Notes from a Wildlife Technician

Sonja is now getting into the groove with her wildlife technician job here at Glacier. She's now seen several bears (both black bears), within about 15 feet of her. She got to chase one of them away from the road yesterday. For the most part, her days involve driving up the Going to the Sun Road to Logan Pass, pulling over at specified points to scan the meadows and cliffs for bears, goats, sheep, and any other assorted wildlife that happens to be around.

One of her tasks during these surveys is to photo-document as many close encounters as she can. Here you can see a mountain goat approaching her survey site. Sonja's spotting scope is on the right. She's gotten much better, as she describes it, at "yelling at visitors" for feeding/harassing wildlife, too. It's almost a daily occurance now that she needs to admonish someone for giving a ground squirrel (one that should have been underground getting ready to hibernate for at least a month by now) assorted fritos, cheezy poofs, and raisins.

But I think what Sonja enjoys most are the daily reminders she gets of how lucky we really are to be living and working in one of the world's most beautiful places.

Now I just have to work on getting her to take more pictures like this one.