A piece of important equipment has been removed from a burned-out stretch of Okanagan landscape where mule deer researchers were working.
Researchers for the Southern Interior Mule Deer Project had gone to the McDougall Creek burn site and discovered that someone had removed their camera and lock, leaving the bear guard behind.
“From the burn pattern on the tree, they believe the camera would have survived the fire,” the BC Wildlife Federation said in an online post.
“These cameras are all password protected and useless to anyone but those gathering data for better managing our wildlife in the SIMDeer Project.”
Should anyone come across a Reconyx camera with a SIMDeer label on it, they ask that they let them know.
“No questions asked — we just want to get the equipment and SD card data back to the researchers,” the post reads.
“We at the BCWF and the SIMDeer project rely on volunteers’ dollars and hours to make this project a success, and the loss of an expensive research camera and the SD card data is a setback.”
Since 2019, dozens of volunteers with the wildlife federation have been taking care of 150 wildlife cameras spread across 30,000 square kilometres. The goal of the Southern Interior Mule Deer Project is to better understand the mule deer population, its health, movements and predators.
The organization says the cameras have historically been moved with the deer’s season migration habits.
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