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Dear John,

This fall, Michael, our Western Program Director, and I had the opportunity to head into the forests of New Mexico with a team from Diamond Dogs, a wildlife detection dog team, as part of our project to assess the health, size, and connectivity of local marten populations.
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With the help of their dog, Skye, we found and collected many scat samples (fancy word for poop), which, using genetic methods, will help identify individual martens through their DNA. This analysis will complement our camera trap surveying to give us better insight into how many martens are in this landscape and how connected the populations are.
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This project is one of many our team is conducting that use innovative methods to capture wildlife data, enabling us to design conservation initiatives that protect and restore wildlife in our Wildway landscapes.

Elsewhere in the Western Wildway, we’re developing and testing a remote system using aerial and satellite imagery combined with deep-learning models to map active prairie dog colonies effectively and efficiently. Current practices relying on field data are too slow or insufficiently broad to capture landscape-level changes in prairie dog populations, which often occur due to plague. Faster information flow will help with quicker conservation decision-making to support prairie dogs, the endangered black-footed ferret, and prairie ecosystems generally.

And we’re continuing to monitor pronghorn with GPS collars in and around large solar energy developments. Part of a multi-year study to assess how pronghorn and other animals are responding to increased solar development, which is planned across tens of thousands of acres in the Southwest alone. With this groundbreaking research, Wildlands Network is taking a leading role in understanding how large mammals behave and move near solar facilities.

We already have great insights into pronghorn behavior and needs from this study, and, incidentally, we documented one of our favorite yet rarely observed natural surprises: mutualism between coyotes and badgers.
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All of this work depends on the financial support of conservationists like you who understand how deeply important this work is for our broader ecosystems. With the US federal government drawing back its funding for research, including for our solar project, we need investment from individuals now more than ever to ensure we can keep these projects going.
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Thank you for being a committed Wildlands Network supporter. If you haven’t already, take the next step and become one of our donors today, joining other people across North America who care about this work and species, big and small.

Sincerely,

Aaron Facka, PhD

Senior Wildlife Biologist, Western Region
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P.S. Biophilia Foundation is still matching all gifts, up to $50,000! Let’s make the most of this moment.

 

Your support makes a difference.
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