Wildlife Refuges, Preserves, State Parks, National Parks, Greenways And Trails

[Guest lightheart]

I wonder what percentage of encounters occur on protected lands. Anyone have data or want to put forth a guess?

Edited December 26, 2013 by lightheart

[NathanFooter]

 One of my older research areas was on a State Game Area , there was activity and excellent sightings from the area, just no access for camping and night hiking.   

 

 I still visit the area from time to time.  There is at least one large individual back in the area but getting close during the most likely operational times of the individual is very difficult. 

 

 If I had access through a joining property, I would spend more time in the area. 

 

 I spoke with the appointed biologist for the game area via phone and he told me after a long conversation that they do get reports of sasquatch in the area but do not address them or investigate them, he would not answer anything further on the front of providing information on when and where of the events they had heard about , he instead gave a rather upset sounding rant on how they have so many trail cameras in the state of Michigan.  And then said he had some important things to attend to and that was the end of our conversation.

Edited December 26, 2013 by NathanFooter

[Guest lightheart]

There is no camping or night hiking in the park or  in the wildlife refuge near me either Nathan.

 

That sounds like a really frustrating conversation...... I bet they wish the whole bigfoot thing would just go away.

[Guest]

 Looks like the PNW and SE USA have a fair amount in common. Boeing, lush forests, lots of rain. Boeing is in Charleston SC building

 the Dreamliner and is now expanding. They are filling in 154 acres of wetlands and to mitigate the environmental damage are buying 3,618 acre's. http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20131227/PC16/131229509/1177/boeing-expansion-in-north-charleston-yields-environmental-win-for-francis-marion-national-forest

  This goes way above and beyond what they had to do to mitigate the wetlands they needed to fill to expand. If you read the article you will see they are buying the parcel that is #1 on the US Forest Service's acquisition list east of the Mississippi River.

   This area has also had several BF reports. http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=16734

  http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=6020

 

http://www.nabigfootsearch.com/Bigfootsightings.html

 

 Allow me to now speculate... Does Boeing/and USFS  have proof of existence? Boeing is in negotiations to buy more parcels that are critical to "preserve the safe animal passage between the watersheds of the Santee and lower Cooper rivers"..  That sounds "squatchy" to me and not far from my research area.  Thanks for any feedback.  

[WV FOOTER]

I asked a DNR officer in North West GA if they ever receive any BF reports in a certain Wildlife Management Area. His response was "We get 10 or 15 a year along with black panthers, but people report seeing little green men also."

 

 

I have gotten pretty much the same reaction from any DNR Officer that I have asked about Bigfoot,here in WV.  Even the few I know personally look at me strange and laugh it off at the mentioning of Bigfoot. I even asked one in Oklahoma once, and got the same reaction. If they know anything, they're not talking, which I would not find hard to believe.

[Guest lightheart]

I asked a wildlife photographer if there are sasquatch in the park, wildlife preserve and he laughed and said :Sure hundreds" But it was the hesitation before he said that that was most telling.

[BobbyO]

I once done some study on this exact thing, focusing on every Class A and Class B in or inside 5 miles of every designated wilderness area in Washington State.

I found that 38% ( 228 of 593 ) of all WA State sightings that were publicly available online up until December 2011 were in or inside of 5 miles of a designated wilderness area in WA State.

Every designated wilderness that had over 20 sightings for it had winter as its lowest elevation average ( an average of 1,178ft per sighting ) per sighting and summer as its highest ( an average of 2,293ft per sighting ). Both spring ( an average of 2,166ft per sighting ) and fall ( an average of 2,217ft per sighting ) jostle for second and third places for different areas.

[Guest lightheart]

Thanks BobbyO I was hoping for some data. That's a pretty decent percentage, 38%. That is also some pretty clear data with respect to the seasons and elevations.

[Guest DWA]

I once done some study on this exact thing, focusing on every Class A and Class B in or inside 5 miles of every designated wilderness area in Washington State. I found that 38% ( 228 of 593 ) of all WA State sightings that were publicly available online up until December 2011 were in or inside of 5 miles of a designated wilderness area in WA State. Every designated wilderness that had over 20 sightings for it had winter as its lowest elevation average ( an average of 1,178ft per sighting ) per sighting and summer as its highest ( an average of 2,293ft per sighting ). Both spring ( an average of 2,166ft per sighting ) and fall ( an average of 2,217ft per sighting ) jostle for second and third places for different areas.

Nobody has to be a wildlife expert to know that the data behaves as one would expect the animal to do were it real.

 

Or people are having biologically-correct hallucinations, take your pick.

[BobbyO]

 

Thanks BobbyO I was hoping for some data. That's a pretty decent percentage, 38%. That is also some pretty clear data with respect to the seasons and elevations.

 

A couple of additional things. Had i used " in or within 15 miles " the 38% would have jumped considerably, up to near 70% which is pretty cool. The whole reason i spent the time i did on it DWA was because i wanted to look at the elevations for the sightings specifically because i wanted to see how "natural" they were or weren't. I used WA specifically as i knew it would give me good variation in elevation and it would give me a good enough number set ( over 500 reports to look at ). The season to elevation thing i suspected would be how it was, but of course we must not forget that is also the season to elevation that the people would be, and we need the people for a sighting. Still, it is what it is. I would have been worried if the vast majority of summer sightings had been under 300ft in elevation let's just say..

[Guest DWA]

Well, that's just it.  People who are just making stuff up, count on it, aren't gonna come up with that pattern when one aggregates the encounters.

 

For somebody to just presume that's happening is...well, I call that paddling DeNile.

Which, if that sounds somewhat like "peddling denial," well, a bigfoot skeptic would call that an utter coincidence. 

[BobbyO]

Yeah you're right.

It was the same order, give or take a matter of 50ft on occasion with spring/fall, for every wilderness area ( 5 core areas, i'll elabaorate if anyone's really interested, just ask ) with over 20 reports in like i said. If i done the same study for Elk, Deer and Bear, i know what my money would be on and in what order, and it's the same as what our subject was..

[Guest lightheart]

Wow! Almost 70% within 15 miles. How large are these wildlife areas? Acreage?

[BobbyO]

In total, designated wilderness areas in WA State make up just under 10% ( 9.59% ) of the total land mass.

So we are talking about roughly 7,000 miles squared.

[BobbyO]

And that's around 4.5m acres.