave from the camera, or bears touch the camera just because they see it?