Population Pockets

[gigantor]

I think the reasoning is that BF is more intelligent than bears or cougars, thus the species requires less offspring...

[Guest]

You've also got SW WA which certainly has sufficient habitat for another population pocket.

And, while around Spokane you have the other large WA human population metropolis, there is a large amount of forest both north and south of it and into Idaho (I grew up around there). The Spokane, Palouse area and Coeur d'Alene indians all had names for BF.

[Guest]

Gigantor,

You mean they refrain from reproducing quickly because they have no need to? More offspring survive if the critter is smart? So the smarter creatures have fewer offspring? No. Pigs be smart and they have many piglets allll at once. And Kangaroos are less smart and have only one......I think nature is not that picky about who it infects, dissects, or dines on. I think it has more to do with body size and gestation and stuff I don't really know about.....?

[Guest]

Knowing lots about children and families, because that's my degree, here's my two cents.

I think hunter gather tribes have children around every 4 - 5 years, after weaning. Because - you cannot be on the move and carry five children under five years old. It is an impossibility. Also, nursing a child to 4 or so gives that child a great head start on a healthy life - and weaned in time to give birth to another baby when the first is 5 years old. Then the five year old can walk and the new baby gets carried. I think apes are similar. However, there are many many things that impact human family size in general. But, in HG societies or very mobile societies, you just cannot haul a ton of babies around. That's why agriculture increased the population - less moving around meant more cultivated food, which meant babies could be popped out sooner - mom wasn't expected to walk 20 miles a day and sleep in temporary shelters - and then you need more hands to work on the fields - leading to more food - leading to more babies... and then it's 2012 and we are in population overshoot with 7 billion humans.

My neighbor has a 2 1/2 year old and twin 3 month olds. If she didn't have a fancy big stroller, there is no way she could move with all those kids in the wild.

How MANY babies bf have - who the heck knows? I'd imagine the spacing of infants would be similar to humans - that 4 - 5 year window. How many die in infancy due to illness? How many succumb to injury as adolescents fooling around, taking risks? How many die of tooth infections? How many die from regular infected injuries? Who knows how long a breeding female is capable and wiling to bear children - we have no idea at what age she starts and how long she lives. Nutrition and food intake obviously also has an impact, on pregnancy and lactation and the ability to feed young (and themselves). Also, with humans, a lot of times, lactation supresses menses, so the chance to get pregnant is less while nursing. Starvation and malnutrition can also suppress menses. Do they have a breeding cycle? Do they get pregnant year round? Do males kill offspring by other males when they take over a troop, like lions do? Do they raise them as their own even if they weren't the father? Do they have a concept of "these are MY children" even? o males have a harem? Or are clans matriarchal, with a male being kept as protector and stud essentially? Since there are no items like possessions or houses (nothing to own, nothing to protect), are children raised as a group after weaning, which is usually mother-child pairs (though not always) or by specific parents? Do all lactating females nurse any child? Are bf pairs long-term partners, short term arrangements or one night stands? Or both? Or do they resemble humans in that respect and the answer is all of the above? What are their family structures like? How they live together and the relationships between them affects so many of the answers to the above questions. And our answer is - we have no idea. We can only speculate.

And the biological idea behind having a litter of babies is that you know you will lose some, so having more means your odds increase to allow at least some of those infants to become adults. Generally, if you have lots of babies/eggs etc, that species is a less involved parent or the babies are left to fend for themselves very early on in life (think baby deer being able to walk within hours etc). Having one baby and raising it intently for many years raises that one child's chances of getting to adulthood for primates.

Like I said, having an education in Child Development and Family Studies and working with preschool children and infants makes me very very curious about the family arrangements of sasquatch. And I met "my" troop at my child's summer camp, so it's doubly curious with the ones I have interacted with specifically. they obviously LIKE kids! Fascinating.

Sorry, I am very garrulous today and feeling very symptomatically ADD. I'm leaving to go to a movie with the kids instead. I look forward to this conversation tonight or tomorrow. Ciao!

Edited November 18, 2012 by madison5716

[BobbyO]

And, while around Spokane you have the other large WA human population metropolis, there is a large amount of forest both north and south of it and into Idaho (I grew up around there). The Spokane, Palouse area and Coeur d'Alene indians all had names for BF.

Yep, the Colville Forest is out that way i believe which is another million plus acres, and the Salmo Priest Wilderness is within it i believe. Norseman will confirm.

Pend Orielle there too.

The State is heaving with decent habitat.

[Guest]

And mountains & relatively uninhabited forest all the way east to Montana until you get to the Plains and north into Canada.

[Guest scooterdad]

Total guess here, but I would think there are ....

1. 5-15 Sasquatches in the Flattops Wilderness area.

2. 5-15 in the Holy Cross Wilderness area.

3. 5- 15 in the Wemincuche (sp) area.

4. 5- 15 in the Southern San Juan Wilderness area.

5. 5 - 15 in the Pikes Peak area.

6. 0 in the eastern CO plains area.

Probably less than 100 grizzlies throughout the entire state...

So is this to say we have 5-6 clans here in Colorado?

I'd assume that there is a more dense population in the holy cross wilderness but who know really.

[Guest COGrizzly]

Scooterdad - Yeh, I'd say more or less. I don't think a family or group of Sasquatch from the Flattops travel/migrate all the way down to the San Juans.

I've got a close friend who harvested 2 elk this year. He is a very very avid hunter. He knows the Sawatch Range (Holy Cross Wilderness) like the back of his hand. He's never seen one, or any sign. On the flip side, a co-worker told me of his hunter friend who saw 2 Sas's 4 or 5 years ago on the south and east side of Holy Cross mtn. Up Homestake Reservoir.

I may be a little low on the numbers. But like you say, who knows?

[BobbyO]

I looked into CO sightings in a specific area pretty extensively a while back as COG knows, just have to get a few things out of the way today and i'll share them.

It's nothing conclusive of course but it is pretty interesting what i found and i believe it was a pattern of movement that has still continued to this very day..

[Guest]

What i want to know is, and i'm talking WA State and small pockets of populations instead of grouping the US all together, if we are to believe for arguments sakes that Derek is on the money give or take 10 either way, is 40 - 50 animals in an approximate 100 mile x 100 mile area enough to keep a healthy breeding population going or would people think ( or know would be better ) that the OP animals would have to have interaction with other " clans " from other parts of WA and also maybe OR in order to keep a healthy breeding population ?

From the the Wikipedia article on Minimum Viable Population (MVP), http://en.wikipedia....able_population, it says:

"An MVP of 500 to 1,000 has often been given as an average for terrestrial vertebrates when inbreeding or genetic variability is ignored.^[3][4] When inbreeding effects are included, estimates of MVP for many species are in the 1,000s. Based on a meta-analysis of reported values in the literature for many species, Traill et al. reported a median MVP of 4,169 individuals."

MVP, by the way,". . . is usually estimated as the population size necessary to ensure between 90 and 95 percent probability of survival between 100 to 1,000 years into the future." (same article).

So, in other words, an isolated population of about 50 probably isn't going to last more than a few generations.

Is this where the rogue male theories come into play possibly ?

Yeah, I'm guessing so. It makes sense biologically. By most accounts Sasq can cover alot of ground if it wants to, even if most family groups hang out in the same "small" area for most of their lives.

Instead of "rogue" males, I'm thinking a natural process where young adult males get kicked out of the home territory when the Old Man can't stand them anymore. Besides, there may be a natural instinct, fairly common in mammals, not to interbreed with your Mom and sisters but to go looking for unknown, unattached and unrelated females. Maybe that's what you meant, BobbyO.

And if that happens just enough, doesn't even have to happen every generation, you could get adequate gene flow between all of these subgroups to make a superpopulation's number possibly meet the MVP.

Anyone know the deal with inbreeding where other Primate species are concerned, such as Gorilla's, Bonobo's, Orang's and Chimps for example ?

I seem to remember the Mountain Gorilla (population somewhere around 1,000), a subspecies of the Eastern Lowland, has always had a very small population because its habitat is small and isolated, and yet has somehow adjusted to this.

I'm curious about that too.

Edited November 19, 2012 by tsiatkoVS

[BobbyO]

Great post ts and thanks, appreciate your input.

I was thinking the same thing regarding what you meant about the rogue males, probably should have put it a little clearer.

I think the " isolated populations " is probably not accurate though however.

For example, of the probable four or five definite core areas of habitat, each era ( in WA anyway ) would be easily fed into another, or at least the Olympic, GP and the North Cascades/Alpine Lakes area, all are close enough together for no probably " troop " to be cut off from an another.

In fact, some research i done on sighting on those exact areas before showed some pretty interesting results, as per the attached.

Look at the 2004 - 2006 years, 0 for the Mount Rainier National Park area and then a jump of sightings on the Olympic Peninsula in that same period.

Pattern of movement ? Maybe.

[Guest]

^Nice charts man! It would be interesting to know if there is a long term decline in sightings and if that translates into a decline in population.

You did ask what would the numbers be “in order to keep a healthy breeding population?†But what if they are going extinct? This species has survived eons by avoiding the best pack hunter on the planet, mankind. And as our population expands and grows we are slowly squeezing them. It’s true we’ve created a lot of wilderness areas here in the west coast national forests and that may be helping them, but those are all high mountainous regions. The low lying farmland/foothill areas are rapidly expanding with McMansions and housing developments and I wonder what effect that has on their wintering habits.

[Guest]

That is interesting, BobbyO. Tho sighting sample size is awfully small that just might be representative of something real - and long range movement seems a real possibility, like you said. Very nice observation.

If years 2005 and 2006 had six or so sightings in the Olympics that would have been an even stronger signal (a lone Mt. Ranier male finally settling down to regular family life so he drops off the radar too in 2005 and 2006 in the Olympics?).

I've never been to WA so I can't ground-truth this, but isn't there a fair amount of urban/cropland between Mt. Ranier and the Olympics?

Are you thinking this could be a lone young male moving really far, or a group?

The low lying farmland/foothill areas are rapidly expanding with McMansions and housing developments and I wonder what effect that has on their wintering habits.

If pre-European habitat and food sources were bigger it would make sense that Sasquatch populations have contracted since their arrival. But modern humans have been here for possibly as long as Sasquatches. If a NA tribe took over the local river valley a thousand years ago, it may not have mattered much to the Sasquatches which modern human group crowded it out and hogged all the good resources.

And there's a plausible argument that Sasquatch numbers could be increasing in the last hundred years or so: the survivors' ancestors may have gone through a population bottleneck of Euro-Asian diseases 150 years ago and the indiscriminate killing of large prey and cutting down of forests. And that indiscriminate shooting of animals probably included Sasquatches too, tho I don't have a good feel for that trend, but it would make sense that it is less nowadays. Sighting reports have certainly increased, (tho other factors enter that equation like cultural acceptance of existence, etc).

Their numbers may have roughly paralleled that of Native Americans. Once the survivors with disease resistence got established, prey animals like deer have come back and managed secondary growth (like in SE Oklahoma) started to provide just enough cover.

All speculation, of course, and there is the question, like you mention, of local loss of things like wintering grounds of elk and such (which is an issue here in Colorado).

Edited November 19, 2012 by tsiatkoVS

[BobbyO]

That is interesting, BobbyO. Tho sighting sample size is awfully small that just might be representative of something real - and long range movement seems a real possibility, like you said. Very nice observation.

If years 2005 and 2006 had six or so sightings in the Olympics that would have been an even stronger signal (a lone Mt. Ranier male finally settling down to regular family life so he drops off the radar too in 2005 and 2006 in the Olympics?).

I've never been to WA so I can't ground-truth this, but isn't there a fair amount of urban/cropland between Mt. Ranier and the Olympics?

Are you thinking this could be a lone young male moving really far, or a group?

All speculation, of course, and there is the question, like you mention, of local loss of things like wintering grounds of elk and such (which is an issue here in Colorado).

I haven't a clue with regards to the what's and why's of it, i just saw it ( the MR drop off of sightings, then the 6 in that first year in the Olympics ) and thought it was interesting.

That's only from the BFRO database bear in mind.

I know i keep threatening to share this CO research that i've done but i have been busy, will get round to it and add it soon and it has MUCH more to it than the WA stuff i shared and i was intrigued with what i was actually finding that i even went and bought some Elk & Deer migration overlay's on Google Earth which just gave me confirmation of my theories that are beyond cool, trust me..

Oh and ts, no issue in my opinion from animals getting to the Olympic Peninsula to the Mount Rainier/ Gifford Pinchot area or viceversa, and don't worry, i've checked the only obstacle, right here below..

http://bigfootforums...a-interstate-5/

Oregon Man, i can get that info on the long term decline in sightings and put it into chart form.

I've already got the previous decade form what i just showed to, for all of the 4/5 core areas i talk about.

Here's the 2 we're currently talking about, so this gives you 20 ish years.

[Explorer]

Neat findings BobbyO!

I agree with TS that the sample sizes are small and do not represent the true population, but this is what we got to work with.

One suggestion on finding patterns on migration is to put the time series for each of the wilderness areas that you have segregated for Washington (or CO) in Excel and then generate a correlation coefficient matrix.

Negative CC between time series will tell you that when one is going up the other is going down.

Positive CC between time series wil tell you that the both increase at the same time (again this is tricky and could be due to TV shows creating more reports).

Zero CC shows that the movements are not correlated. Could be random or independent.

To generate reliable CC you need lots of data, so add as many years as you can.

One way to stretch the data points is to convert the time series from sightings per year into sightings per month or per quarter.

Correlation is not evidence of causation, but it can support you hypothesis of migration patterns.

Excel has this CC function, and Crystal Ball creates the full matrix for all your time series (I think you had over 8 wilderness areas in WA?).