ONE WEEK FROM today, the Port Angeles Lefties will take the Civic Field diamond for their season opener attired in caps and jerseys featuring a marmot mascot logo, an ode to one of the North Olympic Peninsula’s most popular endemic species, the Olympic Marmot.
These native Peninsulaites evolved separately from other marmot species thanks to ice-age isolation and are found only in the alpine meadows within Olympic National Park and surrounding national forest and nowhere else in the world.
Rodents in the squirrel family, they are most easily observed nuzzling, playing and chirping in and around the mountain meadows above 4,000 feet near Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park.
Volunteer monitors sought
The park has overseen volunteer monitoring of the species since 2010, and is now accepting volunteer applications for the Olympic Marmot Monitoring Program’s 2017 survey season.
The 2017 application deadline is next Thursday, June 1, but may close earlier if enough eligible volunteers have been accepted or last longer if some trips remain unfilled.
Launched in 2010, the Olympic Marmot Monitoring Program employs teams of volunteers to visit designated survey areas within the park and gather information about the Olympic marmot’s population presence and distribution.
“We started monitoring the species after a decline was documented in the early 2000s,” said Olympic National Park Wildlife Branch Chief Patti Happe.
“The population has appeared to have stabilized since we began the monitoring program, but at a lower level than what was observed in the 1990s or early 2000s.”
Marmots colonies are still found in good numbers at Royal Basin in Jefferson County and Hurricane Hill in Clallam County, but whole colonies have disappeared.
“There’s none at Deer Park,” Happe said. “You can find abandoned burrows and there is historic data from surveys as far back as the 1950s to the 1990s that show the area supported a population of Olympic marmots.”
Previous research studies have helped biologists come to theorize the population dips were caused by a link between coyotes and changes in climate.
“At other spots, the research that this was founded on saw high level of predation by coyotes,” Happe said.
“The coyotes were taking lots of marmots, especially adult females. Marmots are rodents but don’t breed like mice.
The females need to be 3 or 4 years old to reach sexual maturity, so the mortality of those adult females really did a number.”
Coyotes are not a native species to the Olympic Peninsula, but the adaptable creatures have spread in all directions and now populate all of the lower 48 states, plus Alaska.
I wouldn’t put it past them to have slipped aboard a ship and headed to Hawaii, either.
“Coyotes really weren’t present in the Olympics because historically we had populations of wolves,” Happe said.
“When we had wolves we didn’t have coyotes. But we have had coyotes here for a while, so the increase in marmot predation seems to be in relation to years when we had low snowpack. Years with a more normal snowpack saw less predation, so a changing climate could be playing a role.”
Happe said the marmot predation could be tied back to coyotes in two ways.
“Researchers gathered scat samples in marmot habitats and they found marmot remains present and the researchers were able to identify if the sample came from a coyote, bobcat or cougar, and they found coyote predation was a factor in declining marmot populations.
“They also found remains of marmots that had radio transmitters or ear tags attached that had been preyed upon by coyotes.”
Happe said that with this program, volunteers and park staffers don’t do a hard-target count of individual marmots.
“With this type of program, we don’t count the number of animals, we count the proportion of habitat that is occupied,” she said.
“It’s hard to get a true count of the number of animals because they are running around or running through their burrows.
Happe said the time it would take to count each animal would knock out many potential volunteers from participating.
“Biologists and statisticians have devised a metric that measures the proportion of habitat that the animals reside in,” she said.
“This has made it easier for us to train volunteers to do the monitoring. Instead of having to sit for days or weeks in an area to get a good, firm count, they can hike to a patch and see if they are there or not and its easier to determine a viable habitat and population.
“And so that trend, the patches of habitat that have marmots appears to be static but lower than numbers that were found in recent decades.”
Volunteers must be hardy, capable of hiking to and camping in wilderness areas, navigating steep slopes and walking in off-trail locations.
Survey trips are one to eight days in length. Most survey areas are located between 5-20 miles from a trailhead or road and involve a one or two day hike with significant elevation gain. Survey groups camp out in or near the survey areas and search for marmots for two to four days.
A limited number of day hike assignments are available for the Hurricane Hill, Klahhane Ridge and Obstruction Point survey areas.
Volunteers work in groups of two to six people. To ensure safety, each volunteer must travel and monitor with a partner. Volunteers ages 13-17 must be accompanied by responsible adults.
All volunteers are required to participate in a one-day training that includes both classroom and field instruction. Volunteers are responsible for their own transportation.
Camping fees will be waived at Heart O’ the Hills and other front-country sites for the evening before training. Park entrance and backcountry fees also will be waived for volunteers.
“Volunteers are the backbone of this program, we couldn’t do it without them and their contributions are valued,” Happe said. “We love our volunteers. Many of them are local, and we have some Port Angeles and Sequim residents who have volunteered from the very beginning.”
The Marmot Monitoring Program is made possible by donations through Washington’s National Park Fund. To learn more about Washington’s National Park Fund or to contribute, visit http://wnpf.org.
For more information about the program visit, www.nps.gov/olym/naturescience/olympic-marmot-monitoring.htm.
A short video about the project and the marmot monitor training can be found at http://nwparkscience.org/node/1044.
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Sports reporter/columnist Michael Carman can be contacted at 360-417-3525 or mcarman@peninsuladailynews.com.
