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  • In the North Cascades ecosystem we have a rare opportunity to host

  • the full complement of native carnivores

  • If you don't have a top predators

  • suddenly you find you have an overpopulation

  • of ungulates for example elk and deer that they might

  • feed upon. My name is Roger

  • Christophersen and I work as a wildlife biologist here North Cascades National

  • Park

  • It's a scent lure

  • that will call in or attract

  • black bears. Actually we get a lot of other carnivores

  • I should just say carnivores in general. It's not so bad [smells terrible!!!]

  • This is the hard part.

  • [There are] primarily three ingredients

  • cattle blood, fish

  • fertilizer, and fish oil and then it cooks for like a month

  • in the sun and it gets really "odiferous!"

  • Carnivores have wide-ranging territories

  • and they need to move across the landscape

  • to promote genetic flow. (Reading instrument)

  • 944 meters yeah okay 944 meters to go

  • We made it

  • So we're at this site

  • and we're going to off-load some gear and

  • set up a bear corral which is basically just a

  • box around

  • four or five trees that we can set up a barbed wire

  • system to snag some bear hair. You increase your odds at getting hair

  • if you spread these apart a little bit. Our next step

  • is to build this debris pile in the center of the corral

  • Okay this is what we call a remote

  • digital camera and it's

  • triggered by motion and heat. Okay now we're going to pour this

  • scent lure and the idea is again to

  • attract the bear into this site. We got this debris pile and it might think that

  • there's some kind of

  • dead animal or a carcass underneath and they become curious and then

  • sniff it out. Meanwhile might get a photo of the animal

  • and hopefully it leaves behind a tuft of hair on the barbed wire.

  • We can extract DNA from the hair samples that we collect.

  • And we can sort of see

  • who is related to who and how distant that relationship is or how close it is.

  • So imagine you have the highway here and you have a north side and a south side.

  • And if these two populations are very distant,

  • for example, genetically that might

  • suggest that this highway acts as a barrier

  • They're not getting the genetic exchange that they need

  • Carnivores are

  • at the top of the food chain. They are the major predators

  • and having them all intact

  • makes for a complete, whole, ecosystem

  • and it keeps things in check, keeps things in balance

  • It's just a legacy I want to leave behind

  • It's a personal legacy to leave these places at least the way I found them

  • so that my nieces and nephews and your

  • children in the next generation can at least experience and see

  • what I saw.

In the North Cascades ecosystem we have a rare opportunity to host

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