Tracking Black-Footed Ferrets in Grasslands NP

A few years ago I saw the end of Return of the Prairie Bandit on CBC's The Nature of Things and said to myself: THAT'S what I want to do to mark my 60th birthday: track the black-footed ferret in Grasslands National Park.

And so - Willem and I did exactly that this past week (August 14 and 15), as part of a team of some 60 or so other trackers. As Willem remarked: it's like being allowed backstage in a fascinating drama production.

Grasslands National Park itself is a spectacular sweep of mixed-grass prairie edging the US border in the middle of Southern Saskatchewan (visit the Park website at Grasslands). The first picture is taken from our accommodations (spitting distance from the Park) , the second is the Eco Tour Road, standard point of entry into the land.

 

I'm not sure how one falls in love with a landscape, but I know it's possible, for that's what happened when I visited for two nights in October 2011 - I fell in love with the geography of Grasslands. A few pictures of the landscape from October 2011:

In this vast landscape are - hopefully - some dozen or so ferrets.

A few ferret facts: The black-footed ferret is a species unique to the (mixed) grasslands prairie of the North American midwest. It was extirpated from its prairie home in Canada and thought to be extinct since early in the 20th century. In 1981 the chance finding of a ferret in Colorado led to discovering18 more. These became the core of a captive breeding program. Currently there are some 300 ferrets still in breeding captivity, and around 700 in the wild. A few of these wild-again ferrets live in Grasslands National Park.

They're awfully cute - the image below from US Fish and Wildlife Service Endangered Species:



A ferret's main diet is the prairie dog (in Grasslands the black-tailed, in other grasslands biomes the white). A single ferret typically eats around 100 prairie dogs a year, a nursing female with kits more than 400. It is logical that the systematic destruction of the prairie dog through habitat loss (agriculture) and targeted killing (drowning, application of government-issued strychnine, etc. etc. etc.), resulted in the demise of the ferret.

Tracking those remaining few ferrets is no easy matter. They are nocturnal, with greatest activity at dusk and dawn. A single ferret might have a territory of 100-150 acres of prairie dog territory (aka colonies). So tracking needs to happen at night, over a large area, a number of times - the Parks could not possibly afford the 700 people hours that managed to locate Grasslands' twelve, possibly thirteen ferrets last year. The answer: the volunteer tracker program.

First there is excellent training (this image from GNP website) showing Parks employee extraordinaire Ashley Wruth demonstrating the ferret trap and the "ferret purse" used for transporting any trapped ferrets:



But before ferrets can be trapped (and released, of course!), they must be spotted. The program is a total of ten nights, broken into periods of 2, 3, or 5 nights, with six-hour shifts spotlighting from either 8:15 p.m. to 2:15 a.m. or 12:15 a.m. to 6:15 a.m.. For their shift, volunteer trackers set out with 2-way radios, GPS units, spotlights, scanners, traps, "ferret purses," bug spray, and personal supplies to walk loops in designated colony areas. Below a fully-equipped tracker setting out (taken from the GNP website) - note the brown snake gaiters:



Here are Willem and I setting out the first night (packs still in the truck, which Willem got to drive), in the second picture with program coordinatorAshley Wruth in front of "our" territory, the Larson colony:

 

It's an extraordinary experience. Walking from GPS point to GPS point as darkness falls, scanning with the spotlight to locate the give-away emerald "eye-shine" of the ferret, walking in darkness and stillness for around five hours, taking breaks and looking straight up at the Milky Way and meteor showers in one of Canada's Dark Sky Preserves while coyotes howl and some lightning flashes in the distance - one gains perspective on one's own tiny little place in the eons of earth time below and the infinite universe above.

The prairies show themselves as unexpectedly diverse, when experienced so close-up for such a length of time. What looks like a fairly homogeneous landscape has many small sub-landscapes in it - grasses, marshes, gullies, tussocks, semi-arid spots. In the photo below, the "bumps" are the hillocks of dirt excavated by prairie dogs, the cleft in the land the Frenchman River valley:

At night there are snakes (we wore snake gaiters), frogs, weasels, deer, foxes, coyotes, bats, bison (which no one encountered during our watch) - and of course bugs, millions and billions and trillions of bugs. The bugs vary during the night - the subway screech of mosquitoes gives way to the delicate flutter of hundreds of white moths which all disappear when the temperature drops. One bat accompanied us on our rounds, perhaps because the spotlight attracted a larger concentration of bugs. We were excited to spot two weasels (first thinking they were ferrets), but they disappeared in the underbrush; we also saw deer. Other trackers saw coyotes, a swift fox. There were some beautiful Northern Lights.

It was a treat to come home at 3:30 a.m., tired and somewhat sore, to the lovely accommodations (two bedroom apartment, fully equipped) at The Crossing Resort, located on the edge of the Park. A glimpse of the apartment's interior shows us having dinner with our Regina friend Bruce:

We did not see any ferrets. No one on our watch did. And yet it was a wonderful experience. My getting-older body did better than I expected, despite taking two tumbles on the uneven terrain. And it's hard to describe the serenity I felt, lying on my back on the prairie at night, unafraid, situated between land and sky and feeling connected to both. I will go back, one way or another.

Combining Cultures: "High Tea" in Inuvik

Our effervescent Inuvik hostess Arlene Hansen had decided that Sunday lunch would be "High Tea" in the best British tradition, as imported to Canada's north. And why??? Is there a British royalist lurking in amongst the French and Ukrainian heritage? It came out that - purely coincidentally - Arlene had been in London (England) during the Queen's Diamond Jubilee this past June, and was so taken by the scale of the festivities that she decided on the spot that she would have some sort of High Tea celebration in Inuvik. We were the lucky recipients of that decision. And it is Arlene's way to go all out:
 

Arlene's High Tea was more democratic in that it celebrated any event within purview: the Queen's Jubilee providing initial inspiration, the birth of Prince George receiving honorable mention, but especially the "big birthdays" (50, 55, 60) of three of us Yellowknifers getting more attention than such birthdays might deserve.

The High Tea "spread" followed protocol: dainty sandwiches, starched tablecloths, appropriate porcelain, suitable serving dishes.

We spent some of the morning making the sandwiches: egg salad; cream cheese with cucumber and sprouts (imported from Yellowknife); ham salad; curried chicken salad. The Waterford crystal tumbler on the right contains strawberry jam to go with the second course, scones with jam and clotted cream (the scones home-baked by our Yellowknife baking friend Sheila). There were tarts in abundance which we didn't even get to. The white tablecloths were Hazel's grandmother's, as was the silver sugar dish - the matching teapot is in a following picture. Hazel's grandmother and grandfather, by the way, were butler and housekeeper for an estate of Downton Abbey calibre, and the silver was their employer's wedding gift to them. We each got to choose a dainty teacup from the roughly 100 such cups and saucers Arlene has, just because she loves them

And of course - no High Tea is truly high unless one wears hats. The most majestic ones, which do suit almost every face, were the ones Arlene bought in a store in Wales. That's Arlene presiding over the two teapots, her sister Jan in the peach hat:
 

Hazel brought her own, I took up all four of mine just in case there was a shortage. One of them was a hat made for me by Liz Pereboom for my 50th birthday (10 years ago already - wow, a long time ago!). Donna was elected to wear it, and she did it proud:

And at the end of it all Arlene gave everyone there a present: tea, of course!

I had not thought that my 60th could be as memorable as my 50th, which I thoroughly enjoyed. But I was wrong. Thanks to Hazel, and to Arlene, and to Jan, Shona, Donna and Brenda, the Inuvik trip was a birthday celebration of unalloyed pleasure. I'll never forget it.

Inuvik Adventure

Courtesy of my energetic and generous fibre-friends Hazel of Yellowknife and Arlene of Inuvik, four of us spent just over 48 hours this past weekend extending our knowledge of and appreciation of Canada's North by getting to know Inuvik. Hazel was the one who organized the flights and all related travel details, while Arlene was the consummate hostess who made the stay more memorable than anyone could possibly have imagined. She was abetted by another Inuvik friend, Shona, who graciously put two of us up for the two nights.

Flying in the north is a whole 'nuther experience. For one, security: one doesn't have to go through any, which simply feels as wrong as not wearing a seat belt while driving, so accustomed have we become to all the searches to which airline passengers are subjected. Here's the closed security door and the open waiting area door in Yellowknife Airport:

For another, cargo: we flew Canadian North, which allows two checked bags of 72 lbs each, and two carry-on bags of 22 lbs each. This acknowledges the fact that northern travellers inevitably bring things from the south: so upon request we brought Arlene a few more than the 10 lbs of butter she had requested if we could find some at less than the $6.99 a lb it costs at the Northern Store in Inuvik. Here we are in the waiting room with some of our bags of groceries (you can't see the canteloupe and the strawberries, for example).

We flew on a reconfigured Boeing 737 in which the front half of the plane was devoted to cargo. Much of that cargo was off-loaded in Norman Wells, the one stop on the trip. It lies on the MacKenzie River between the Franklin and Richardson Mountains - a geography I didn't expect to be so apparent at that point.

The raison d'etre for Norman Wells is indeed oil - though of late the wells have been running dry. This has serious implications for the price of heating oil in Inuvik, and apparently heating costs doubled this past winter, for example from $600 to $1200 for heating a roughly 1000-square foot bungalow.

The airport combines the modern with the traditional:

 

We arrived expeditiously, to be met by Arlene (turquoise top) and her imposing new mode of transportation:

 

 

I confess to loving driving around in trucks - there's something so capably "can-do" about it. Arlene and Shona both have trucks like this, the one brown and the other black - Arlene took us all about town in it, while Shona took Donna and me down a piece of The Dempster Highway in her's.

Interesting touristy things we could have spent far more time exploring:  the Lego Hospital (nickname); the sculpture in front of the Visitor's Centre which doubles as an interesting little museum; the quilt show; the map showing the North's view of the world; Aurora College main building; Inuvik's Trans Canada Trail marker and piece of trail; the Igloo Church.

 

 

 

Unexpected, and a delight, was the community greenhouse, well-established in an old arena building. Part of our job as guests was to help Arlene - one of the forces behind the operation - water not only her plot but also the plots of fellow-gardeners who were away.

 

 

 

 

At least as fascinating to me were Inuvik's "utilidors" - the system in which the town delivers utilities to residents. These are above-ground pipes running behind (usually) every  house; at the point where they cross streets there are little rounded bridges not unlike the ones that go over Amsterdam's canals, without the ability to be raised, of course. In the winter a steady stream of liquid keeps the pipes from freezing; the liquid is also slightly heated by recycling heat from generators that keep the system going. The utilidor system is not without its challenges, as can be read from e.g. the 54-page report on the "cost of water" in the town in 2006 (see Utilidor Report). But it sure is interesting!

 

We did a few other things (sorry, no pics) - shopped at The Northern Store, admired Arlene's "Originals" gift shop (she's got some marvellous jewelry and a wonderful array of fine items for every taste and budget). We toured both Arlene's and Shona's quilting workshops and were heartened to see that talented, industrious and productive quilters like they are do have a considerable stash as well as a number of works in progress. Whew, I'm normal after all!

And there was a final highpoint that deserves its own posting - stay tuned.

Flying to Tuktoyaktuk

On a whirlwind 48-hour trip to Inuvik this past weekend (a separate post on that forthcoming), we spent four hours on Sunday afternoon in a side excursion to Tuktoyaktuk. The flights there and back take about an hour each, leaving us two hours to explore the community.

Canada's northern landscape does take the breath away!

The most vivid image of the tundra: an exquisite piece of beautifully worked lace, numerous blue pools separated by strands of green.

We - four Yellowknife fibre-friends - flew up in a six-seater Cessna 107 (I think), with a pilot just a few years out of highschool (funny, how very young the capable young all seem these days):

 

He flew us along the delta of the mighty Mackenzie River (Slavey: Deh-Cho, big river) on the way up, an intricate system of lakes and channels. It's worth reading about  Canada's biggest river, and I had done so, but seeing first hand is another experience entirely.  

On the way there are cliffs, and old DEW-line stations:

Tuktoyaktuk itself is a decently sized (population around 900) Inuvialuit and Inuit community just off the eastern edge of the delta:

We were met by Joanne of "Joanne's Taxi Service". In addition to driving taxi and giving two-hour tours of "Tuk," she provides ambulance services (to the community's nursing station) and in winter regularly drives "the hospital bus" on the 185 km ice road from Tuktoyaktuk to Inuvik (read more: Inuvik/Tuk Ice Road). That takes about four hours, she says; and, laughing: "sometimes two, and my husband can do it in one!" That's Joanne in front of her house right on the Beaufort Sea, and her taxi cum ambulance.

 

Of the many interesting aspects of the community, a few stand out. There's a summer community greenhouse operation in an old quonset hut (no picture, alas). There's an old DEW-line station, of which one white dome is now in Inuvik repurposed as the offices of the local cable company there. 

Fascinating are the pingos, mounds of earth-covered permafrost (ice) . Tuktoyaktuk has the highest concentration of such formations, around 1,350 of them, of which a number are right in or by the community:

If you click to read more (Pingos), you will see not only a picture of one but also the polygon wedge ice left by melting pingos, a phenomenon visible to different degrees in many spots on the tundra between Inuvik and Tuk.  In the community, one was partially excavated in the 1960s to serve as a community freezer. While I didn't have the nerve to go down myself (the picture shows why), I learned that it has 19 rooms divided into three "hallways," and is cooler in summer than in winter. 

 The ambitious Trans Canada Trail starts in Tuk (from sea to sea to sea):

Of course we did the truly touristy things - getting our picture taken with the sign, and wading in the Arctic Ocean.

 

There is also sadness - the sadness shared by so many remote, mostly aboriginal, communities. The gap between the world that was, only a few generations ago - hunter-gatherer - and the world that is, now - wage earning - is great. This is especially so in communities in which there is little work to be had, despite a great deal of fishing and hunting still, and where education beyond high school and any sort of career entail the heartache of leaving "home". The young bear the brunt of it, and in Tuk, too, there is teenage pregnancy and teenage suicide. A visitor who cares feels helpless and wishes there were a better answer.

On the way back we flew overland, getting a first-hand look at construction progress on the permanent road between Tuktoyaktuk and Inuvik. It's going to be an amazing finish to the famed Dempster Highway, threading its way along the filigree lace of the tundra.

 

All in all - four hours so intensely beautiful and interesting that they will stay with me forever.