Wild Earth Society Incorporated

Western Wildway: This year, we launched a four-year study, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy to understand the impact of large solar panel fields on pronghorn and other wildlife. Within days of outgoing Arizona Governor Ducey beginning construction of an illegal border wall through black bear, ocelot and jaguar habitat in the San Rafael Valley, we systematically documented the progress of his makeshift, shipping container wall. We are surveying over 150 miles of barbed wire fences within the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which serves as an important pathway and winter range for the Paunsaugunt mule deer herd. We are leading a camera monitoring project to collect critical baseline data regarding the status of martens in the Southern San Juan Mountain of northern New Mexico. We are partnering with Texas A&M AgriLife Research to study how human disturbances influence predator populations and their impact on Gunnison sage-grouse conservation. We have developed deep-learning models to identify and easily map prairie dog colonies in New Mexico and Utah.

Eastern Wildway: In Gorges State Park in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, we have completed two field seasons of monitoring four small culverts that were installed to facilitate road crossings for timber rattlesnakes and eastern box turtles. Since 2015, our motion-sensitive cameras have been used to study local concerns about wolves' impact on game species. Because red wolves continue to suffer from a lack of national awareness, we coordinated with the Associated Press on a major update about the wolf program, a story that was picked up by over 900 news outlets across the country. Future Forests Reimagined, our transboundary initiative to reconnect Old Forests in the Northern Appalachian-Acadian-Wabanaki bioregion brings our indigenous-guided forest planning process to the UNESCO Champlain-Adirondack Biosphere and eight UNESCO Biosphere Regions in eastern Canada. Through workshops and international collaborations, we support collaborators in development of their plans to identify and protect old forests and expand the use of ecological forestry aligning with traditional conservation knowledge systems.