Long teams up with Microsoft on scent bait for winter conditions
To study elusive wolverines in the wild, you need to know where they occur. To figure out where they occur, you need wolverines to trigger remote research cameras. To get wolverines to trigger the cameras, you need to attract them with a strong scent, which naturally fades after two to four weeks. To keep that scent refreshed after it fades, you need to hike into backcountry terrain with deep snow and dangerous avalanche conditions in the winter—and that’s where it gets tricky.
Extreme winter conditions can make the small but critical task of refreshing scent lures or baits difficult for Woodland Park Zoo senior conservation fellow, Robert Long, PhD, limiting the window during which he can reliably collect data for his wolverine research throughout the year.
Until now.
Microsoft has teamed up with Woodland Park Zoo and Idaho Fish and Game to take noninvasive conservation research methods to the next level with a clever technological solution.
