Great Bear Rainforest Remote Camera Project

Located on the western edge of the North American continent exists one of the last great wilderness regions of its kind: the Great Bear Rainforest, the largest expanse of temperate old growth rainforests left on the planet.

Here, where the land meets the sea, terrestrial and marine ecosystems are intertwined, creating one of the most biologically rich areas in the world.

Here, where the land meets the sea, terrestrial and marine ecosystems are intertwined, creating one of the most biologically rich areas in the world.

Here, where the land meets the sea, terrestrial and marine ecosystems are intertwined, creating one of the most biologically rich areas in the world.

Yet, because of its remote nature this region and its wildlife still harbor many mysteries.

A group of engineers, biologists, and filmmakers have developed a new way to gain insight into the inner workings of this secretive coastal rainforest.

Well, for nearly two decades we’ve been trying to really further our understanding of predator/prey relationships in particular in these remote salmon rivers of the Great Bear Rainforest.

So what we are doing now is deploying a new generation of wireless video cameras in these remote areas, and we are extremely excited about it because we hope to uncover feeding behavior, inter-species relationships that has not been recorded previously.

So it’s very exciting because we can spot the wolves as long as they’re in our field of view; and follow them, track them, pan, tilt, and zoom, watching their behavior, which is just so exciting because we now know just 150 feet from where we had the camera last night, we’ve located their prime feeding ground.

This season they’re focusing on salmon rivers, as this is where many of the species will come to feed.

A headless salmon indicates that wolves are in the area.

So, we have three cameras set up. We’re just taking a quick look around the stream here to see what’s going on. The nifty thing is we’ve got the complete field of view of everything that’s going on in or near the stream. So that shot is from about 100 yards away; there’s a very big, dynamic range on the zoom, which is huge.

The cameras are equipped with infrared technology, allowing the crew to monitor the river valley 24 hours a day.

They’re hoping that this night-vision will open up new levels of insight into the lives of nocturnal animals like the wolves.

You never get to watch wildlife just doing their thing. No matter how quiet you are, you always have some presence there that they’ll be watching. They know you’re there. They’re always going to be looking back at you and making sure you’re not a threat.

So, once I zoom in you can really see its tongue and (its) eye, its big talon.

But we’ve already noticed from observing wildlife, especially large carnivores, that they’re completely unaware of the cameras, and they’re acting in a way that we’ve never been able to observe before by our physical presence changing their behavior.

As conservationists and researchers, we really have responsibility to protect wildlife that we’re viewing and studying and getting to understand.

And one of the problems with traditional research methods is that we frequently are habituating wildlife to human presence, and in an area like this where poaching and trophy hunting is happening, we’re really putting these animals at a disadvantage, because how can they tell the difference between somebody carrying a tripod and a camera, and someone carrying a rifle?

And one of the problems with traditional research methods is that we frequently are habituating wildlife to human presence, and in an area like this where poaching and trophy hunting is happening, we’re really putting these animals at a disadvantage, because how can they tell the difference between somebody carrying a tripod and a camera, and someone carrying a rifle?

And one of the problems with traditional research methods is that we frequently are habituating wildlife to human presence, and in an area like this where poaching and trophy hunting is happening, we’re really putting these animals at a disadvantage, because how can they tell the difference between somebody carrying a tripod and a camera, and someone carrying a rifle?

And one of the problems with traditional research methods is that we frequently are habituating wildlife to human presence, and in an area like this where poaching and trophy hunting is happening, we’re really putting these animals at a disadvantage, because how can they tell the difference between somebody carrying a tripod and a camera, and someone carrying a rifle?

And one of the problems with traditional research methods is that we frequently are habituating wildlife to human presence, and in an area like this where poaching and trophy hunting is happening, we’re really putting these animals at a disadvantage, because how can they tell the difference between somebody carrying a tripod and a camera, and someone carrying a rifle?

And one of the problems with traditional research methods is that we frequently are habituating wildlife to human presence, and in an area like this where poaching and trophy hunting is happening, we’re really putting these animals at a disadvantage, because how can they tell the difference between somebody carrying a tripod and a camera, and someone carrying a rifle?

So this is using very sophisticated technology to observe wildlife behavior here in a noninvasive way.

I mean when you consider the amount of work that’s been done in the temperate rainforests, especially up here in British Columbia, yet we’ve never documented, you know, wolverines preying on salmon, cougars preying on salmon.…

There’s so much unknown about what goes on up here in these salmon rivers, and we really hope with this camera system, with this new technology, that it’s going to open up our eyes to a world that’s been previously inaccessible.