What do garden gnomes, Chicago's coyotes, and three women with cameras have in common?
The answer lies in a fascinating new study and the announcement that we won a National Geographic Expeditions Council Grant! (Cue the balloons falling from the ceiling!)
In one week, the NHUC team flies to Chicago to begin some truly exciting work with Dr. Stan Gehrt, Associate Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Wildlife Extension Specialist at The Ohio State University, and Chair of the Center for Wildlife Research at the Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation. If you've ever run across a news story about Chicago's urban coyotes, you've probably heard Dr. Gehrt's name mentioned.
As the lead of the longest running urban coyote research project, Dr. Gehrt is known as the world’s foremost expert on this wily city canid, and he has graciously let us team up with him on a two-pronged study to be conducted this summer.
We are helping him explore the personality and boldness of urban coyotes, and we're doing some innovative camera trapping tests along the way. Needless to say, we are super excited.
What we're studying
How does a coyote's individual personality play a role in their colonization of an area? Does the culture of a city shape the psyche of the coyote within it? Answering these questions is essential to minimizing human-coyote conflicts.
Dr. Gehrt’s team has continuously monitored coyotes in the Chicago metropolitan area since 2000. So far, they have marked over 900 individual coyotes, and typically are monitoring 50-60 radio-collared coyotes year-round. The team has looked at coyotes as a group, and one thing has been made clear: one coyote is not necessarily like another. That's where this grant research comes in.
We will be looking at individuality using both genetics and behavioral observation. We'll be placing novel objects (this is where the garden gnomes come in!) within the home range of radio-collared coyotes and recording their reactions on camera. The results will be added to what we know about each coyote, including their movement patterns, food habits and so on to develop an overall personality profile for each coyote.
The goal is to determine if there is a link between these behaviors and genetic markers associated with similar behaviors. Our exploration into the personality and genetic linkages within urban coyotes is the first of its kind.
A second objective to our work is to evaluate the reliability of remote cameras for describing coyote movements and habitat use, especially in developed areas. We'll set up remote cameras in strategic locations and compare camera "captures" with the patterns recorded from the coyotes' GPS collars. The results will provide useful information for any wildlife-monitoring program that relies on camera trap surveys.
We'll be clicking away with our cameras to provide editorial-quality images of urban coyotes that will not only illuminate nuances of behavior, but also create compelling photographs that spark the curiosity of the public.
How you can help
We are most definitely pinching ourselves. National Geographic! Working with the world's foremost coyote expert! The grant gives us a lot and we absolutely need it to do this interesting and very fun work.
However, it does not cover a day rate, which is what a photographer relies on as a pay check to cover the bills waiting back at home like rent, utilities and so on. And it is also specific to Chicago, while our NHUC project as a whole takes us to cities all over the continent.
To help keep us rolling forward in between exciting grants and to (quite literally) keep the lights on, we are raising funds through the International League of Conservation Photographers, a non-profit organization representing some of the most exceptional conservation photographers in the field.
Your donation will directly fund our work in the field. You'll be helping three women who really, really love what they do. You'll be helping urban coyotes and people living around urban coyotes. You'll be helping us get to other cities like San Francisco, Denver, New York or maybe even yours. No matter where you live, there's a good chance you've got coyotes in the 'hood, and our project aims to help everyone figure out how to get along.
Another bonus: As a non-profit, donations made through iLCP are tax-deductible. YAY!
Make a tax-deductible donation
We deeply appreciate any donation, no matter how small. And you wouldn't want to let this little cutie down would you?
(I know, we're shameless.)
Meanwhile, stay tuned for updates from the field! And yes, that includes more coyote pups!
