Taylor Wilderness Research Station Archive

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:42:14
Bridget Bradshaw
Now, that same canary in the coal mine. Well, it dates back to the early 1900s, when canaries really were used as literal carbon monoxide detectors in coal mines. Canaries are these little yellow domesticated birds whose wild cousins are native to the islands off the coast of north west Africa. The idea for using them as poisonous gas detectors came from a Scottish physician named John Scott Haldan.

00:00:42:16 - 00:01:10:17
Bridget Bradshaw
And this dude did all sorts of crazy experimentation on himself to try and figure out how different gases affected humans. He also invented decompression chambers and respirators and oxygen tents. And he was like, hey, listen. Carbon monoxide is a problem in mines and it will kill you. You should bring a bird down there as you’re sent. And they were like, this guy assumes he knows what he’s talking about.

00:01:10:20 - 00:01:45:17
Bridget Bradshaw
But why a canary? You might ask. Well, here’s the thing about birds. Birds are the magical fairy beings of this world. They spend their whole lives dancing around on the knife edge of life and death. They eat only enough to power themselves, but not so much that it weighs them down. They’ve traded organs and bones for lightness. In fact, you can trace a lot of weird bird physiology back to one thing:

00:01:45:19 - 00:02:18:13
Bridget Bradshaw
Flight. And what does flight take? Oxygen. Lots and lots of oxygen. Which means that they move fresh air across their lungs when they breathe in. And when they breathe out. It all has to do with these air sacs they have inside them. So instead of birds’ lungs inflating like ours, the air sacs inflate and then they push air across the lungs and out like bellows pushing air across coals.

00:02:18:16 - 00:02:35:24
Bridget Bradshaw
So because birds move so much more air through their body than mammals do. They feel the ill effects of carbon monoxide way before we do this, but I digress.

00:02:35:26 - 00:03:07:10
Bridget Bradshaw
This podcast isn’t about bird lungs or coal or canaries. At least in the literal sense. Look at all the little critters. Hey, buddies. It’s like they’re napping in toilet paper and stuffed with cotton. This is a story about a little research station snuggled in the steep walled valley of the Big Creek drainage, deep in the heart of the Frank Church.

00:03:07:12 - 00:03:14:07
Bridget Bradshaw
River of No Return Wilderness.

00:03:14:10 - 00:03:45:07
Bridget Bradshaw
So let’s see, what do we have here? We have got a bat. Solid owl. And this happy little fellow. Oops. We’re looking inside a specimen cabinet. It’s meant for insects, but it only has a few scrappy butterflies and chewed-up bees inside. The real gold is in a little cardboard box at the bottom. It says 88 by Holly Akenson.

00:03:45:10 - 00:04:30:10
Bridget Bradshaw
And the toilet paper, it’s […] into a bird. So we have a medium sized bird, like the size of a bluebird, and it is bright yellow gold like goldenrod color. And that fades into like crimson cherry red on his base. Oh now there’s two. So little.

00:04:30:13 - 00:04:38:06
Jocelyn Aycrigg
People love looking at birds. It’s just one of those things that people can really get into.

00:04:38:08 - 00:05:01:16
Bridget Bradshaw
That was doctor Jocelyn Aycrigg in early June. She hopped on a tiny plane and made her annual migration to start the bird count season here at Taylor. She missed last year. Covid pretty much shut down the field season here. So it’s the job of myself and three other field techs to dust things off. Kind of get them running again.

00:05:01:18 - 00:05:04:21
Bridget Bradshaw
Okay. Will you introduce yourself?

00:05:04:23 - 00:05:14:11
Jocelyn Aycrigg
Sure. I’m a assistant research faculty in the Department of Fish and Wildlife Sciences at the University of Idaho and the College of Natural Resources.

00:05:14:14 - 00:05:36:04
Bridget Bradshaw
Doctor Aycrigg is the principal investigator for an ongoing study on birds here in the lower Big Creek area of the Frank Church Wilderness. She’s building on top of data from Bird Point counts going back 20 years. And as a researcher, she thinks big picture climate change, population ecology.

00:05:36:07 - 00:05:51:00
Jocelyn Aycrigg
I’ve always liked, providing context to questions. So I like looking across large landscapes. And when I say large landscapes, I’m talking about like an entire wilderness or entire wilderness system across the United States.

00:05:51:03 - 00:06:19:28
Bridget Bradshaw
The subject of one of Doctor Aycrigg’s current research projects is Birds. We’re in year five of what may end up being an eight year study of bird populations of the Frank church. It’s all about collecting bird data in different ways. So traditional bird point count studies, or you’ll hear her say, systematic surveys and a much more laid back method that some might call

00:06:20:00 - 00:06:22:23
Bridget Bradshaw
taking a walk.

00:06:22:26 - 00:06:48:06
Jocelyn Aycrigg
So that is research has been done in a very specific place at, in and around Taylor Wilderness Research Station. There’s been a tremendous number of years of data being collected, but it’s all been fairly systematic. And there is some systematic surveys being done here at Taylor Ranch. But I’ve, I’ve been interested in trying to see, how eBird, how data that’s collected and submitted to eBird would be different.

00:06:48:08 - 00:07:15:15
Bridget Bradshaw
eBird, for those unfamiliar, is a database like no other. It was created and is maintained by Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology. Same as in the bird world with lots of moderator help from a healthy population of nerds in the birding community. And it works like this. Step one make yourself an eBird account. You can download an app or just enter data later on your computer.

00:07:15:18 - 00:07:39:24
Bridget Bradshaw
Step two. Head out for a walk. Maybe you’re taking your dog for a walk, and you click the button that says Start Checklist. Then when you see a bird, you just search the name of the bird and then press a little plus sign that says Boop. Someone you see a starling blip. You see a giant bird with a red tail but don’t know what it is.

00:07:39:27 - 00:08:14:24
Bridget Bradshaw
Great, because eBird is linked with Cornell’s other grand birding unifier, Merlin, the bird identification app. You enter some field marks like big Red tail, and the computer will give you the most likely identification based on your location. Blue. You finish your walk and you click submit. Boom! Did it. Data collection. And now imagine everyone on your block doing it every time they take their dog for a walk.

00:08:14:29 - 00:08:24:21
Bridget Bradshaw
Bloop! Or every time they see birds at their bird feeder. Bloop bloop bloop bloop. Yeah, lots of data.

00:08:24:24 - 00:08:40:03
Jocelyn Aycrigg
And so the question is, can that data be used in various ways to inform conservation? But one of the issues with eBird is that, where you get data is where people go to look at birds.

00:08:40:05 - 00:09:09:09
Bridget Bradshaw
And herein lies the challenge for community science programs. You tend to get a lot of data from around where people live. And after the violent removal of indigenous people from what are now the US wilderness areas, no one’s allowed to live in them. So here’s the question: who’s watching the birds? Enter Taylor Wilderness Research Station.

00:09:09:12 - 00:09:17:29
Jocelyn Aycrigg
And it sits within the Frank church River of No Return. Wilderness, of course. And then, of course, that is part of the National Wonders Preservation System for the whole U.S..

00:09:18:02 - 00:09:42:20
Bridget Bradshaw
Taylor is an inholding that predates the Wilderness Act. The 60 odd acre chunk of land along Big Creek was bought by Dave Lewis, aka Cougar Dave, back in 1918, who sold it about 20 years later to Jess Taylor and the Taylors ran it as an outfitter for 30 or so years, during which time a mountain lion researcher named Maurice Hornocker would come study big cats.

00:09:42:23 - 00:10:13:04
Bridget Bradshaw
So when the Taylors were looking to sell. Winokur convinced the University of Idaho that this little inholding in the Frank Church was a rare gem a small, perfect, beautiful window into what land looks like and smells like and sounds like when you’re 30 miles from the closest road. And Hornocker knew that this rugged, wild place was the before picture that you can put next to the picture.

00:10:13:04 - 00:10:29:26
Bridget Bradshaw
That’s taken after machines have moved in. And he wanted to make sure that someone was out here listening. And you know what the university did? They bought it.

00:10:29:29 - 00:10:52:05
Jocelyn Aycrigg
And so in places like where we’re sitting right now, there’s not that many people. And so there’s not that much birthday. They’ve been collected. So the idea is to try to fill in a gap here in, in this wilderness and in Idaho and in the country that then will lead to I mean, it’s just another small piece of data that’s been put into eBird, but that data is all being used for conservation.

00:10:52:08 - 00:11:13:01
Jocelyn Aycrigg
This data is kind of unique because it’s collected in a wilderness area. And it doesn’t have all the same sort of, impacts or influences that a lot of other bird data eBird data has because it’s being collected where people go more than in here. So that’s why I’m interested in this here because it’s filling that gap.

00:11:13:04 - 00:11:47:00
Bridget Bradshaw
Fill the gap. Yes, that’s a good motto for us in the gap. So now, 52 years later, here we are listening. It’s 6:30 and there are four of us hiking up Pioneer Creek. Today we’re doing an unstructured survey, which means we’re just going for a walk. and then we write down the words receipt or actually more likely the birds that we hear.

00:11:47:02 - 00:11:57:21
Bridget Bradshaw
Mostly we hear the birds. I see like 1% of the birds on the surveys. So we’ll see how it goes.

00:11:57:23 - 00:12:10:06
Bridget Bradshaw
The work is tiring. It’s getting up early and patiently untangling this mess of different songs and calls.

00:12:10:08 - 00:12:17:02
Bridget Bradshaw
Oh. Ow!

00:12:17:04 - 00:12:17:24
Bridget Bradshaw
I’m trying not.

00:12:17:24 - 00:12:23:16
Bridget Bradshaw
To whack you in the face with this rosebush. Sorry.

00:12:23:18 - 00:12:55:12
Bridget Bradshaw
The other big part of this project is the way it engages undergraduate interns. So, heard you developed this. It’s working with lots of different things. Probably the […] thrush. Kaylee and Genevieve are the interns for this summer. And they have both quickly learned to recognize the regulars. And I also heard the one going, here, teee. You guys remember what that one was?

00:12:55:15 - 00:13:00:29
Unidentified speaker
Oh, it’s the […].

00:13:01:02 - 00:13:33:01
Bridget Bradshaw
You’re there, yes. That was very, good job. Doctor Aycrigg sees the involvement of undergrads in teaching them new skills and building confidence in their field science as a crucial element to the study here, and crucial to the way Taylor runs in general. Graduates, undergraduates, researchers, operations staff all come together here to keep things running and to keep an ear to the ground.

00:13:33:04 - 00:13:39:09
Bridget Bradshaw
So magical, the most magical thing of all time.

00:13:48:18 - 00:14:07:04
Jocelyn Aycrigg
I am a big proponent for monitoring. And the longer those that data set is, the more valuable it becomes. In my mind, because you’ve established this long term data set. So every year you add to it becomes more and more valuable.

00:14:07:06 - 00:14:27:22
Jocelyn Aycrigg
I do feel like this is a very unique place, and it’s a great place to look at birds. And like I mentioned before, birds are great ecosystem indicators, and if there’s something going on in the wilderness and we can use them as an indicator, maybe we can prevent something from happening by taking some action.

00:14:27:25 - 00:14:40:19
Bridget Bradshaw
Which brings us back to this little yellow bird in a drawer in a log cabin in the mountains of central Idaho.

00:14:40:21 - 00:15:05:08
Bridget Bradshaw
I feel like the ones I’ve seen alive have been a lot brighter. I wonder if they aren’t as bright. If color fades. I don’t know. It’s a western tanager. They’re bright like fire. They eat things like fruit and insects, and they thrive on the edges of Douglas fir forests and places like city parks. They’re not delicate or endangered.

00:15:05:10 - 00:15:25:18
Bridget Bradshaw
Taylor’s thick with them. It’s their ideal habitat. A land of burns and serviceberries and Doug firs to go around. This specimen was found outside of the lab here, right where I’m sitting, after a cold snap in 1988.

00:15:25:20 - 00:15:46:02
Jocelyn Aycrigg
So I think there’s a lot of questions that could be centered around the data that’s been collected already as baseline and helping to continue that, and then also starting to ask questions about how are species adapting. Are they moving off? Are they are, do we see like new bird species coming in or new insects or new,

00:15:46:05 - 00:15:58:25
Jocelyn Aycrigg
Do we see shifts in some of the plant species and so on? Are they moving north or are they moving south, that sort of thing. And again, looking at that within a wilderness area, where we don’t have the land use impact. I just think that is tremendously unique.

00:15:58:27 - 00:16:23:02
Bridget Bradshaw
So I guess I’m hearing from you is the direction that research could go. Here is wilderness as, a baseline and wilderness as a control almost in relation to other kinds of areas, protected private, public whatever. Exactly. Wilderness as being untouched by a lot of other things. But, but subject to climate change.

00:16:23:04 - 00:16:29:11
Jocelyn Aycrigg
Exactly. It can’t escape climate change.

00:16:29:14 - 00:16:49:06
Bridget Bradshaw
In the same way that birds feel the effects of carbon monoxide before we do, they also feel things like changes in weather and insect communities before we do. They’re what folks call indicators of ecosystem health or canaries in a coal mine.

00:16:49:09 - 00:17:13:17
Jocelyn Aycrigg
The bigger question to me is also is like, okay, if, like, what if all the ecosystems that are occurring within the Frank Church are actually shifting out of the Frank Church over time? So are there ecosystems that are coming in behind it? So basically these boundaries we’ve drawn, these static boundaries we’ve drawn are not protecting what we initially wanted them to protect.

00:17:13:17 - 00:17:21:00
Jocelyn Aycrigg
And, you know, of course, we’re looking further and much farther in the future, but that might be what we’re starting to see.

00:17:21:02 - 00:17:39:25
Bridget Bradshaw
Which is to say that these tanagers in the wilderness are the canaries in the coal mine. They are the sentinels for global warming. And it means that someone needs to be here listening to them.

00:17:39:28 - 00:17:40:12
Bridget Bradshaw
Are you ready?

00:17:40:12 - 00:17:50:01
Bridget Bradshaw
Unscripted. But we talked about it last night. So that’s like, you know, big grand vision.

00:17:50:03 - 00:17:57:18
Bridget Bradshaw
Meaning of wilderness. What does, What does wilderness mean to you? I mean, what does it mean to you personally?

00:17:57:20 - 00:18:17:02
Jocelyn Aycrigg
You know, it has a certain mystique. I think when you’re here, if you’re get sick or if you get hurt. You have to really take care of yourself more. You have to think about yourself more. You have to think about, like, when I go down the trail, I have to think about, okay, I have to keep an eye out for rattlesnakes because I don’t want to get bit.

00:18:17:05 - 00:18:34:07
Jocelyn Aycrigg
That’s not something I have to think about, like walking down the street in Moscow. And I think that makes you much more self-aware. And I think that’s good for people to be self-aware, that there’s a bigger world out there that, that you’re a part of, that we’re each a part of, as opposed to us being the world.

00:18:34:10 - 00:18:48:08
Jocelyn Aycrigg
And, and I think that’s what this place bridges, and I think that’s really important for people to understand is that we are part of this world. We’re all in this together.

00:18:48:10 - 00:18:49:15
Jocelyn Aycrigg
Yes. But

00:18:49:17 - 00:18:50:17
Bridget Bradshaw
Thank you.

00:18:50:20 - 00:18:56:23
Jocelyn Aycrigg
Sure. I hope you can get some tidbits out of that. So I’m going to get to this. Okay. And then what happens? And then.

00:18:56:23 - 00:19:12:04
Bridget Bradshaw
I go.

00:19:12:06 - 00:19:59:02
Bridget Bradshaw
Thank you to the Bleak Family for supporting graduate work here at the Taylor Wilderness Research Station. And to my advisor and research director here, Theresa Cohn. This piece was edited and recorded with help from Hannah Wilson, Genevieve Arterburn, and Kaylee Carr. The music was by Pier 1958, Cape West, and Clive Romney from Pixabay. I also want to acknowledge that we are living and working on the ancestral home of the Tukudika and the Niimiipuu, also known as the Sheep Eater Shoshone Bannock and the Nez Perce.