Gabrielle Franke would like to invite anyone interested to participate in a survey of Silver Falls State Park. We will be looking for tracks and other sign of bear and cougar (Ursus americanus and Felis concolor, the American bear and the cat of one color) that are known from previous surveys and sightings to live there.
The date is October 21. That would be one week after the Salmon Festival at our favorite tracking park (Oxbow) and one week before the October Dirt Time (also at Oxbow).
For those who haven't done this before, it is quite fun. Tracks and sign are not always found by everyone but it sure is a nice place to spend a day looking around. Actually, last fall we were quite successful and some folks returned from their routes with great plaster casts of bear and cougar. Not only that, but you should’ve seen the bear scat full of western crab apples! We did it in April 2000 as well and found family tracks of bear and cougar!
Plan on a full day, beginning there around 9am and ending around dark (about 4:30 or so that time of year). Generally up to nine teams of 2 to 6 people walk a mapped-out route and look for animal signs, mark it on the map with notes, and turn it in at the end of the day. Gabrielle compiles it all and sends out a report later. All experience levels of tracking are welcome. At least one experienced tracker is put on each team.
I'll remind you a few more times about the event as it draws nearer but put it on your calendars now if you can. In the past we've organized carpools from G.I. Joes in Tualatin and that has worked well.
Gabrielle's email is gkfranke@aol.com if you have specific questions, but you don't have to email her to say you want to participate. She will be the person to call it off at the last minute in case of weather issues 503-378-0010.
Gabrielle Franke is in the beginning stages of putting together a Tracking Club similar to ours at Silver Falls State Park. Silver Falls has lots of wildlife activity and was the site for The Tracking Club of Portland's first survey, where twenty nine trackers searched the trails and roads of the park in search of bear and cougar sign. For trackers in the Salem and the south Portland metro area this will be a great way to get out and track. The Tracking Club of Portland welcomes the addition of the Silver Falls Tracking Club to the region. Check this website and the club newsletter for more info.
by Gabrielle Franke (reprinted from the March Tracking Club newsletter)
I was watching the weather forecast closely. Too much rain overnight keeps many animals under cover. If they do venture out, the tracks are quickly dissolved back to the underlying soil. Given that it was mid November, a cloudy and rather warm forecast were a real blessing.
Plans had been made with The Tracking Club and the state park. The maps were made on waterproof paper and ready to hand out to the 10 teams. I had picked trails where at one time or another I had previously found black bear and/or cougar tracks or sign. I recalled my excitement when I found perfect prints in mud, claw marks on a tree, or a big pile of scat. I knew these teams would feel the same if the tracks and signs were there to be found.
The trail segments were 2-5 miles long, some with significant elevation changes. We were scheduled to organize at 9 am, be out on the trails by about 10 am. Traveling at the slow pace of even 1 mph, the ranger estimated the last team would be back no later than 3 pm. He wanted a safety plan so those teams not back by 4 pm would be considered overdue. I agreed to his plan, but chuckled inside and decided to ask Steve Engel to head the ranger's tracking team. Though their trail was only 2 miles long, I knew Steve would keep the team busy well into the late afternoon.
We had 29 trackers from Portland to Eugene with varying degrees of experience to cover about 33 miles of park trails.
My trail along Silver Creek revealed only deer and raccoon tracks. Downed logs often provided shelter to burrow and den entrances, though there were no fresh tracks in the dry soil. On the trail away from and above the creek, we found more deer tracks and a small, hairy scat of unknown origin. Returning via Bear Creek brought more deer tracks, and I hurried to the parking lot to be ready to meet returning teams.I was there at 3:30 pm and not a single team was back yet. My interpretation was that everyone was finding something wonderful and interesting. Good stories were going to get shared about this day!
At about 4 pm, Team 1 came walking up the road. They had a 2.5-mile trail but told me they never got past the first 1/2 mile all day. They found bear tracks and produced a plaster cast, and a baggie with a copious quantity of scat consisting of hair and what appeared to be juicy crabapple skins. Team 2 returned having found an apparent bear trail and a very coarse, dark brown, 2" hair taped to a journal page. Teams 3 and 4 shared some common sections of trail and together examined a Western Hemlock tree stripped of bark by a black bear. Team 4 was the only one to be delightfully presented with nearly 3/4 mile of cougar tracks right on the trail they were walking. They also madeplaster casts.
Teams 5 and 6 were similar to my Team 7, finding numerous deer tracks and some other signs, but none belonging to the targeted bear or cougar. Team 8 did find bear tracks on their trail along with some unidentified tree markings. One member of Team 9 became ill and their trip was cut short, though they too found deer and coyote signs.
Team 10 consisted of Steve, the ranger and other trackers who found numerous trails, tracks and signs, but none of the targeted species. Steve had the only other plaster cast, of a deep deer track with widely splayed toes including the dewclaws.
Teams turned in copies of their field notes and the last trackers left shortly after 5 pm, when it got too dark to see any more. The feedback from the tracking teams was the desire to do another survey event again and to have shorter trails.
During the next week, I compiled the notes and marked a master map for the park on our findings. The feedback from the ranger about our survey has been general rather than specific, but they were grateful to have the information and were impressed with our efforts. The plaster casts of the cougar tracks were seen by many, including the state biologist, and they are grateful for the record of our tracking work.
Compiling the field notes gave me one bigger piece of information. There was wide variation in all of the recorded notes. There was no way that we could compare measurements to know if the bear tracks found by one team was the same or different from the tracks found by other teams. To resolve this issue, The Tracking Club has been meeting to establish standards for recording survey data and all future team leaders will need to be trained in those standards.
The fall bear and cougar survey was such a success for trackers and state park staff alike that it is being repeated this spring. On April 2 we will again meet at 9 am at the Howard Creek Equestrian parking lot at Silver Falls State Park. Heavy rain overnight prior to the survey will cause a cancellation of the event. If in doubt, please call Gabrielle at 503-378-0010 between 6-7 am on April 2. .
