Service Learning - Wildlife Monitoring

Daniel Atienza

McFarland

BIOL& 241

9 May 2017

Service Learning - Wildlife Monitoring

1. My service learning event was Wildlife Monitoring that occurred from 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM on May 5, 2017. My supervisor was Grace Coale (grace.coale@email.edcc.edu) of the Anthropology department.
2. The event was sponsored by Edmonds Community College’s Anthropology department and the Center for Service Learning.
3. During this event, I assisted in analyzing and setting up the various wildlife cameras that were stationed around the green belt in Japanese Gulch located in Mukilteo. In addition to that, I was responsible for locating “game trails” or indigenous animal prints along the trail, such as coyote or fox.

4. While we were walking through the green belt, Grace explained to me that their purpose for setting up the cameras and observing the environment, which is to monitor the population of a variety of different species that are found in the area. These populations can be altered by hazardous weather, an increase/decrease in their food supply (ex. Other smaller animals or plants), or human interaction. This experience opened my mind to what the various species have to be cautious of as they attempt to survive in the Gulch. The day before we went to Japanese Gulch, there was a big thunderstorm that could have potentially taken out a small portion of the forest and that could have contributed to the weak activity in the Gulch during our trip. A numerous amount of people would walk along the trails with relatively large dogs (which I was able to analyze due to large paw prints) who could have been seen as threatening to the coyotes; and nearby one of the cameras, one tree was nearly chopped down with an axe, but according to droppings that were found underneath the tree, it was where owls would perch or even take shelter in. The importance of what we did to set up the cameras and monitor the Gulch is pivotal in how the local government addresses human interaction with the various species that are trying to survive. Just like humans, animals have nervous systems, which means that they also have sympathetic nervous systems (SNS) in their autonomic nervous systems (ANS). The sympathetic nervous system mainly functions as a “fight-or-flight” response and for these animals, they mainly have to resort to “flighting” (both figuratively and literally). The coyote’s source of food is rabbits and the owl’s source is small animals/rodents, and if they are run out of the Gulch, the gardens that are located around the green belt are bound to be ravaged by the growing population of rabbits within the Gulch, which would be bad for both the coyotes and the humans. Human biology is interdisciplinary because of how humans and animals relate closely on a cellular level and how the actions of humans can affect the ecology and overall lifestyle of a variety of different species.

5.   1) How many species are known to be around Japanese Gulch?

     2) What is the motivation for people to mess with the various species?

     3) Where do the coyote go when they are run out?

      4) To what capacity can human interaction actually be helpful to the survival of the various species?

This is a photo showing a coyote that was seen by one of the stationed cameras (taken by Grace Coale)