Valley Floor wildlife monitoring report published
Findings show a variety of species call land home
By Eva Thomas, Telluride Daily Planet
After months of collecting data, Sheep Mountain Alliance, the Telluride Institute’s Watershed Education Program and Mountain Studies Institute published the Telluride Valley Floor Wildlife Monitoring 2021 Report on Jan. 23. Throughout 2021, 12 citizen-scientist volunteers and 104 students from Telluride Middle School sorted through 10,234 photos. The report's purpose was to record elk and wildlife activity on the Valley Floor, as 10 cameras were placed across the area.
"The most important data was the demonstration that elk use the Valley Floor for three of their four most important yearly cycles," said Garrett Smith, Ph.D., the Telluride Institute’s chief scientist and Watershed Education Program director. Along with the valuable information collected about activity on the Valley Floor, the project focused on encouraging local engagement through a "citizen science program."
"We were curious on how to engage local people on a science project on the Valley Floor. We're also curious about the elk behavior on the Valley Floor," Sheep Mountain Alliance Executive Director Mason Osgood said.
Each camera was "adopted" by a group of volunteers that worked alongside organizers. Every two months last year, a group would go onto the Valley Floor and collect the photos captured during those months. Then, the group would sort through the images, discarding any photos that included people. Groups sorted pictures into sub-folders for each species found on the Valley Floor, as well as folders for unknown images or false triggers.
After the months' photos were organized, Smith would conduct data analysis based on the collections. According to the report, elk were the largest group of detected species, making up 69 percent of all recorded images. The most significant number of elk detections took place from June to July, as 2,262 useable images were captured during that time, which accounted for up to 48 percent of recorded elk images.
“While the spatial distribution of elk detections varied by collection period, northern zones on the Valley Floor represented high-to-medium high detection rates in all collection periods,” according to the report.
Two of the cameras were adopted by seventh-grade science classrooms at the Telluride Middle School, and the eight others were distributed among local volunteers. Carrie Koenig and her 7-and-9-year-old-daughters adopted one of the cameras. Koenig signed up for the project because she wanted her "kids to be involved in the science as a learning experience and, on a deeper level, come to love, appreciate and protect our Valley Floor."
After 30 years of using the Valley Floor for recreation, Koenig said she gained a new appreciation for the 560 acres after participating in the project.
The 10 cameras were placed in five separate areas, divided into distinct habitat types.
Osgood and Smith agreed that the most surprising data gathered from the project was the diversity of species captured on the placed cameras.
"I think the most interesting thing that we found was just the abundance of different species of wildlife on the Valley Floor. We had everything from a ton of elk to seven occurrences of mountain lions. We had coyotes, and we had a lot of black bears. It really speaks to just how special the Valley Floor is in terms of wildlife biodiversity aspects," Osgood said.
The 16-page report contains an in-depth description and analysis of the project. It includes the methodology behind the data, pages regarding each collection period, results and future studies.
Recently, the Town of Telluride's Open Space Commission approved the Valley Floor Wildlife Monitoring Report for another year.
According to Smith, there are not a lot of changes for 2022 that would deviate from the initial project. Although, from an educational standpoint, he would like to improve the materials given to students and volunteers.
"We would like to thank the Open Space Commission for originally approving the project and allowing it to continue for a second year," Smith added.
For 2022, Osgood wants to prioritize getting more efficient with data collection and camera placement.
"The more data we have in our region the better it’s going to contribute to environmental decisions that we make in the future," Osgood said.