We are officially in skunkapalooza!
Since late August, we have been catching skunks left and right and a few weasels from the HJA and the surrounding Willamette National Forest. Our tally is up to a total of 1 short-tailed weasel, 1 long-tailed weasel, and 21 western spotted skunks! We successfully recaptured all of the skunks we had captured last fall and spring, and we refitted these skunks with shiny new VHF (very high frequency) collars. In addition, we have 10 new skunks on air! Unfortunately, we have also documented 1 short-tailed weasel mortality and 4 western spotted skunk mortalities (shown in parentheses below).
This fall, we are also trying out some micro-GPS collars. These GPS collars are slightly bigger at 20 g, so we can only put these collars on large males. A good rule of thumb is that tracking devices should never be more than 5% of an animal's body weight. If a collar is more than 5% of an animal's body weight, there is a high probability that the collar will alter an animal's behavior. A collar that is too heavy may mean that the animal cannot move as well, which could result in loss of body weight, a smaller home range, or a higher mortality rate. Thus, any information we learn about the animals with heavy collars may not be representative of the rest of the spotted skunk population.
We have programmed these micro-GPS collars to attempt a fix location every 30 minutes at night and every 4 hours during the day. This will allow us to map in detail the movement and activity patterns of male spotted skunks. These collars also have remote download capability, so we're hoping that we can download these locations when we're able to find the rest sites during the day!