January 19th and 20th photos and notes:
Greetings from the (very cold!)  top of the mountains in Idaho!
I arrived on Friday after 12 hours of travel to get to the house here in Malta, ID.  The town is small, population is 171, but the towns around it are actually smaller!  The kids that live in surrounding communities are bussed HERE for high school each day.  Some kids spend a long time on the bus, as you might imagine. The team is large with 6 volunteers including myself, 3 graduate students, 2 scientists, and 2 houndsmen. For the weekend only there are also 3 extra houndsmen along for the treks to take pictures of lions.  The houndsmen do not stay here at the house in Malta with us, but the rest of the team is here - crowded for such a small place - but an interesting group.
John Laundre is the PI (Principal Investigator) of this study.  Lucina Hernandez is the PI for the similar study of mountain lions that is going on on Mexico in the Chihuahuan Desert. They work together on both projects and compare data to help understand more about the ecology.
One of the students, Itzel Arias, is from Mexico, and is working on a study of bighorn sheep for her final college project.  She goes out into the field to collect data on the sheep - observing where they live, and what they are doing such as grazing, moving to a new area, etc.   The sheep had been a big part of the ecosystem here, but were wiped out in this area when they caught a disease from the domestic sheep here.   They were reintroduced a few years ago, and are being monitored to see if they will survive and also begin to increase their numbers.  Right now there are three small groups of sheep.  The group that Itzel is concentrating on has 11 individuals that live in the mountains about 1/2 mile from the house where we are staying.  It will be interesting to see if they survive and how that might effect the ecosystem.   If you think about the sheep as prey for mountain lions and other predators...because they are...then you can imagine it might make a difference if they ARE or AREN'T present.  They found one that had been killed in the past few days by a predator, probably a lion.  Do you think that the reintroduction of Bighorn sheep into this area might affect the mule deer population?  What kind of "ripple" effect do you think this might have on an ecosystem?  Should they be reintroduced by humans since humans caused their problems in the first place, or should we leave the ecosystem as it is?
The other two graduate students are from the University of Illinois in Chicago. They are not studying in this area,  but they are helping with this project and are  interested in why animals search for food as well as where (and how) they do.  Even though this ecosystem in Idaho is very different from the ecosystem in a big city, all animals have habits related to their habitats.
Yesterday (Saturday 1/19/02)) was a good day to see the area for the first time in daylight.  The mountains are all around us and look like someone took a huge pile of flour and sprinkled cinnamon on top.  There's actually not that much snow overall because it's a cold desert. There are cactus here in the summertime that we can see are frozen under the ice!  We went out looking for lion tracks and didn't have much luck.  It was windy, and that makes the snow blow over the tracks making them difficult for the dogs  to follow.  We did see golden eagles, 2 bald eagles, and some mule deer.  Because there were very few deer we knew it wasn't likely that there would be lions in the area. It was a good prediction - and we didn't see a lion at all, but we learned a LOT from the scientists and the other people who are part of the team.

The plan today (Sunday 1/20/02) was to go back into a different area which is actually private property.  It's owned by a rancher and is over 7,000 acres of land - you can see for miles!  Most of us in Smithfield have between 1/2 acre and 1 1/2 acres of land in our yards. Imagine 7,000!  We had hoped to tag a female lion that is known to have 3 kittens.  We didn't end up finding them, but did end up catching a male cat this morning.  This cat weighed 125 lbs!  The photos below will give you an idea of  what we saw and the process of collecting data on these animals.  We hiked up and down mountains for several hours reaching at one point an elevation of approx. 6,000 ft.  Because we are following tracks you can imagine that it isn't a straight line up the mountain - and cats don't always stay on a path.
The phone setup here is pretty 'low tech' and is shared by everyone, so I can't be online for long periods of time, so be patient as I try to answer your questions!

I hope you are having a great weekend, wherever you are!
 The day started out looking for tracks, which we found after only about an hour. 
The houndsmen prepare the dogs for the run. Without these dogs there wouldn't be any way to track and collar the lions. The houndsmen don't shoot the lions - except with their cameras!
The lion once it was tranquilized.  Their paws are HUGE! 
Placing the collar on the sleeping cat. The radio collar will last about 2 years and give information about the cat, help relocate him, or let them know if he moves out of the area. 
Proof that we are NOT in Florida? 8-)

Collecting data (INFORMATION!)
Measuring from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail.  The bleeding is only from the tranquilizer dart - he's not injured. The scale that is used is hanging on the left. 
Look at how large the claws are compared to the hand of this team member. They don't measure claw length, but do measure the paw/pad size. 
Sleeping cat - notice the dart is still in (top right).
Taking other measurements - this one is "ear to ear" to measure skull size.
The cougar has to be lifted using a pulley to get its weight. The scale in the photo above is what the cougar is attached to.  He's fine - just fast asleep in this photo.
The teeth are examined to tell the age and to check for the health of the animal.  The measurement of the length of the teeth is also recorded.