I’ve learned to appreciate the quiet in
the cold it’s just not something you did
in any other place and in any other
season we’re the loudest things out
there thinking about rare species
they’re such an important part of the
landscape and something that we work so
hard to preserve and that’s always
what’s driven me that’s that’s where I
want to make the most difference because
I’ve worked with threatened endangered
species for most of my career used to
not seeing what I study a Lynx is a very
snow adapted cat and we actually we
don’t know how many they are we pick up
scat or hair and then from the scatter
here you get genetic information and you
can identify a species or an individual
with using camera traps you don’t always
get the perfect picture and it’s often
hard to tell it if that’s the Lynx or a
bobcat so we try and use track surveys
and cover more of the areas that the
animals actually inhabit even experts
misidentified tracks when tracks melt
out they’re hard to identify we make
mistakes for human I have definitely
always had an affinity for river systems
and really anything aquatic so when I
learned about tools like environmental
DNA it was mind-blowing that I can then
just go out collect a water sample and
tell you what species were upstream so
environmental DNA in its truest form is
DNA that is shed from a species into the
environment so that DNA could be cells
from skin from hair from feces from
urine anything that is then shed from
that animal and into the environment
here at the genomic Center we’ve
analyzed over 10,000 samples 480
different species and I really work
to make that tool available for anyone
across the world so this all came from a
collaborative meeting with geneticist
with carnivore researchers with the EDA
program and we were all kind of talking
about plans for winter sampling how the
Lynx crew is going to be doing their
field work and then kind of as a group
kind of came to this moment of like huh
well snow tracks are basically just
water samples if we melt them out there
should be no reason that that shouldn’t
work just as we treat a normal Street
sample it’s been through a lot of
conversations and working with Tommy and
then one day we just decided let’s let’s
see what happens when we scoop snow
let’s test this it was one of those
moments where you come back into lab you
plug in the results you’re waiting for
it to load and all sudden they pop up on
the screen and it’s one of those Eureka
moments we can detect DNA from snow
tracks like that alone in itself is
crazy
it’s really exciting to see all of the
success that EDA has had with detecting
rare species and streams and to bring
that onto land there’s no question you
know we find the links and it is links
and and we don’t have to focus our
efforts on that we can instead focus on
these broader conservation questions I
think that we’re not we’re not going to
be able to do conservation without
collaboration we’re providing people
with good science-based information and
letting them make more informed
decisions for conservation and I think
there’s nothing there’s nothing greater
than that
so I have never seen only
who knows if I ever will but with E DNA
like I don’t have to see it to know it’s
there and that is truly remarkable about
this technology by detecting a single
cell of DNA on an entire landscape we
can effectively influence how over 5
million acres of land are managed
you
you
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