HOME RANGE WILDLIFE RESEARCH

 I had just rolled into Twisp, WA for the first time in a year, this time to stay for at least five weeks. I got a text from Anna, “A colleague of mine is going out to collar wolves tomorrow. Would you be interested in joining?” In the Home Range Wildlife Research parking lot, I let out an excited squeal, practically jumping up and down in my seat, the same reaction I had to the email telling me I got into the Field Immersion Program in the first place. This is my first day?!, I thought in disbelief. I arrived to the office late on a Friday evening and hadn’t even reconnected with Anna or Carmen since meeting them at the Wildlife Field Techniques course a year earlier and I was already jumping headfirst into the good stuff.  This is what this program has felt like: every day, a new opportunity to soak up as much wisdom as I could from local biologists. Throughout the program, I shadowed a variety of professionals, including John Rohrer, to assist with handling and pit tagging ...

I have spent the past six weeks as a trainee in HRWR’s Field Immersion Program, and I have honestly loved every second of it. It has been such a privilege to learn so much from the incredible team at Home Range. A large part of this program was spent developing experience for future field work. I honed my skills in radio telemetry, trail camera deployment and maintenance, conducting habitat surveys, study design, data analysis, wildlife track and sign, and building trap sets, among other things. I also gained a variety of more general skills that come in handy in the field of conservation: backroads driving, skinning a carcass, backing up with a trailer, and even deploying bear spray! We were given a number of opportunities to practice all of these skills. We spent a day tracking down a local collared Mule deer doe with radio telemetry, and even got close enough to spot another deer in her group. We went out with the Methow Beaver Project to conduct habitat surveys and record historic ...

Leah was an intern from Whitman College and worked in the field on our Lynx and Wildfire Project during the summer of 2025.    Log Walking and Lynx Conservation My name is Leah Barnes. I am a junior at Whitman majoring in Biology-Environmental Studies, and this summer I interned at Home Range Wildlife Research in Winthrop, WA. I worked on a project that researched Canada lynx habitat in the 2005 Tripod megafire burned area to ultimately uncover the best modes of lynx conservation. In the winter, a crew snowmobiled into the study area and snowshoed along lynx tracks in the snow, backtracking their movements and learning the story behind them. They mapped the lynx trails as they went, flagging anytime a lynx attempted to hunt or succeeded in killing its meal – usually a snowshoe hare. The graduate student in charge of this research then placed those trails in GIS, creating a plot every 400 meters, at hunting attempt sites, and at kill sites. She also copied each trail, spun ...

Sarah was an intern from Middlebury College and worked in the field on our Lynx and Wildfire Project during the summer of 2025.  This summer, I worked for Home Range Wildlife Research, an organization based in the Methow Valley in Washington state, on their Canada lynx and wildfire project. For four days every week, I bushwhacked through an area that experienced a climate change driven megafire 20 years ago. We followed lynx trails that were traced in the winter by following tracks in the snow and stopped periodically to take vegetation plots in order to learn where lynx are able to survive in burned areas. This data helps Home Range to recommend management actions that will allow the forests to be resilient against megafires in the future, while also ensuring that the lynx are able to thrive. It has been incredible and very helpful to have the opportunity to do field work full time. I am considering careers that involve field work, but I had not had the chance to do much of it bef...

 Gabe attended the Wildlife Field Techniques course in June, 2024.  I graduated from law school in the spring of 2023 and passed the bar exam in the winter of 2024. During law school, I studied environmental law, focusing on larger environmental policies. I volunteered and interned at various wildlife protection agencies. In one of my courses, I wrote my capstone seminar paper on issues facing the protection of the gray wolf under the Endangered Species Act. One thing that became clear throughout my research was that there was a big discrepancy between science and policy: laws were made sometimes not in accord with biological principles – for example, understanding what is a separate “species” versus “subspecies” versus “population” – and the law often made no room for those distinctions. It was during this research that I became much more interested in the science behind wildlife ecology, and realized I wanted the opportunity to firsthand experience how wildlife science is co...

Ron has been a committed supporter of Home Range since our humble beginnings. We are inspired by his story and are so grateful to be a part of it. Enjoy! Before Enrolling in a Home Range Course: I worked as a mechanical engineer for 24 years before being forced into early retirement at the end of 2020. After just two months of "retirement," I decided to pursue a second dream career by going back to school immediately. The idea of a second dream career originated during the Great Recession of 2008/2009. During that time, it was known that finding a worthwhile job would be challenging, so I committed to returning to school in 2008 to become a biologist. However, my plan was derailed because I never lost my job. Reflecting on this, it was both good and bad: good because I was one of three engineers in my department who didn't lose their job; bad because I thought my dream of becoming a biologist would never come true. My original challenges in pivoting to a different career ...

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is a lethal neurodegenerative disease affecting wild cervids (e.g., deer, moose, elk, caribou) in North America and Scandinavia. In the US, CWD has been detected in 35 states, and this August, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) announced the first detection of CWD in our home state, Washington.  CWD is caused by infectious misfolded proteins called prions that aggregate in tissues throughout an animal’s body. Prions are predominantly found in lymph and nervous system tissues, including the brain. These prion clusters (amyloids) essentially "swiss-cheese" the brain, causing the neurodegenerative symptoms indicative of this wasting disease. These clinical signs of disease appear in the last 6-8 weeks of a cervid’s life and include symptoms such as weight loss, lethargy, a splay-legged stance, drooping ears, and loss of fear.  Chronic wasting disease affects cervid species common to Washington, such as mule deer, pictured here....