Ideal Bigfoot Conditions?

[Guest PAKid]

What in your opinion are ideal bigfoot living habitats? This thread is meant to be opinionated, so do not start fighting. I would just like you know what YOU think is an ideal bigfoot habitat.

Thanks,

PAKid

[Guest gershake]

Just an OT to say that I'm glad that I misunderstood this thread's title... I thought this was about ideal bigfoot corpse conditions... Proceed everyone

[Guest Lesmore]

Hard to answer as it could vary considerably.

Ostensibly BF lives in all sorts of climes from the balmy PNW...to the cold of the Boreal forests and Canadian Shield in Mb and NW Ontario...Florida....to Boggy Creek...wherever that may be .

Some say Yeti is a BF...cold up in the upper reaches of the Himalayan mountain range.

Possibly, if BF does exist...it may be like a human...they have adapted....to widely ranging habitats.

[Guest]

Hard to answer as it could vary considerably.

Probably not. PAKid is asking for opinions about ideal habitat, not acceptable habitats. In relatively recent years, ecologists have come to recognize that a organism's habitat can be divided into sources and sinks (http://en.wikipedia....-Pulliam-1988-1). Source habitats are those where conditions are such that the birth rate exceeds the death rate; as such, source habitats are net exporters of individuals, who then migrate into acceptable, but suboptimal, sink habitats. The vast majority of an organism's range could well be sink habitat.

I suggest rephrasing PAKid's request for opinions about ideal habitat, to a request for opinions about source habitat. I assume source habitat would have the highest population densities (of the animal of interest), thus would likely be the easiest locations to have an encounter.

Pteronarcyd

Edited February 28, 2011 by Pteronarcyd

[Huntster]

What in your opinion are ideal bigfoot living habitats?

Very wet (200" per year precipitation or more), not too cold (below 60 degrees latitude and 5,000 feet in elevation), montane (mountainous), coastal, and densely forested.

In short, the Pacific Northwest from San Francisco Bay north to Yakutat, Alaska, and as far eastward to the Pacific side of the next major mountain range (Cascades in the U.S. and Rockies in Canada).

Their range extends from there, but mostly now as a peripheral range. I suspect they're going extinct, and as such, will likely be most concentrated in the last refuge of the above range, and the most remote of it to boot.

[Guest]

I suspect they're going extinct ....

Why do you suspect that?

[Guest TooRisky]

3 of the 5 are the very basics for any creatures survival.... Food, Shelter, and water.... 4 would be, IMHO, being hidden deep enough so as not to be messed with by man... And the 5th would be favorable temps that do not get to hot or cold for the survival of the young...

[Guest Knuck]

A farm, with several ponds. (Some stocked with fish.) A small neighborhood adjacent to the farm. Several rural residences surounding this. Heavy patches of woods, and fields surrounding this. And a few Sas friendly humans. -Ideal habitat. -Knuck

[Huntster]

Huntster, on 27 February 2011 - 08:48 PM, said:

I suspect they're going extinct ....

Why do you suspect that?

1) It appears that their densities were never really high, even in ideal habitat (for example, like black bear populations)

2) Despite human encroachment into their prime habitat, we still haven't come upon or actually kill a specimen

3) There has been no good quality photographic evidence since the Patterson event

4) Great ape populations worldwide are in decline

5) Old growth forests of the PNW that appear to be their ideal habitat have largely been cut down/altered

[Guest]

1) It appears that their densities were never really high, even in ideal habitat (for example, like black bear populations)

2) Despite human encroachment into their prime habitat, we still haven't come upon or actually kill a specimen

3) There has been no good quality photographic evidence since the Patterson event

4) Great ape populations worldwide are in decline

5) Old growth forests of the PNW that appear to be their ideal habitat have largely been cut down/altered

In response I'll respectfully disagree.

1) We have no clear idea of Bigfoot population numbers. We're all just guessing and surmising BASED on other large mammal data.

2)Considering all the reports across North America, It also appears at least circumstancially Bigfoot has no problem moving in closer to urban areas, remaining undetected.As far as killing one, the opportunity has presented itself many times. The shot has yet to be taken in most cases, due to the unexpected "Human Quality".

3)You got me there!!

4)Assuming it is indeed a "Great Ape" yet to be proven.

5)With the sheer amount of territory in North America (Canada included) the loss of habitat in some regions wouldn't automatically be a death-knoll. Bigfoot based on casted tracks seem to have already demonstrated an ability to cover huge areas over time. Even in one time sightings Bigfoot has consistantly demonstrated an amazing mobility, swiftness in covering difficult terrain. Bigfoot has also demonstrated displeasure in habitat loss, but also doesn't stay in an area that has been clearcut. If it didn't move along,

I'd expect to have seen skinny, angry, starving sasquatch pictures taken on fairly naked mountaintops.

Of course I'm not expecting you to agree with me. I am however basing my observations on reported behavior. Whether this behavior is abberrant or mistaken is also up for speculation.

Edited for (sp)

Edited February 28, 2011 by grayjay

[southernyahoo]

Probably not. PAKid is asking for opinions about ideal habitat, not acceptable habitats. In relatively recent years, ecologists have come to recognize that a organism's habitat can be divided into sources and sinks (http://en.wikipedia....-Pulliam-1988-1). Source habitats are those where conditions are such that the birth rate exceeds the death rate; as such, source habitats are net exporters of individuals, who then migrate into acceptable, but suboptimal, sink habitats. The vast majority of an organism's range could well be sink habitat.

I suggest rephrasing PAKid's request for opinions about ideal habitat, to a request for opinions about source habitat. I assume source habitat would have the highest population densities (of the animal of interest), thus would likely be the easiest locations to have an encounter.

Pteronarcyd

Good points, some sink habitats might also be considered hunting grounds that are periodicly visited. Repeated sightings in such areas might actually be good places to look for sign / evidence since they would likely be smaller and the evidence more concentrated.

[Guest]

Can the BFRO encounters database help us get an idea of what might be bigfoot source habitat? Let's see.

First, any analysis using the BFRO data is fraught with problems. Not all potential encounters are reported there (or reported at all), not all reports are published, it's almost certain that not all reports are valid, and those reports that are reported there are almost certainly not a random sample of the universe of possible reports. Thus, any extrapolations from the database are most certainly not statistically valid. Having said all this, allow me to proceed for giggles and laughs.

Hunster suggests that ideal (i.e., source) habitat might be the Pacific Northwest from norther CA to AK. The public BFRO database shows the number of reports for each state or province within that range as follows:

• CA -- 425
• OR -- 227
• WA -- 507
• BC -- 120
• AK -- 22.

WA, CA, and OR have the highest numbers of any states or provinces, which seems to confirm Hunster's hypothesis in part. If we use raw number of reports as an initial screen in a search for the most squatchy habitats, I'd say WA, CA, and OR make the cut, but let's leave BC and AK in for now.

To refine the search, area and human population should be taken into account. Given two areas with an equal number of reports, the smaller area would seem the more squatchy, and the area with the lower human population (i.e., fewer eyes and ears to detect encounters) would seem the more squatchy. Using 2000 US Census data for the states and Wikipedia data for BC, the report density (reports/mi²) for each jurisdiction is calculated to reveal the following:

• CA -- 0.002725
• OR -- 0.002365
• WA -- 0.007615
• BC -- 0.000336
• AK -- 0.000038.

WA, CA, and OR again take the lead, with BC and AK falling far behind.

Human population is taken into account by dividing the number of reports by population, which yields the following:

• CA -- 0.000013
• OR -- 0.000066
• WA -- 0.000086
• BC -- 0.000027
• AK -- 0.000035.

Here the top three jurisdictions are WA, OR, and AK.

Interestingly, the number of reports per area seems to provide far greater information than does the number of reports per human population. The ratio of the largest to smallest value of the former is about 200, while the ratio of the same for the latter is a mere 7. One might interpret the relative consistency of the latter as showing the proportion of crazy people being roughly the same along the left coast from CA up to AK; but, because CA would be judged as the most sane of the five jurisdictions, such interpretation must be dismissed.

For the five states or province the relative ranks (5 is high) for report density and reports per human population are as follows:

• CA -- 4 and 1
• OR -- 3 and 4
• WA -- 5 and 5
• BC -- 2 and 2
• AK -- 1 and 3.

Giving equal weight to both sets of ranks and summing them, the rank sums for each jurisdiction are as follows:

• CA -- 5
• OR -- 7
• WA -- 10
• BC -- 4
• AK -- 4.

Thus, WA, OR, and CA appear to be the most squatchy, and BC and AK will be dropped from further analysis.

A state is an awfully large, nonhomogeneous area, so subdividing it would be a way to refine the above analysis. That will be the subject of my next post.

Sincerely,

Pteronarcyd

Edited February 28, 2011 by Pteronarcyd

[Guest Sallaranda]

Great mathematical work Pter. I'm glad you pointed out the flaws in that line of reasoning, but logically it still makes sense. However, I'm inclined to believe BC is more "squatchy" than your findings lead on. Lower human population density = higher bigfoot population density. This is a linear equation I have always believed to exist. +x=-y. Anyways, enough of the math...

I believe the source habitat for Bigfoot to be at a lower elevation than the sink habitat. Why? Breeding and the survival of young offspring. Typically, the youth need warmer temperatures and more nurturing environments to survive. Furthermore I expect the living areas to be within <15~20km away from a source of freshwater. BC, out of the provinces and states that Pter analyzed, to my knowledge, has the largest supply of fresh water. I expect Bigfoot to be a big fish fanatic. Living off of insect larvae just doesn't seem like it would do it.

As for the sink habitat - I expect higher elevations and rougher terrains. Bigfoot likely has fat stores that allow it to survive several weeks without any real large source of food or water - plus this allows it to remain mostly isolated from mankind - clearly the beast's optimal goal.

[Guest gadgetgurl]

...and many of the sightings in BC just go unreported is my guess. It is hard for me to get opinion or information about Sassy out of my own family up there, let alone others. Part of that is the Nut Factor, and part of it is just that whole rural-inscrutable thing people have going on there. I think many First Nation people wouldn't report sightings, because it simply wouldn't occur to them to do so--I get the idea that for the most part they just accept Sasquatch and don't see the benefit of "outing" them. I kind of feel that way myself sometimes (then it goes away). No, I really like BC (especially the Island) for prime habitat. Great parts of V.I. are remote, yet temperate. There are deep woods, delicious salmon, abundant game and lots of yummy plant life. It is rugged and did I mention how remote the Western parts of the island can be?

[Guest]

First, any analysis using the BFRO data is fraught with problems. Not all potential encounters are reported there (or reported at all), not all reports are published, it's almost certain that not all reports are valid, and those reports that are reported there are almost certainly not a random sample of the universe of possible reports. Thus, any extrapolations from the database are most certainly not statistically valid. Having said all this, allow me to proceed for giggles and laughs.

Best disclaimer I've read in years.