Wildlife camera shows N.W.T. tundra teeming with life — including a powerful grizzly | 24CA News

After retrieving greater than 300 SD playing cards from wildlife cameras unfold out over Thaidene Nëné Indigenous Protected Area within the N.W.T. on the finish of the summer season, it was apparent to Iris Catholique which one to take a look at first. 

The iron publish that digicam had been mounted to was bent at a 90-degree angle, and other people concerned within the biodiversity monitoring challenge have been attempting to guess what animal may have inflicted the injury.

“Once they figured out it was a grizzly bear … it kind of puts in perspective like actually how strong they are,” stated Catholique, the Thaidene Nëné supervisor for Łutsel K’e Dene First Nation. “This is iron. Angle iron. And the bear totally mangled it.” 

The digicam is considered one of greater than 1,000 cameras and audio recording units put in in 2021 by the N.W.T. Biodiversity Monitoring Program in and across the territory’s protected areas — and it captured images of the act. Sort of.

Images from the digicam present a grizzly bear wandering as much as the machine one morning in May. The animal disappears from view, and all of the sudden the digicam’s angle turns about 90 levels. The grizzly bear ambles away.

The cameras are activated by sensors each time animals stroll by. Other photographs from the grizzly-damaged digicam present the inquisitive nostril of caribou, the blood-streaked face of a wolf, and Arctic hares hopping by at midnight — earlier than a grizzly bear offers what seems to be a remaining blow in July. 

Building a baseline

In Thaidene Nëné, the monitoring program was a collaborative effort between the Łutsel K’e Dene First Nation, the territorial authorities, Wilfrid Laurier University and the Canadian Wildlife Service. 

Claudia Haas, a biologist and PhD scholar at Wilfrid Laurier University, was a part of a staff that spent 31 days putting in 307 units of cameras and audio recording units all through the park in 2021. The staff used boats, helicopters and float planes to get the job finished. 

“It was quite the effort, a lot of days, but worth it,” stated Haas.

Thaidene Nëné was established in 2019, and it consists of 26,525 sq. kilometres of land northeast of Łutsël Ok’é — together with a nationwide park and territorially protected areas.

Catholique stated sights and sounds from its huge tundra, forest and wetland environments will assist construct an understanding of the animals that stay there, and can assist Łutsel K’e Dene First Nation handle the park within the years to return. 

“Thaidene Nëné is brand new. We don’t have any kind of baseline data with regards to many different things,” she stated. 

The data can assist the group make decisions about the place to hold out land-based studying, stated Catholique. It can even affirm conventional data of the place animals stay, eat and mate, or assist paint an image of how these issues are being modified by local weather, forest hearth and trade, she stated. 

Haas stated the information may also be used to find out about interactions between completely different species. 

“Are there cougars coming into the N.W.T.? Are there boar? So all this information will give us an early idea of how habitats are changing with climate change and hopefully lets us adapt as well,” she stated.

More than one million images

But earlier than the monitoring staff could make sense of the information — it faces an onerous activity. 

The staff retrieved all however 42 of the digicam and recorder units on the finish of the summer season, and now should sift by way of all the photographs and sounds that have been collected. Haas stated there are 1.8 million images alone to take a look at. 

As for the cameras left within the area, Haas stated choices are nonetheless being made about how lengthy to go away them there. One of the largest components it will seemingly rely upon, she stated, is how lengthy their batteries can final. 

Haas estimates it value practically $350,000 to hold out the big challenge in Thaidene Nëné, and that is why a smaller variety of cameras are getting used to assemble information now. She stated a lot of the cash got here from a 2019 Canada Nature Fund funding into areas within the N.W.T. that have been on the verge of turning into protected areas, or have been candidates for defense.

The biodiversity monitoring program has additionally put in cameras and recording units in Ts’udé Nilįné Tuyeta, a protected space west of Fort Good Hope, Edéhzhíe, a candidate protected space within the Dehcho, and Dınàgà Wek’èhodì, a candidate protected space in the northern portion of Great Slave Lake’s north arm.

Haas stated there are additionally cameras exterior of protected areas, close to Sambaa K’e, Norman Wells and Fort Smith.