Why researchers are nuts for Yukon’s ‘squirrel camp’

Andrea Wishart tells people she chases squirrels for a living.

She’s usually half-joking — a University of Saskatchewan Ph.D. tyro has spent months tracking and watching a tiny rodents during “squirrel camp,” also famous as the Kluane Red Squirrel Project. It’s a tiny though renowned research camp at a feet of a Saint Elias mountains, alongside a Alaska Highway in Yukon.

‘I’m preoccupied with how animals correlate with their environments and conduct their possess resources,’ says Andrea Wishart, a PhD tyro now during squirrel camp. (Cheryl Kawaja/CBC)

“Obviously, there’s many some-more to what we do than only regulating around a timberland looking during tiny tree rodents,” Wishart said. “But I’m preoccupied with how animals correlate with their environments and conduct their possess resources.”

The Kluane Red Squirrel Project — launched 31 years ago — is a partnership between 5 universities: McGill, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Guelph and Michigan. It allows students and researchers to live on site and investigate a tiny animals in their natural habitat.

The camp’s doormat reads — what else? — “Welcome to a nuthouse.”

Data collected during a stay over a years has strew light on everything from squirrels’ “personality” and amicable behaviour to their sex lives.

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“We know everybody who’s lived here; we know who’s associated to who, how mostly they’ve bred, who they’ve given birth to, who they corresponding with — all of that information,” pronounced Zach Fogel, a comparison technician during a camp.

Data collected during a investigate stay over a years has strew light on red squirrel habits and behaviour. (Andrea Wishart)

Wishart’s research concentration is on a squirrel’s caching behaviour — how they stockpile food. She’s even collared some animals with “squirrel Fitbits” to assistance lane their movement. 

“They fundamentally have tiny addresses in the timberland that we can predictably find a same animal at, and they will stay during that domain for roughly their whole life,” she said.

Wishart says a ancestral data, collected over decades, is invaluable.

“I consider we’re adult to over 400 people that have been ‘squirrellers’, or technicians, on a project. It’s a lot of people — tons and tons of researchers,” she said.

“There’s been influences in all kinds of opposite fields of investigate during this point, regulating squirrels as a indication system. And some of a questions have been unequivocally squirrel-specific — ‘why do squirrels privately do what they do?’ — but a broader context of it is bargain how animals work in a furious environment.”

‘Really cold village atmosphere’

Rodent investigate is not for everyone — even if a rodents are lovable and bushy-tailed — though for a biologists during squirrel camp, life doesn’t get many better.

“I unequivocally adore it,” Fogel said. “You know, there’s — in my opinion — something to be pronounced for being outward all a time and only kind of a tiny bit unwashed all a time. You know, my hands constantly have rubbed-in dirt, and we can’t apparently showering that often.”

‘There’s a unequivocally cold village atmosphere, we know. We have family cooking any night where no matter how bustling people are with work,’ says investigate technician Zach Fogel. (Cheryl Kawaja/CBC)

But what creates a stay many special, he says, is a comraderie among scientists. 

“In general, everybody helps any other out a lot. There’s a unequivocally cold village atmosphere, we know, we have family cooking any night where no matter how bustling people are with work,” Fogel said.

Kiley Chernicky agrees. She’s been operative with Wishart, tagging, trapping and collaring squirrels, and counting pinecones. 

Unlike a squirrels, Chernicky is not in her healthy habitat. It’s her first time in a boreal forest. 

“It was a prolonged approach for me to come. we indeed gathering adult from Florida to Saskatoon, and afterwards took a moody from Saskatoon to Whitehorse,” Chernicky said.

“The interactions that we have with a other scientists here, a volume of believe and theories that are bounced off of any other — it’s positively incredible.”

Wishart in a margin with Kiley Chernicky, who came from Florida to work during squirrel camp. (Cheryl Kawaja/CBC)

Article source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/yukon-squirrel-camp-kluane-research-1.4280012?cmp=rss