Cascades Carnivore Project - How Do They Miss The Bigfoots?

[Guest Urkelbot]

Lots of jokes but still no explanation for a lack of game cam photos. Except conspiracy theories and maybe magic I guess.

[WSA]

Urkelbot...don't tax yourself overly on this point would be my advice. Take one and I'll take the other: Either they just didn't get seen, or they aren't there to see. A bunch of folks on a internet bulletin board rhetorically chasing their tails won't get you a jot closer to figuring out which it is. We'll see in time, or we won't. Statistically, I've another two decades to be available to get the news, and I hope my life expectancy will exceed that by at least ten more years.  I've got lots of time to think about it, and to try and learn more. If you've got a deadline to meet, guess you gotta draw a quick conclusion. Me, not so much at all.    

[Guest Urkelbot]

I want the answers now and i want them placed in my hot little hands!

[hiflier]

Hello Urkelbot,

 

As soon as I get them I'll pass 'em to ya.....I promise!  

[Guest DWA]

OK:  go back to kitakaze's post #616.

 

Can anyone say:  "how any CCP researcher would have reacted to seeing one of the 85 trackways they crossed during the study?"

 

Never good to torpedo one's argument with one's own posts.

OK, Titanic.  You are Go to resume sinking...

[dmaker]

Can anyone say:  "how any CCP researcher would have reacted to seeing one of the 85 trackways they crossed during the study?" -DWA

 

That question is simple to answer. And, I might add, it was basically asked and answered by officials from two projects. Their responses are upthread, but allow me to refresh you with a paraphrase of both: they did not, nor ever have, seen any evidence of Bigfoot. I can assume that would also include tracks. They perhaps saw them, but did not imagine that they belonged to an unclassified bipedal North American ape. 

 

I can anticipate your response. The are lying.  

Edited January 11, 2014 by dmaker

[kitakaze]

OK:  go back to kitakaze's post #616.

 

Can anyone say:  "how any CCP researcher would have reacted to seeing one of the 85 trackways they crossed during the study?"

 

If you mean the Minnesota tracks, I imagine they would likely think they were looking at the sign of a small mammal. If one had Bigfoot on the brain, I guess I would wonder what an 800 lb animal was doing going sideways up branches lying in the snow or going through thickets of scrabble and not leaving hair snags. The fact is the CCCP, the GP Task Force, Conservation Northwest, the Rockies group in Canada, the rare carnivore project in Oregon; all these groups have been employing in combination with remote camera, baiting and hair traps, also snow tracking in winter. They have had years to find Bigfoot tracks and document them, find a Bigfoot through them. 

So too has the Olympic Project had four years now to document Bigfoot on any of their 51 cameras in the Olympic National Forest, or locate Bigfoot via snow tracks. The same goes for anything in the Ouachita Lift. For all of them nothing. No reliable evidence of Bigfoot.

[Guest Stan Norton]

Yes, one may apply 'common sense' and infer from this that there are no sasquatch. Unfortunately, all it can really tell us is that no sasquatch have been recorded. I have been banding birds in my garden for years...does my failure to trap certain species mean they are absent from my locale? No it does not. It just means they haven't blundered into my nets. Absolutes on both sides of this debate are just plain daft.

Edited January 11, 2014 by Stan Norton

[dmaker]

Sure, but it's awfully suspicious that every other large mammal in the area showed up just fine. It really leaves little rational explanation as to why no sasquatch. Other than, of course, there are none there to begin with. 

[Guest Stan Norton]

Yes you are right it is highly suspicious and it needs an explanation. You choose the 'no sasquatch' answer and I can't say I blame you. I would argue (speculate) that there may be other reasons why those particular field surveys drew a blank. Sasquatch population density may be one. Actual geographical coverage of the cameras may be another. I would be mindful not to overestimate the likelihood of field surveyors quite rightly focussing on their 'narrow' project objectives to pick up on what may well be rather subtle field signs of sasquatch...if they're not actually looking, how likely are they to come across tracks etc? It's just a whole lot more complex than 'no photos=no animal'.

[Explorer]

Kitakaze,
 
Thanks much for re-introducing this topic in 2014 (for those of us who missed it in 2011).

I agree with you that the fact that wildlife monitoring organizations (in US and Canada) that used camera trap tools/methods in areas considered to be BF habitat and found no evidence is of concern to those who believe BF is present there.
 
I had the same concern last year when I realized that BF Research organizations (Project Forest Vigil, Olympic Project, and Bluff Creek Camera Project) had not had any success despite the high number of camera-trap days used. In addition we need to add the thousands of game cameras that are installed by hunters all over North America to look for patterns in their target animal (deer, bear, etc.) that also have not captured any BF photo.
 
This lack of success with game cameras is an issue that needs to be addressed as opposed to dismissed. Camera traps have proven to be ideally suited for detecting rare and cryptic species that an observer may rarely, if ever, encounter. Thus, it is a fair question to ask if BF is real how come camera-trap studies have not captured it.
 
However, failure to detect a species in a camera trap is not proof of its absence.
 
To brainstorm on possible reasons why BF was not detected, I will deconstruct the problem into 2 parts: probability of availability and probability of detection given that it is available.
 
P (D) = P (A) x P(D|A)
 
For detection to be zero, then either of these 2 probabilities has to be zero.
 
Possible reasons for the probability of availability to be zero:
1. BF does not exist
2. BF exist but was not available in the area sampled with camera traps

Possible reasons for the probability of detection to be zero given that BF exists and is available in the sample area:
1. The area covered by camera trap cells (or sample sites) was too small relative to the range area of BF.
2. The cameras were placed too close to each other and despite the high camera density, the survey did not cover a large and diverse enough habitat
3. Cameras were placed in a straight line fashion or following a creek/game trail/ridge line instead of covering a grid (does not have to be random distribution).
4. The habitat features that were targeted (based on species of interest in the wildlife study) to place cameras is avoided by BF.
5. BF prefers to move on roads and human trails and not in game trails or wild areas, thus camera-traps placed in wild habitat will miss them.
6. The BF communities have sentries that monitor every hiker that gets close to their home range and when humans install these odd objects, they avoid them.
7. BF (like most primates) is an arboreal species and is hard to detect on ground-based camera traps. (This is a wild claim and I throw it in the pot just as part of the brainstorm. I recall reading in one of Paulides books about NorCal that BF’s were scouting the area from above on the redwood trees).

With regard to the 7 possible reasons for lack of detection given availability, items 1 thru 3 are methodological reasons applicable to any species and reasons 4-7 are speculative reasons particular to BF. (BTW, I am not a proponent of those reasons, I am just brainstorming. I am excluding reasons that seem farfetched like conspiracy theories or dimensional portals).

I read the Canadian Rockies Carnivore Monitoring Project report (see link below) and it is very impressive. They certainly followed and established best practices on the use of camera-traps for wildlife monitoring. They followed the best methodologies available for establishing the presence of multiple species. Thus, if they did not detect BF and BF is claimed to live in those Canadian National Parks, then the reasons for no detection must be the more speculative ones and not the methodological ones.
 
http://www.cfc.umt.edu/heblab/Projects/Steenweg%20etal%202012%20PC%20Report%20remote%20camera%20occupancy.pdf

 

 
I also read about the work that Shiloh Halsey and GP Task Force did on modeling the Distribution of Bobcats the Southern Washington Cascades, and believe that he also used the best available methods.
Halsey’s dissertation will be available in August 2014 (see link below). I look forward to a more detail review of his methodology.

http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/996/

http://www.gptaskforce.org/our-work/conservation/wildlife-tracking/fisher-habitat
 

On the other hand, the Cascades Carnivore Project is not that comprehensive with regard to camera-traps. The report said that they did not have camera-traps in every sample station that collected hair samples from bear and martens. Their focus was on DNA testing of collected hair samples and not on developing occupancy statistics purely on camera-traps. Thus, it is not clear if the camera-trap methodology used by the Cascades Carnivore Project could be used to conclude that lack of detection of BF with camera traps was statistically sound.

With regard to the BF organization studies, however, I am not familiar with the details of the methodologies used and thus don’t know if they were designed to the standards of wildlife biologist to increase the probability of detection (of any of the mammals present).  I wish Project Forest Vigil had issued an analytical report describing all the animals that were captured in their cameras as a function of camera site and day, and more information on the distribution of the cameras (how far apart, cell distribution, camera density, etc.). This would help in comparing methodologies between them and wildlife monitoring organizations.
 
Jamie Schutmaat from the Bluff Creek Camera Project wrote on his Facebook page (see link below) that he is creating a catalogue of all the animals captured on the BC Project since they started in 2012. I look forward to that report, since it will provide some calibration with bear and cougar population estimates from the CA DFG and that will provide insights into how well the BC camera-trap methodology is representing that habitat.

https://www.facebook.com/BluffCreekProject

[Guest]

thanks for your insight Explorer, great call and plus 1

[Guest DWA]

Explorer:  plussed, absolutely.

 

That, folks, is how a scientist looks at a problem. 

 

To think that a bunch of cameras ferpetesake, planted with no true knowledge of an unconfirmed species' behavior patters and travel tendencies, are gonna provide significant evidence of anything betrays misunderstanding of pretty much everything involved in wildlife biology.  And I'm not even a biologist and I know that.

 

Plus.  Alpha coyotes on a territory never get caught in their territories on camera traps.  Proven, by scientists who know how to look at a problem.

[Guest DWA]

This from the abstract of the above study (can't quote or link from where I'm posting...search me.  Google "alpha coyotes and camera traps."  Brings it right up).

 

"All coyotes were wary of cameras..."

 

Bam.  Primate intelligence being what it is, sasquatch avoiding cameras - on purpose - is an automatic entrant in our sweepstakes.  The mainstream says so.

 

Combine with probable low numbers compared, not only to coyotes, but to everything else out there:  Explanation.  You are unlikely, in the extreme, to get photos of sasquatch on camera traps.  Not a valid research technique for this species.

 

Sometimes, science can be done from an armchair by the perceptive.

[Guest Darrell]

 

"All coyotes were wary of cameras..."

 

Ya but they still got pics of coyotes. And if you google "coyote game cam pics" you will see thousands of coyote game cam pics. Good, clear, HD game cam pics. there are high quality game cam pics of the most elusive animals on this planet. But no bigfoot game cam pics.