Hey folks! This is Whitney from the Natural Resources Defense Council, ASC’s partner in the ongoing series of grizzly tracking workshops in the Centennial Range. I was lucky enough to join Gregg and a great group of volunteers for the first trip last weekend, and we had a blast. We all learned a lot and collected some valuable data, including some hair samples that we can hopefully send to the lab for DNA analysis. For more of my thoughts on the weekend (above and beyond the fact that it rocked), you can read my blog about it here: http://www.onearth.org/blog/tracking-bears-with-citizen-scientists-its-as-fun-as-it-sounds. And be sure to check out some of our volunteers’ blogs, below. That should be enough to convince you to come join us on the September trip (sign up here: www.adventureandscience.org/grizzly.html)! See you in the field!

-Whitney Leonard

             Multi-tasking is the name of the game in modern society.  I received a new lesson in this last weekend when I signed up to go on a three-day camping trip into the Centennial Range in Southwestern Montana tracking grizzlies. 

             It was one of the last weekends in summer before fall classes start, and I was looking forward to heading into the mountains for a short backpacking trip.  When I found out that I could join an ASC group heading to the Centennials to look for signs of grizzlies using the area, I was thrilled.  On Friday we made the beautiful drive southwest of Bozeman to our campsite where we slept with the tail end of the Perseid meteor shower blazing above us.  The next morning we learned to recognize grizzly tracks and hairs and to distinguish them from those of black bears.  We spent the remainder of the weekend hiking the trails and fence lines of the western Centennials on the lookout for grizzly signs.  We were rewarded with several DNA samples which will be sent to a lab for analysis, not to mention phenomenal scenery and glimpses of a wide array of wildlife.

             With a lesson in tracking and the opportunity to meet some amazing new people, the weekend ended up being much more than a simple camping trip.  A day spent hiking can also go a long way towards conservation.  ASC certainly met their goal of inspiring “recreational outdoor users to effectively use their time in the wild to advance conservation science.”  

L. Guenther

  I nearly flunked biology in college and don’t really do the “outside” thing, so believe me when I say there couldn’t possibly be a less likely candidate for an intense 3-day hike tracking grizzly bears through the glorious Centennial Mountain Range. And yet here I sit, exhausted but exhilarated, and there’s only one thing I can think about: I want more! 

  Founder, Executive Director, NatGeo Adventurer of the Year, and wicked harmonica maestro Gregg Treinish challenged me to grow both as an outdoorsman and as a conservationist. I learned to recognize all types of wildlife tracks, traces, hairs, and scats; I learned about the scourge of Blister Rust and the pressure it places on grizzly habitat; I discovered the ethos of Leave No Trace camping; but most of all, I learned that anyone, regardless of experience, can make a difference. That this could be possible, with a group that included such a diversity of backgrounds (everyone from a college biathlete to… well, me, a desk-hugging filmmaker from the prairies!) is a testament to the simple genius that informs all elements of the ASC. So sign up! Get out there! Make new friends! Learn something new! You might surprise yourself.

- Refah Seyed Mahmoud

                                August 12, 2011
Today I was listening to a book by Douglas Adams, part of the “Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” series. This book was calledMostly Harmless . These two words were, after much editing and re-editing, all that remained of the Guide’s entry on an obscure little blue and green planet called Earth.

But this is all beside the point. What jumped out at me today was a blink-and-you’d-miss-it little gem in a dialogue between Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect, who are bickering with each other in their usual manner. It concluded something like this:

Arthur: “I think we have different value systems.”

Ford: “Mine’s better.”

Arthur: “That’s because…. oh, never mind.”