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Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming draws thousands of awed visitors every year but few are as fortunate as Rebecca Raymond, a URI alumna, who visits the park year around as part of her dream job.
Raymond is a field biologist who was graduated from URI with a degree in conservation and wildlife biology in May, 2008 and her full-time job is to help kept track of the park’s wolf population.
"I always wanted to work with canids," she said in a telephone interview, adding that as a teenager in Warwick she had already made up her mind about her career.
She credits her grandfather with getting her interested in nature and wildlife biology.
After high school she worked for several years as a veterinary technician in Georgia and then 10 years after graduating from high school she decided to go to URI to pursue a degree. She continued working as a vet tech in Rhode Island while going to school.
During the summer of 2007, she did an internship in Yellowstone that gave her credentials good enough to land a permanent job.
"I just Googled wolves and that led me to this job," she said.
Raymond, 33, is one of three full-time field biologists employed by the Yellowstone Association, a non-profit support group. There are also four field biologists who work for the National Park Service.
Together the biologists monitor the dozen or so packs of wolves that are in park on a year-round basis although at certain times of the year the group is augmented by part-timers, largely students.
Their findings and observations are summed up in an annual report (the 2008 report can be found at http://www.nps.gov/yell/naturescience/
upload/wolfar2008_9_09.pdf).
The report, complete with color photos, is an interesting read on the condition of the packs, their habits and the techniques biologists use to monitor the wolves.
"We spend a lot of time outside," said Raymond. In the winter when the roads are closed, there’s a lot of hiking, skiing involved she said. Weekly and daily airplane flights are use and once a year a helicopter is use to "dart" the wolves.
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A biologist shoots wolves with tranquilizer darts and then the biologists land to take measurements of the dazed but awake animals. The biologists have about two hours before the animals recover and they take blood samples, weight and other measurements. Of particular importance is to check for any diseases—currently distemper is prevalent and it seems to go in cycles. Wolves can catch the disease from other animals such as weasels—a situation the scientists are trying to decipher.
Less than a third of the wolves in the park (at the end of 2008, it was estimated there were at least 124 wolves in 12 packs, two non-pack groups and six loners) are fitted with very high frequency radio collars that enable researchers to track their movements. Four collars are GPS types.
The wolf restoration project was started in 1995 when 14 wolves from Canada were introduced into Yellowstone. Up until this time, the park area was devoid of wolves since 1926—disease and wholesale eradication practices caused the elimination of the wolves.
Of course, restoration of wolves into the park area has not been without controversy. Many hunters and ranchers have opposed the project—hunters because of the competition and ranchers because of the danger to their livestock.
"In town, I don’t tell people what I do," laughed Raymond who lives with her dogs just outside one of the park’s entrances. "There are people who hate wolves," she added.
Wolf packs fascinate her. There are territorial battles and mate battles. The report gives details on each pack and in many of them, young pups did not survive in 2008, largely through distemper.
The Leopold Pack, considered the most stable pack in the park, went out of existence in 2008, a major development reported in the annual report.
The biologists also collect data on wolf-prey relationships, composition of wolf kills, population, reproduction and mortalities.
The work is never finished said Raymond and so far the funding for the project appears solid.
Should it run out, Raymond said "I guess I will have to find s new pipedream."
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