Cameras Looking for Wildlife on the Trail

Sterling Meyers writes in the 10 February 2008 Washington Times under the headline "Cameras to aid in trail preservation" about the effort to document wildlife along the Appalachian Trail with 50 digital cameras on loan from the National Park Service. The cameras are equipped with infrared heat sensors that trip the shutter when a warm body passes by. A target of special interest is the elusive and possibly extinct eastern cougar.

Cameras Hunting for Wildlife

The Maryland Daily Record (of Baltimore) has an 8 February 2008 Associated Press article titled "Hunting for proof" that reports the Mega-Transect's use of automated cameras to try to document the populations of large mammals -- specifically the eastern cougar -- along the Appalachian Trail.

Cameras Being Placed Again This Year

Hannah Northey has an article in the Harrisonburg (VA) Daily News Record of 30 January 2008 titled "Scientists, Volunteers Use Cameras In Hunt For Big Mammals; Photos May Document Whether Cougars Live Along Appalachian Trail." In short,

"For the second consecutive year, about 100 volunteers in Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland will photograph animals in the spring with infrared cameras along a 570-mile stretch of the Appalachian Trail. The section to be monitored runs from the southern border of Virginia to the northern tip of Maryland, including parts of Rockingham, Page and Augusta counties.

"The program, headed by William McShea, a wildlife ecologist with the Smithsonian Institution's National Zoological Park, is designed to protect large mammals that have been understudied."

As a part of the second year of the Mega-Transect study of the Appalachian Trail, finding evidence of large mammals is only part of the show.

Looking for Lions in Shenandoah

The project to take a census of predators in the Shenandoah -- and possibly confirm the existence there of mountain lions -- is briefly described in the Charlottesville, VA 'Daily Progress' of 15 May 2007 under the headline "On the prowl for a mystery." Specifically,

"A group of volunteers and research scientists last month began installing infrared cameras at 350 sites near the Appalachian Trail in Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland to try to capture images of predators."

And so on.

Mega Transect Article

Another copy of the Associated Press Roanoke Times article about using motion cameras to inventory to carnivores along the Appalachian Trail as part of the "mega-transect" appears in the Newport News (VA) Daily Press on 17 February 2007.

"The all-volunteer survey is a cooperative effort between the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service and the Smithsonian Institution." {Although I don't see the Smithsonian's logo on the ATC's page of partners, where there are quite a few others besides the ones mentioned in this article.}