FSPW receives Idaho wildlife award

At the 2017 joint meeting of the Idaho Chapter of The Wildlife Society and the Idaho Chapter of the American Fisheries Society in Boise, ICWS honored Friends of Scotchman Peaks Wilderness with its 2017 Special Recognition Award.

The award is presented annually to a person or group within the state of Idaho that has made an outstanding contribution to wildlife conservation, management, science, or conservation education; or the wildlife profession; or to a specific area of endeavor, species, community, ecosystem, or region.

FSPW was nominated for the award by IDFG biologist Michael Lucid for their help with the Multi-species Baseline Initiative, a four-year collaborative effort of organizations to monitor wildlife and microclimate across the Idaho Panhandle and adjoining mountain ranges.

In his nomination, Lucid wrote, “The Friends recruited, trained, and organized over 200 volunteers to run forest carnivore bait stations in the West Cabinet Mountains. This contribution resulted in $303,821 of in-kind matching dollars, 12 percent of the entire project budget. (This helped fund) … baseline data collection of nearly 200 under-studied species and associated micro-climate data at over 2,000 sites across the Idaho Panhandle and adjoining mountain ranges.

“The Friends efforts contributed to detecting a relatively numerous fisher population in the West Cabinets and to many local residents learning what the heck a fisher is!

“The Friends … foster a very active social scene that enables thousands of people to learn about and contribute to local wildlife conservation efforts. If you attend one of the Friends events you may find yourself drinking a glass of wine one evening and snow tracking a marten the next day …”

“I’m very excited for FSPW to receive the Special Recognition Award,” said Lucid. “Our partnership with FSPW has been instrumental in implementing Idaho Fish and Game projects such as the MBI. Well deserved, FSPW. I’m proud to call you Friends!”

FSPW was particularly helpful in the rare forest carnivore portion of the MBI study, engaging volunteers to place and monitor remote camera bait stations designed to attract and capture digital images of many different species of carnivores, creatures as rare as pine martens and wolverines and ubiquitous as pine squirrels and weasels.

“ ‘Remote’ is a very descriptive word,” noted FSPW program coordinator Sandy Compton. “Some of the stations were way out in the back country. FPSW volunteers and staff not only set them up, but went back to monitor the cameras several times, most often on skis or snowshoes, sometimes into some very gnarly places. That’s dedication.”

North Idaho people have won the award three out of the last four year. U of I professor Kerry Reese and IDFG bird specialist Beth Paragamian won in 2014. Kathy Cousins of IDFG shared the award with Alana Jensen in 2016 for their work on the Clark Fork Delta restoration. For 2017, FSPW was awarded for work that was also done to a great extent in the Clark Fork area.

FSPW executive director Phil Hough accepted the award on March 2 “on behalf of the over 200 dedicated FSPW volunteers as well as our terrific staff, all of who made the effort that led to this award.”