The elusive Wood bison

Charles Dickie, Dr. Helen Schwantje, Wood bison cow, Sonja with Ranger Al protecting us in the background.

It's always true that when you are looking for something that is typically found in a specific location, it's not going to be there that day. Such is true with the Wood bison herds of the Fontas and Liard. This past November brought us a week of working with the bison. The plan was to tranquilize the cows with collars, download the data from the past year and a half, put new batteries in those collars and add 2 more new GPS pods to make our sample size increased to 7 animals per herd and then I was to start analyzing the data for the Society for Range Management conference in Billings, Montana in February 2011 and to further analyze that data for my thesis and for the Ministry of Environment and Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation.

But! Such was not the way it came to an end! Only one collar was retrived from the Fontas (Etthithun herd), however, four collars were retrieved from the Liard (Nordquist herd). Although we had 5 collars in our hands, we were only able to download the data from 4 of the collars (one from Fontas and the rest from Liard). It would appear that the wires at the base of the collars were snapped/torn.

Some pictures from our intense, emotional roller coaster ride of a time doing the bison work include ....

Dr. Helen Schwantje teaching Charles Dickie about the tranquilizers used on the Wood bison.

The crew getting set up on the Alaska Highway with a Wood bison herd less then 20 feet away.

All great stories start out with ... it was a cool, calm morning and the Bison were all grazing peacefully by the side of the Alaska Highway... this herd ended up spooking and stampeding across the highway, not to be found until later in the day. Onto the other herd ...
Conservation Officer Jeff Scott and Wood bison cow.

Tyler Mattheis and Charles Dickie with one of the matriarchs (tranquilized)

Conservation Officer Jeff Scott helping Conrad Thiessen (Wildlife Biologist) and Helen work on the matriarch.

Conrad, Ranger Al and Tyler processing the matriarch.

Conrad Thiessen and I with a matriarch.

All a person could ever hope for is to have two big, strong bulls trying to lift you up to bring you back to the herd should you go down.

Charles Dickie and I putting the new GPS pod collar on.

Conrad won the sharpshooter of the day award for his excellent accuracy with the tranquilizer gun.

Charles Dickie monitoring the Bison herd the day after working with them.

The one who got away! She escaped us and we were unable to recover the collar. In a couple weeks, it should blow off and hopefully Ranger Al and Conrad will go up and retrieve it!

The Crew: Ranger Al Hansen, Dr. Helen Schwantje, Tyler Mattheis (NRRM), Charles Dickie, Sonja, Conrad Thiessen and Wood bison cow (missing: Armand and Conservation Officer Jeff Scott. Photo credit: Armand)