Great article about animal life along the Appalachian Trail

I am a member of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy Home – Appalachian Trail Conservancy and receive their bimonthly magazine, Journeys. It arrived yesterday, and there were two letters complaining about the use of cameras on the Trail to study wildlife. The camera work is unobtrusive, but the writers complained about a loss of privacy and solitude.

I disagree. Here’s a great article in the Washington Post about the specific study, done by the Smithsonian, that went on in a 600 mile corrider from West Virginia to Maryland. Be sure to take five minutes and look at the picture gallery that accompanies the article!

What’s Lurking in The Dark? – washingtonpost.com

Starting in the spring, scientists from the Smithsonian Institution used motion-triggered cameras to snap pictures of animals along the stretch of the famous footpath in Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland. They now have more than 1,900 photos, an album of everyday life in the forest that surrounds the trail.

The pictures from the study, which ended last month, show feral horses and domestic dogs, clueless deer and curious bear cubs — a place threatened by people but still full of its own life.

"There is some wildness left out there," said William McShea, a Smithsonian ecologist who has led the research. "There are wild animals that are living in [and] among us."

"We hike during the day," he said, "and they hike at night."

The Appalachian Trail stretches 2,175 miles from Georgia to Maine, running along the outer edges of Fauquier, Loudoun and Frederick counties on its way north. For hikers, it’s a place to escape. But for animals, scientists say, the ribbon of wilderness is a valuable corridor between the East Coast’s fragmented habitats.

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The most frequently photographed animal was the white-tailed deer. No surprise there: The deer’s population explosion is already familiar to frustrated gardeners and startled drivers in the Washington area.

But researchers were not expecting to find such a large number of black bears. The creatures, in the midst of a comeback of their own, were spotted at 75 of the 273 camera locations.