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Women in Science!

In honor of the 19th Amendment Centennial, today’s Science Friday is a shout out to all the talented and amazing women scientists that work in Glacier, past and present! From the early 1900s when Gertrude Norton was hired by the Great Northern Railroad to lead wildflower expeditions and identify wildflowers at the Many Glacier Hotel to Kate Kendall, a research ecologist and the first permanent female scientist hired by Glacier, the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem has been blessed with strong, capable, innovative women in a variety of science fields.

Although many of Glacier’s women scientists have received numerous awards, we honor Kate Kendall today for her innovative techniques and long-lasting impact to grizzly and black bear research. Kendall graduated from the University of Virginia in 1974 with a B.A. in Environmental Sciences and then went on to receive a M.S. in Fish and Wildlife Management from Montana State University in 1981. She spent her career studying grizzly and black bear populations for the National Park Service and U.S. Geological Survey. Kendall’s most notable contribution to science was her use of non-invasive methods to estimate grizzly bear populations in Montana’s Northern Divide Ecosystem, an eight-million acre territory that includes Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness complex. By collecting bear hair from identified tree rubs (by placing barb wire around them), Kendall and her team could identify individual bears from the DNA in the hair samples and thus, provide the first precise estimate of the entire population of grizzly bears in northwest Montana.

This ground-breaking use of genetics to identify population size, gender, and regional density led to numerous awards for Kendall for her contributions to wildlife research and conservation. In 2014, she received the Northwest Section of the Wildlife Society’s Arthur S. Einarsen Award for outstanding service to the wildlife profession. Kendall’s long-term contributions to the Department of Interior were also recognized when she was awarded Superior and Meritorious Service Awards.

At a time when few women dared to enter into the male-dominated field of wildlife biology, let allow grizzly bear biology, Kendall not only broke ground for generations of women to come, but she rose to the occasion and left a lasting legacy in the field of wildlife biology.

Kate Kendall leaves a lasting legacy in the field of wildlife biology.

[image description: Top: Two female scientists string barb wire around a tree. Second: A standing grizzly bear rubs against a tree with its head looking up at the sky. Third: A tuft of bear hair sticks out from barb wire wrapped around a tree. Fourth: Woman strings a camera to a tree. Photos courtesy of USGS]

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The Bucket Metaphor for Wildlife Management

Let’s represent habitat as a bucket, and the amount of one species of animals able to live in it is the water. There can be big buckets or little buckets, but eventually, if you keep pouring water - adding/stocking animals - the bucket is eventually going to fill up, and everything else added is going to be a waste. The top of the bucket is the “carrying capacity” - the amount of individuals able to live in a habitat.

Carrying capacity can fluctuate. In the summer months, there is sometimes more food available for animals. With more food available, the amount of individuals a habitat can support increases. But if that food goes away in the winter, the available food goes down, and the carrying capacity decreases. Those extra individuals either die or disperse - and most dispersers end up dead.

The secret to increasing the amount of a population is not to pour more water into a small bucket, but to increase the size of the bucket. This means increasing the quality of the habitat - increase food production, diversity, available shelter, and sometimes connectivity with other patches of habitat.

Just increasing one of those things isn’t always a solution either. White-tail deer are a prime example of this. In winter, deer struggle more to find food, so people will leave birdseed, feed, and corn (with provides little nutrients for them) for them to eat. There is now more food available in a habitat, and the population goes up instead of cycling through a natural decline and rise. Food may no longer be a problem, but shelter, parasites/disease spread, and fighting may increase, decreasing the health of the overall population. Not to mention, that in suburban areas, the superficially increases population of deer are going to cause more motor vehicle accidents.

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sometimes being a wildlife bio student is hilarilous. cause like. they'll teach you the weirdest ways to remember things. for example, to help us remember what a barred owl sounds like, professors typically say "who cooks for youuu" in the tune of a barred owl call. and like last semester i took a dendrology class and when we were being taught how to ID trees, the professor told us that the leaf scars on american basswoods look like a mouse with a motorcyle helmet. and i was like. WHAT?!? but that's literally how you learn. idk i just think its cool and funny.

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:S

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the wildlife science students

a feeling of peace whenever you’re surrounded by nature

biology and ecology textbooks stacked on your desk

fighting to slow extinction rates and preserve biodiversity

being unafraid to get your hands dirty while pursuing your goals

a journal of field notes, scribbled handwriting partially blurred by raindrops

fascination with the natural world, on levels both big and small

knowing how to move through an ecosystem without disturbing it

studying influential figures in your field, from Linnaeus to Goodall, Darwin to Fossey

identifying plants and animals off the top of your head

long nights analyzing data, dreaming of getting out into the field again

an awed admiration for the majesty of the animal kingdom

the sound of a waterfall

wanting to preserve the Earth for future generations

treating all categories of life with respect, knowing each organism is part of a larger ecosystem

noticing small changes in the world around you

a myriad of shades of green and brown; colors of the Earth

a love for animals of all shapes and sizes

evaluating human impact on wildlife populations 

going beyond animal anatomy to study behavior, learning how species communicate and interact 

applying individual observations on a larger scale

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Longear Sunfish (Lepomis megalotis) exhibiting typical nest guarding behavior.

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Upper Prong River. Texas County, Missouri.

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Drainage Stream. Howell County, Missouri.

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Steinweg Mountain Landscape

@ Hippopx

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by Kyle Bonallo (Instagram)

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Dogwood Canyon, Missouri.

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Canada Goose, Table Rock Lake, Missouri.

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Me: “Are you sure you know where we are going?”

Coworker: “Yes.”

Me, four hours later: “Alexa, play lost in the woods, please.”

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Walking Tree, Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah, USA [OC] [533x799]

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Walk in the woods after sunset, southern Germany [OC] [3200x4267]