Wildfires in Washington’s North Cascades are reshaping the habitat of many species, including the endangered Canada lynx. To protect these rare cats, we need to know how they use burned and unburned areas, how long it takes for burned landscapes to become livable again, and how forest management can help reduce habitat loss as wildfires grow larger and hotter.

In 2023, we began answering these questions using GPS collars, backtracking, and an array of long-term remote camera monitoring stations. Analysis of these data will soon be underway. Our goal is to gain a fine-scale understanding of the ways lynx utilize varying degrees of burned habitat throughout the Methow Valley. 

In the Methow Valley, hotter summers, bigger wildfires, and more development are bringing black bears and people into contact more often. Natural foods like wild berries are changing with the climate, and bears are turning to human areas for food.

As part of a larger effort to help our community live safely with bears, we have been collecting data on the occurrence of five fruiting shrubs that bears eat: serviceberry, chokecherry, currant, elderberry, and dogwood. By monitoring the trends of each shrub over time and comparing them to the amount of human-bear conflict in the community, we can better understand how to coexist with bears in a changing climate. 

If you are interested in volunteering as a community scientist on this project, you can sign up here!