In January, the entire group of trainees got together in Plainfield, Massachusetts for the second installment of the training program – an evening class and then a day in the field.

Evening class before the full day in the field.

January 15. 17 new trackers in training.

What is the Berkshire Wildlife Trackers Monitoring Program?

How are BWT wildlife monitors trained?

What’s happening now at Berkshire Wildlife Trackers?

Becoming Part Of The Berkshire Wildlife Tracker Team

Apply to become a wildlife monitor with Berkshire Wildlife Trackers.

What is the Berkshire Wildlife Trackers Monitoring Program?

Berkshire Wildlife Trackers (BWT) is hosted by Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT) and Berkshire Natural Resource Council (BNRC). This group of volunteers has been trained to read the woods and other natural habitats for tracks and signs of wildlife. These trained wildlife monitors go out in small teams to collect data that tells a story of how wildlife species use the natural areas of Berkshire County and the surrounding areas. The team maintains a database of the information collected and shares this data with scientists, educators, government agencies, and environmental organizations to help protect wildlife species and important wildlife habitat and linkages in the region.

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How Are Berkshire Keeping Track Wildlife Monitors Trained?

BEAT and BNRC contract with Keeping Track® to provide an exciting and intensive training for the trackers. The training includes two days in the classroom and six full-day training workshops in the field. Most of the training is done on weekends, and the training is spread out over a year so that trainees have tracking experience in all seasons.

The training sessions are run by nationally recognized naturalist, habitat identification specialist, and photographer Sue Morse of Keeping Track®, who trains trackers in the use of a scientifically-based data collection methodology so that they can document their field observations using a protocol that is useful to environmental scientists and others who regularly use this type of data.

Training includes: detection and interpretation of tracks and signs of agreed upon focal species for the Berkshires, conservation biology and how it relates to data collection and land protection, forest ecology and plant identification and what it tells us about how Berkshire species use local habitat, ‘search imaging’ (Sue Morse’s technique for predictably looking in the right places and finding wildlife signs), and an introduction to science-based field studies.

Our next class begins in October. Application to join the team.

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What’s Happening Now At Berkshire Wilderness Trackers?

Berkshire Wildlife Trackers is now looking for volunteers to form a third group of 18 to be trained for the monitoring program. Training will start in October 2010. On September 22, Sue Morse of Keeping Track® will be in the Berkshires to present her program Bobcats, Mountain Lions, Moose and More. This will be a great opportunity for anyone wanting to learn more about the training program.

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Becoming Part Of The Berkshire Wildlife Trackers Team

Our third group of monitors will begin training in October of 2010. Would you like to take action to ensure that wildlife always has a place in and around the Berkshires? If so, please consider joining the program. Application.

If you would like to be trained to be a Berkshire Wildlife Tracker, here are a few things to consider:

• To complete the training you must be able to be outside in the cold and snow all day.
• You must be able to hike up and down uneven terrain. (The group moves very slowly, looking at track and sign, so the pace is not strenuous.)
• You will be asked to commit to approximately one day per month for training, and about the same for monitoring for at least two years. Training and monitoring are on weekends. Schedule: 2010-2011.
• You will be asked to pay part of the cost of training. The cost to BEAT of training a wildlife monitor is about $1,200. Trainees are asked to pay $450 of this cost, plus the cost of staying overnight in Vermont for three of the trainings. If you are enthusiastic about the prospect of a local wildlife monitoring group and willing to make the commitment to training and annual monitoring but money is an issue, please talk to the BWT coordinator about the cost. Some assistance may be available. If you cannot afford the entire amount, are you willing to help raise the money?

Have questions? – Please, first take a look at the Keeping Track® website for more information about the training.

Still interested? – Then please contact the BWT coordinator.

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photo by David Ellis, one of the Berkshire Wildlife Trackers

Berkshire Wildlife Trackers (BWT) is hosted by Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT) and Berkshire Natural Resource Council (BNRC). This group of volunteers has been trained to read the woods and other natural habitats for tracks and signs of wildlife. These trained wildlife monitors go out in small teams to collect data that tells a story of how wildlife species use the natural areas of Berkshire County and the surrounding areas.  On September 22, 2010 Susan Morse from Keeping Track® will present another impressive slide show on wildlife of the northeast (see related story) and we will organize another group of volunteers to be trained by Keeping Track®.

If you think you might be interested in training to become a Berkshire Wildlife Tracker, more information can be found here.

Black Bear Cub photo by Susan Morse

Bobcats, Mountain Lions, Moose, and More:

Wildlife Slide Show
with Susan Morse of
Keeping Track®

photographer, naturalist, &
habitat identification specialist
with more than 30 years
of tracking experience

See amazing photos of mammals in the wild
Hear mammal calls and answers to your questions
Get a feel for the daily lives of wildlife in our region
Learn how you can discover & interpret more wildlife sign

Wednesday, September 22, 2010, 6:30 to 8:30pm

St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, 67 East St. (use entrance on Allen St.)

Pittsfield, MA
$5 Donation at the door appreciated

Please sign up on-line so we know how many people to expect

Have you ever seen an animal track while walking in the woods and wondered what animal made it? Wouldn’t it be nice to know, not only what animal made it, but where they might have been going and what they might have been looking for? If you’ve had these sorts of thoughts, wouldn’t it be even better if you knew the answers to these questions would help save the land that animal needs to survive? That is just what nationally recognized naturalist and habitat identification specialist, Susan Morse of Keeping Track® can teach you to do.

Bobcat in the grassland photo by Susan C Morse

Susan Morse returns with another incomparable Wildlife Slide Show with an emphasis on our cats – Bobcat and Mountain Lion – but including many of our other large mammals here in the northeast – Bear, Moose, Fisher, and many more.

Join us September 22 from 6:30 to 8:30 pm at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, 67 East St (use the Allen St. entrance), Pittsfield, MA (see google map for parking and location).

Susan Morse, a nationally recognized naturalist and habitat specialist, will dazzle you with a slide show of her spectacular wildlife photos and an interactive talk on the biology and ecology of these mammals. Morse uses humor and personal anecdotes to impress on wildlife enthusiasts of all sorts the importance of landscape-level planning to protect wildlife habitat and corridors. Sue’s research has focused on cougar, bobcat, black bear, and Canada lynx.

Trackers in snow photo by Susan C Morse

Keeping Track^® was founded by Susan Morse in 1994 to teach adults and children how to observe, interpret, record, and monitor evidence of wildlife in their local communities. Sue coaches each team to include people with diverse interests. A team may have hunters and vegetarians, birders and trappers. While cooperating to gather data on local wildlife, each team develops a network of understanding that encourages collaboration and land use solutions beneficial to wildlife as well as humans.

Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT) is looking for eighteen people who want to get out doors, have fun, and work hard to protect our wildlands by joining the Berkshire Wildlife Trackers program.  Participants sign on for six full-day training workshops in the field plus two classroom sessions. During the training, the following issues are addressed: detection and interpretation of tracks and sign of agreed upon focal species for your region (bear, moose, bobcat, fisher, mink, and otter), conservation biology as it relates to data collection and resulting land protection, forest ecology and plant identification as they relate to mammal uses of habitat, ‘search imaging’ – Sue Morse’s technique for predictably looking in the right places and finding sign, and an introduction to science-based field studies. The Keeping Track Project and Data Management Protocol is distributed to all trackers, to serve as the manual for developing a monitoring program and provide standards for data collection.

Whitetail Deer Scent Marking photo by Susan C Morse

Tracking teams usually make their data available to local and regional organizations so that planning, conservation, development, and road construction decisions can be based on these scientifically gathered facts. During the last several years, 2500 acres of habitat were conserved  in Northwestern Vermont because Keeping Track’s monitoring program shared data and collaborated with a dozen state and community-based organizations.

Keeping Track and Berkshire Wildlife Tracking are citizen-science programs. “By engaging people in monitoring their local wildlife, Morse turns the notoriously abstract issues of biodiversity and habitat fragmentation into an earthy, firsthand relationship with wild animals on their home turf” says Audubon magazine.

During the Wildlife Slide Show, participants will hear about Keeping Track’s Wildlife Monitoring Training program and have an opportunity to join the Berkshire Wildlife Trackers group that will start training in October.

Sue Morse and Keeping Track^® have been featured in: National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” and in magazines such as Smithsonian, Audubon, The Nature Conservancy, the National Wildlife Federation’s Ranger Rick, Adirondack Life, Vermont Life, Orion, and Wild Earth. Her photography and life work are featured in The Woods Scientist, part of the Houghton Mifflin Company’s “Scientist in the Field” series.

Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT) and Berkshire Natural Resources Council are hosting this event. A $5 donation at the door is requested.  More information about Berkshire Wildlife Tracking can be found here or by contacting BEAT at team@thebeatnews.org or 413-230-7321.

9:30 AM to 3:30 PM –  9:00 AM sign-in
$30 per person – registration required
Doyle Conservation Center, Leominster, MA

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Susan Morse from Keeping Track®

Plus presentations on a wide variety of wildlife topics
See the agenda and biographies on the Northeast Wildlife Trackers  Conference Details page

Reserve your space at the conference to:

• Find out how fellow trackers have been using wildlife tracking in their work
• Renew friendships and share your experiences
• See exhibits about other tracking-related resources

Please bring your own bag lunch. Coffee and bagels available at sign-in. Drinks and snacks provided.

Register through Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT):  Online or by mail.

Lynn Levine, co-author of Mammal Tracks and Scat, recently  dubbed “The Scat Lady” by a group of fourth graders, gave a fascinating  presentation on scat and tracks and how to interpret them.  We sat in a circle and passed carefully preserved scat around for all to examine. Lynn has a collection of scat from 27 different species – from mouse to mountain lion. We looked at spherical scat – both round like rabbits and hares leave behind, as well as elongated that animals from chipmunks to deer and moose leave. Not to mention cylindrical poop which comes in pointed, broken, twisted, blunt, and miscellaneous categories. We compared scat of animals including bear, fox,  mountain lion, grouse, and turkey – among others.

Lynn also demonstrated the way different animals leave characteristic track patterns – for example, many animals when walking only leave clear prints of the hind foot because they step with the hind foot exactly on top of where the front foot had been.

This program was presented by Berkshire Wildlife Trackers, Berkshire Environmental Action Team, and Berkshire Natural Resources Council.

Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT) is partnering with Berkshire Natural Resources Council to continue to host Berkshire Wildlife Trackers whose volunteer wildlife monitors are trained by Susan Morse, founder and director of Keeping Track® in Jericho, Vermont. We are currently looking for volunteers who may be interested in taking the intensive Keeping Track® training of 6 very full days scattered from October 2010 to April 2011.  More information about this training can be found here.