“According to the Denali bus driver’s manual, hitting a snowshoe hare
will only ‘produce a momentary loss of traction,’” quoted our bus driver, Drew,
over his microphone. We’d been watching bunnies dart across Park Road on the
way into Camp Denali. “During highs in the population cycle,” Drew continued,
“they’re so abundant on the roads that it’s hard to miss them all.”
Scientists as well as drivers across Alaska are quite aware that hares
numbers are on the rise. In Denali National Park, the last peak in their 9-to-11
year cycle occurred in 2009. Since 2012, wildlife biologists with the National
Park Service have been keeping track of hare numbers through a particularly
kid-friendly method.
“We can’t just walk out there and say ‘hey animals, come out, I want to
count you,” explained Denali National Park’s wolf technician, Kaija Klauder, to
a group of high school students from Anchorage who were attending a summer science
camp. “Luckily,” she continued, “all animals poop, and that’s awesome for
science.”
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| High school students from Anchorage hike through spongy tundra to get to our second hare pellet count grid. Despite cooler temperatures, sunshine, low bugs, and great scenery made doing the science even more exciting. Photo by Emily Stone. |
Pellet surveys can be tedious, so I was impressed by how
enthusiastically the kids began their work. Park scientists have established 8 different
grids of 100 plots apiece. Within each plot, a pair of counters was tasked with
finding every small, brown, Skittles-shaped hare pellet, marking it on the data
sheet, and then tossing it away from the plot so that it won’t be counted
twice. The one-foot-radius plots I helped count had at least 15 pellets each,
and some kids found over 100 pellets in a single plot. That seems like a lot,
and it is more than they’ve found during the past four years. Back in 2012,
though, three years after the previous high in the hare population, pellet
counts were 50 percent higher than this year. It’s impossible tell when the
population peaks until it starts going down, but it seems like they have room
to grow.
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| Snowshoe hare pellets look kind of like Skittles that are made out of sawdust. The abundance of pellets can help scientists estimate the density of hares in an area. Photo by Emily Stone. |
Looking for the pellets gave us all a closer look at the moss, moose
poop, fungal mycelia, mushrooms, and beetles inhabiting both a spruce forest
and a willow thicket. We found a moose
bed in the moss, too, and admired flowers in the spongy tundra. Who knows what
other subconscious observations the students made with their noses to the ground?
Science has a way of sneaking up on you. Studying one organism leads to
questions about others, and just crashing around in the woods for a few hours
inputs data into our personal sensory computers.
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| Kaija, the National Park Service biologist who led our pellet count survey, pointed out the features of a moose’s bed. Photo by Emily Stone. |
About a month later, in mid-August, I joined Claire Montgomerie and Matt
Kynoch, two graduate students from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, to help
with their snowshoe hare fieldwork. They are partnering with the National Park
Service near the tiny town of Wiseman in the southern foothills of the Brooks
Range.
Just as in Denali, we saw plenty of hares along the Dalton Highway as we
drove north from Fairbanks. I was mesmerized by the rolling expanses of boreal
forest and the undulating silver stripe of pipeline that mostly paralleled the
road. For me, this wasn’t just an exciting opportunity to help with research;
it was an excuse to explore new landscapes in The North. At the sign marking
the Arctic Circle—66.33 degrees north latitude, I took a selfie with a huge
grin. I love going North.
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While the Dalton Highway is riddled with potholes and washboards for much of its length, the scenery along its length more than makes up for it. Photo by Emily Stone.
|
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| Doing research can take you to some amazing places! Photo by Emily Stone. |
I was still smiling the next morning as we wound through soft green
hills and along the silvery braids of the Koyukuk River to access two different
research sites established by the biologists from Gates of the Arctic National
Park. Along one rutted gravel road we set 14 live traps baited with alfalfa
cubes and carrots. Firmly compacted moss in the hares’ runs and dense clusters
of brown pellets indicated good spots to place the traps. Claire pointed out
exposed dirt on the road cuts where hares have been recorded coming to lick the
soil. Our goal there was to recapture hares who had been previously deployed
with GPS collars to track their use of the mineral licks.
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| We used live traps baited with carrots and alfalfa cubes to catch hares in the Brooks Range. A piece of tarpaper over the cage provides protection from rain and sun, as well as making the hares feel more secure and hidden. Photo by Emily Stone. |
Next we parked at a pipeline access road and walked in to a trap grid used
for mark-recapture surveys. There we spent a couple hours finding, baiting, and
setting over 30 traps at established locations. We also picked handfuls of
tart, red highbush cranberries, savored the sweet treats of dwarf raspberries,
and admired the luminous white flowers of bog-star. After dinner, we ambled
through thick beds of moss and lichen behind our bunkhouse and picked
blueberries until dark.
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| Lucky for us, the blueberries were perfectly ripe in the Brooks Range during our snowshoe hare field work in mid-August. Photo by Emily Stone. |
I’d been seeing and hearing about the population dynamics of snowshoe
hares since I arrived in the Alaskan interior. I was thrilled to find an
opportunity to learn more, and to experience research firsthand. Now that I was
actually up in the Brooks Range, the side benefits of fieldwork were becoming clear.
What would the rest of the week bring? I fell asleep dreaming of blueberries
and bunnies.
For 50 years, the Cable Natural History
Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Come visit us in Cable, WI!
Our new exhibit: “Bee Amazed!” is open.
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