Often, when we hear the word “bycatch” our minds go to fisheries. Countless studies outline the wasted fishery resources of marine bycatch: dolphins and sea turtles tangled in nets, sharks hooked where they should not be, the dangers of trawling and bringing up bottom-dwellers that will only be discarded once they’ve been sorted through. For conservationists and animal-lovers, the word bycatch, leaves a bitter taste in our mouths. That being said, bycatch has a totally different (and much more positive) meaning in the context of camera trapping.
Camera trapping is a noninvasive method of sampling the distribution of different species. This means that researchers don't typically have direct contact with the animals they’re studying, which lessens the influence that the presence of researchers (i.e., humans) have on their study species. Throughout the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest, Marie and I have set up numerous cameras to “catch” carnivores (on candid camera) in order to see who lives where and in what abundance. Marie and I are targeting small carnivores with our camera traps, like weasels and skunks! Anything our cameras pick up that are not our target species are considered camera trap bycatch. Let’s take a quick look at some of our most frequent and unexpected visitors:
Black Bears: These two black bears wandered into our camera trap site, brought there by the smell of cat food we’d left out to attract smaller carnivores. After batting the cat food off of the tree, the mama bear crunched through the lid and licked the can clean. She has a yearling with her as well, the charismatic critter to the left. Black bear cubs often stay with their mothers until they are mature, when they are around 2 years old.
Flying Squirrels: We often catch flying squirrels whose trees we set with bait. We have many pictures of them scampering up and down the massive trunks of H. J. Andrews. Curious as they are cute, flying squirrels rarely stop to sample our bait, but they do like to poke around before they make their way back up the trees.
Turkey Vultures: These large birds are, we believe, attracted to our more open baiting areas by the stinky smell of aging cat food. We have many pictures of turkey vultures picking at the cat food cans in hopes of removing the lids with their strong beaks. Why would they be attracted to such a horrible smell? Turkey vultures do humans the great service of cleaning up carcasses and keeping disease from spreading. They have to have an amazing sense of smell to locate dead animals to eat, and so it doesn’t surprise us that they find our cat food cans.
These are just a few species that we catch in H. J. Andrews—can you guess what else we find on our camera traps when we’re least expecting it? Comment below and we’ll let you know if you’re correct!