The winter 2010 season of the Kluane Red Squirrel Project is well underway.   The crew arrived in February and has been hard at work opening up camp, setting up projects and preparing for the year ahead.  There are some returning squirrelers, new technicians, and we’ve already had several visitors to camp.  The weather has been fantastic and we’ve seen all sorts of wildlife and spectacular mountain views. 

On February 12, Ben Dantzer, a Michigan State University grad student and his field technician, Frances Stewart, arrived at Squirrel Camp.  By February 15 they had camp organized and were starting to deliver peanut butter to the squirrels on the food addition grids.  Manu Landry-Cuerrier arrived from McGill in Montreal to really help them out with this huge task.  Together, they delivered over 320 kilos of peanut butter in less than four days.  Once the peanut butter was all in place, Ben and Frances started trapping squirrels to start Ben’s current project.  They are trying to determine how perceived population densities affect red squirrel reproduction.

The rest of the late winter and spring crew arrived at Squirrel Camp on Wednesday, March 3.  The five of us had driven for three days from Edmonton after watching Team Canada take the gold medal in Men’s Olympic Hockey and successfully completing our University of Alberta Driver’s Tests.  Returning to Squirrel Camp for their third time were McGill grad student, Devan Archibald, and Kristen Rostad.  New to camp this year, were Dylan White, Lindsey Valliant, and myself, Cass Stabler.  Ben and Frances welcomed us all into camp with a delicious dinner and we all found warm places to sleep in the loft of the data hut and the PhD hut. 

The next day we started training.  The spring crew is responsible for collecting information about all of the squirrels living on the six long-term research grids.  We need to know which squirrel lives on each midden and the reproductive status of each female.  This allows us to determine when and where the new pups will be born on each grid.  We can then find the nests and identify the pups.  Training went very well as we learned how to set traps, monitor the trap line, and collect information about the squirrels we saw and trapped on the grids. 

Since training, we’ve all been out trapping each day to gain an understanding of where each squirrel in the current population lives.  During this time, Dr. Stan Boutin from the University of Alberta came to visit camp.  Stan is one of the principle investigators on the Red Squirrel Project and the person who set up this camp back in the 1980’s.  He passed on a lot of great advice about trapping squirrels, told us interesting information about the history of the camp, and got our snowmobile running. 

On grid we’ve seen moose, lynx, goshawk, snow bunting, snowshoe hare, ermine, and several grey jays and chickadees.  The birds like to rob the peanut butter bait from our traps and that can make it difficult to catch squirrels.  We’ve found two nests and have successfully counted and identified the new male and female pups.  This has been pretty exciting for everyone involved because squirrel pups sure are cute!  This past week we also completed our second peanut butter addition.  With the entire crew working hard we had all the peanut butter delivered in one day.

As spring begins in the Yukon, we’re already noticing the increase in daylight hours.  The sun sets around 8:30 pm, but it’s still quite light out when we go to bed.  We’ve had a few very mild days and it seems like the snow will be melting soon too.  The returning crew has told us all about how muddy the area can be when this happens.  We’ve still got a few squirrels to find and a lot of nests to come.  Business as usual at Squirrel Camp!