Monitoring Forest Carnivores

By Shevenell Webb, MDIFW Wildlife Biologist Forest carnivores are elusive and difficult to observe, but they have a hard time resisting the smell of skunk essence and beaver meat. Remote trail cameras are an emerging survey method that wildlife biologists use to observe a wide variety of wildlife species. Cameras have a lot of advantages as they are easy to operate, can be set in the field for months at a time, they work during most weather conditions, they don’t typically disturb the animals, and carnivores like to investigate stinky smells that are typically paired with the cameras. In 2017, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife recruited a graduate student at the University of Maine to develop a monitoring protocol to track population trends of marten and fisher in Maine. The graduate student is focusing her camera trapping efforts primarily in northern Maine, where the two meso-carnivores overlap. So far, the graduate student has deployed over 100 cameras in the winter and summer to determine optimal times of the year to detect each species, as well as compare habitats where each species is found. Although the target animals are marten and fisher, a wide variety of other species have gotten their picture taken, including moose, deer, Canada lynx, bobcat, otter, mink, raccoon, weasel, black bear, red fox, and coyote. This research is expected to be completed in 2021. We will be using the results from this study to inform future monitoring programs for marten and fisher, and potentially other forest carnivores. For more information about this study, check out the links below. You can learn more from this Carnivore YouTube video and written story