Big Cats 101: Tigers at Dartmouth

If you have kept up with the other articles on The Tiger Tool, you will quickly notice this writing will be different from the rest. Instead of covering a particular aspect of big cat conservation or media, I will be sharing the beginning story of my work on The Tiger Tool and some exciting news about its next chapter.

I started The Tiger Tool website to create a platform dedicated to sharing insightful and engaging content related to big cat conservation. The articles, videos, and news updates across the site are all results of my work over the past year to present what I have learned researching tigers, cougars, and other big cats to a larger audience.

Background

To begin with the most basic background, I am in my final year of my degree at Dartmouth College. For the past year I have been working on a Senior Fellowship, which is a special program offered by Dartmouth that allows a handful of seniors to replace their final year of coursework with a year-long project. Although I never thought I would have the opportunity to study Asia’s largest predator all the way in rural New Hampshire, this unique Dartmouth program made my work in tiger conservation possible.

While the Senior Fellowship was the beginning of The Tiger Tool, my work in the space of big cat conservation began several years before in the Southeastern United States. I was in high school at the time, and had just secured an internship with Rescue Doc Films as a field assistant. After briefly working on a film covering the overpopulation of companion animals in the United States, the crew began a new project titled The Hidden Tiger. 

The film poster for The Hidden Tiger.. Source: Rescue Doc Films

As someone who had always been passionate about conservation, I was excited for the opportunity to begin my first professional level wildlife media production. Over the next few years, I traveled around the world following the story of the tiger. This took me from captive tiger facilities in the rural American Midwest, to wild tiger reserves in Central India, and just about everywhere in between. Somewhere along the way of that crazy journey, I fell in love with big cat conservation and have yet to look back.

By the time I was studying environmental studies and economics at Dartmouth, I already had an idea of what issues I wanted to focus my academics around. More specifically, I knew I was interested in the intersection of wildlife conservation and sustainable development. In the spring of 2019, I was able to combine my passion for wildlife and my academic fields of study into a single project through a program called the Stamps Scholarship. The Stamps organization went on to make all of my work possible by funding my project and allowing me to travel back to Asia to conduct research on the front lines of tiger conservation. 

Almost exactly one year after beginning my work with Stamps, I made the decision alongside my faculty advisors at Dartmouth to propose a Senior Fellowship focused on studying tiger conservation with a focus on the impacts of tourism and social media. Around the same time, I began working for National Geographic photographer Steve Winter, whom I had originally met while filming The Hidden Tiger documentary. I was taking the role of his general field assistant, helping him while shooting wildlife media stories.

Senior Fellowship

Now that the most important background information has been covered, I want to acknowledge that my fellowship ended up taking a path quite different than what I had originally proposed. The primary reason for this deviation was a direct result of COVID-19 making international travel to Southeast and Southern Asia impossible. 

When I first determined the pandemic would inhibit my travel plans, I thought I would just move my tiger conservation research to a remote format. However, it did not take long for me to realize my proposed work alongside frontline conservationists could only be truly accomplished in person. In many of the remote regions of Indonesia and India, where I had planned to work, internet infrastructure is limited and not conducive to long-term virtual collaboration. While I was dealing with this issue, the National Geographic team led by Steve Winter also received news that our travel plans to India would be temporarily suspended. As fate would have it, these two simultaneous roadblocks ended up leading both my fellowship and my work with National Geographic down a new path… this time much closer to home. 

New England

With international travel plans ruled out, I began looking for opportunities to continue big cat conservation work domestically. At the same time, Steve and I were also searching for possible National Geographic stories in the New England area, close to Steve’s home. Ultimately, through a series of events outside the scope of this article, both searches ended with a common project - A New England wildlife story for National Geographic focused on bears, moose, lynx, and bobcats. While lynx and bobcats are far from tigers, this gave me the valuable opportunity to work alongside wildlife conservation experts from New Hampshire Fish and Game and Vermont Fish and Wildlife. Plus, who could ever complain about photographing elusive bobcats and spending time with precious orphaned black bear cubs?

A photo of me capturing a video of orphaned black bear cubs at the Kilham Bear Center. Source: Halsey Jennings

Over the course of the fall, I conducted much of the work that I would have hoped to do with tigers, only working with a different set of species. In particular, I spent several months camera trapping across the New England wilderness. For those of you unfamiliar with camera trapping, this is a technique used by wildlife photographers and videographers to capture content from animals without having any humans physically present. For many wild cat species that avoid human interaction, this methodology is vital to conservation research and helps capture moments and behavior that might never be observed by people.

The process of camera trapping can be long and painstaking. To provide some insight into my experience this year with this technique, I put together a list of the steps Steve and I take to create successful camera trapping expeditions.

A photo of Steve and I setting up a camera trap for lynx on the Canadian border. Source: Mike McGovern

Scout the area: Putting up a camera trap does not guarantee results. It is important to find a location that is both visually compelling and also a likely location to spot the animal of interest. Surveying the area for the best locations can take days of hiking through the forest. If you are not familiar with the ecology of the region or behavior of the species, it is also important to have someone who is an expert in this space to help pinpoint the best locations for sightings.

A photo of me fixing a flash on a camera trap set up for bobcats in New Hampshire. Source: Mike McGovern

Trail cams: If you want to ensure you have found the best location for a trap, it is smart to first install a trail cam (or trail camera) at the site. These devices are much cheaper and less complicated than a full DSLR trap, so you may be able to install multiple trail cams across a few potential sites. After leaving the trail cams in place for a few days, you can return to those locations and determine which site had the best sightings of the species you hope to capture.

A photo of me posing as a lighting subject to test exposure of a camera trap with Steve. Source: Steve Winter & Mike McGovern

Set up the trap: This step will be greatly simplified to avoid writing a novel on this point alone. The process of setting up a trap requires a lot of gear, which can often be hard to transport when the traps are a long hike through difficult forested terrain. Once you have all the materials at the site, you need to decide where you want the picture to be taken from. At this stage, you have to consider your artistic goal, but also feasibility. Animals are often curious and an easily accessible trap frequently ends in a destroyed set up. Once the main DSLR is put in place, the other accessories need to be set up as well. This includes an infrared transmitter and receiver to detect motion, several flashes to light the subject, and sometimes a complicated tangle of cords connecting everything together (although some traps are wireless). Because there are no wild tripods just waiting to hold camera gear, most of the devices have to be screwed into trees or clamped onto branches. Finally, once everything is in place, you must finalize the settings on the camera, ensure all the flashes have battery and are set at the right power, and activate the motion sensor.

A juvenile black bear photographed at the same camera trap featured above, seconds away from destroying this set up. Source: Steve Winter & Mike McGovern

Trap checks: While it would be nice to set up a trap and return months later with several incredible photos, this rarely happens. Instead, a mixture of weather, curious animals, and random technological issues often render the trap ineffective. This means that it is essential to check the traps frequently to make sure everything is in order. The area you are working in will certainly impact the frequency of required repairs. In our case, the inclement weather of New England and adventurous spirit of black bear cubs meant our traps were rarely in a perfect condition upon returning to the site. Issues we commonly addressed were dead batteries, full SD cards, snow covering the trap, and general destruction by bears.

A lone bobcat captured by our camera trap in the Upper Valley. Source: Steve Winter & Mike McGovern

While this list is simplified, it provides some perspective on the effort wildlife media professionals put into creating these breathtaking images. Over the course of the past several months, Steve and I have set up and managed many different camera trap locations, and thankfully, captured some powerful images in the process.

Two bobcats feasting on a deer kill captured by our camera trap in Upper Valley. Source: Steve Winter & Mike McGovern

In addition to camera trapping, my other work with Steve Winter, National Geographic and the U.S. government wildlife officials helped me realize I would be able to fulfill the hands-on portion of my Senior Fellowship that I had originally proposed. Documenting the incredible wildlife conservation efforts being carried out in New England also reminded me important conservation work is not only taking place across the world, but also in many of our own back yards. However, there was still one component of my project that was missing - work with big cats. After many conversations with my academic advisors, I decided the final adjustment of my Senior Fellowship would be a broadening of my research topic from solely tigers, to a comparative analysis between tigers and cougars. I had already collected much of the research I needed on tigers through my previous field work in Asia, and I could study cougars domestically in the United States. With winter quickly approaching and my new plans set, I packed my bags and headed West to the land of mountain lions.

Colorado

During the winter, I was able to continue my research on big cat conservation and also gain more field experience working on the front lines of wildlife conservation media. I decided to relocate to Colorado, with the goal of involving myself in the center of North America’s big cat scene. While obtaining a precise population is not possible with such an elusive species, it is widely accepted that Colorado leads the United States with the largest mountain lion population. But just as important as the cats, Colorado is home to another group - people working in the many industries related to mountain lions including wildlife research, game hunting, and more. 

While COVID-19 continued to pose challenges for in-person collaboration, a combination of virtual communication and solo field work made living in Colorado the best choice. I would characterize the work I did out West into several categories: remote research, writing, capturing and sharing media, and traditional interviews and observation based field work. 

A photo of me setting up a trail cam above mountain lion footprints in Colorado. Source: Mike McGovern

From a research perspective, I took the mixed approach of literature review and expert input. I needed to build up a foundation of cougar research that could be comparable to the work I had already conducted on tigers. Generally, I would reference one of the sources I collected for broad knowledge (usually books, articles, or digital media) and then reach out to specialized experts with questions more specific to my focus. One example of this method was my work with Mark Elbroch’s new book, The Cougar Conundrum: Sharing the World with a Successful Predator. The content of this book covered all the topics I used to compare tigers and cougars - legal protection, media coverage, tourism, and conservation/management tactics. 

One of the sections where my project needed some additional outside input was in cougar media, as this is arguably the fastest changing area of my four topics. For more information in this sector, I was able to reach out to multiple people who actually worked with Elbroch on cougar research, including National Geographic Explorer Drew Rush. My interview with Drew proved to be an extremely helpful source of information and offered an entirely new perspective. One of the main takeaways from our interaction was the importance of game hunting in maintaining cougar populations. Having focused exclusively on tigers prior to this project, I mostly considered trophy hunting to be the antithesis of conservation before our interview. Despite my personal stance on game hunting, this narrative was important to acknowledge in my research. My conversation with Drew gave me deeper insights on what I learned from The Cougar Conundrum in a manner only possible through a personal conversation. 

In addition to time spent on research and writing remotely, I also was able to capture more media for The Tiger Tool website and conduct some of my own work in the field. Tracking and camera trapping for cougars represented most of what I worked on in the Colorado backcountry. While I had originally hoped to do this work alongside established experts, as I was able to do in New England, COVID-19 complications ruled that out. In lieu of this, I applied what I learned from remote conversations with these experienced camera trappers and tried conducting this work on my own. 

I visited both private and public land, speaking with locals about the most common places for cougar sightings. Thanks to the total snow coverage in the region, I was even able to find cougar footprints. While I did have a motion sensored camera rig that I was able to set up, the ghost cats lived up to their nickname and I was unable to get any cougar photos. Ultimately, this was not very surprising, as almost everyone I have spoken with emphasized how difficult these cats are to catch in the wild. In fact, I learned that many of the spectacular photos of mountain lions are from “photography farms” that release captive cats into larger enclosures for easier media access. Regardless of the results, spending the time tracking cougars and setting up the traps was a valuable experience and it reminded me of the inherent uncertainty of working with wildlife.

Thankfully, despite the challenges of camera trapping, I was able to capture some great media from my time in Colorado. One of the highlights of my time out West was being able to connect with the largest big cat sanctuary in the world, The Wild Animal Sanctuary (TWAS). Thanks to my friends at National Geographic, I was granted exclusive access to their sanctuary in the areas closed to the public. I was able to spend my last days in Colorado traveling to the sanctuary, photographing the cats and speaking with their founder and director of media. 

An adult tiger living at The Wild Animal Sanctuary in Keenesburg, Colorado. Source: Mike McGovern

TWAS was able to provide a wealth of knowledge on big cat sanctuaries including their impact on media, how this relates to conservation education, and what it takes to run such a large operation. The sanctuary is spread across three locations, spanning over 10,000 acres and provides large enclosures for their rescued animals. I was even able to see several of the tigers that the government had seized from Tiger King star Joe Exotic, and hear how TWAS helped relocate these high-profile animals. 

The Final Stretch

Upon returning to Dartmouth after my time in Colorado, I was officially entering the final period of my Senior Fellowship. Spring had arrived and my research portion was completed. Since I was back in the New England area, I immediately resumed my work camera trapping and assisting Steve on the National Geographic story. However, the primary work I had left for my Senior Fellowship was writing and finishing The Tiger Tool website. I enjoyed the opportunity to reflect on my work in the field and translate those experiences and research findings into articles and social media posts. The most important takeaway from this period is primarily the completion of A Tale of Two Cats (the four-article series covering my work between tigers and cougars). 

With that, we have finally arrived at the present moment in which I am writing this final article. After a full year of hard work, evolving plans, and unforgettable experiences, my Senior Fellowship is coming to a conclusion… But the journey doesn’t stop here.

Big Cat Voices

Over one year ago, I set out on a mission to make big cat conservation and media research more engaging and accessible to a wider audience of people. This journey has taken me down unexpected paths and through The Tiger Tool - I have had the pleasure of bringing many of you along with me. However, I must admit I have left out one of the most important results of my Senior Fellowship work until now: Big Cat Voices.

Big Cat Voices is a new non-profit organization dedicated to sharing the most important stories in big cat media with the world. While the original idea for the organization came out of a conversation between Steve and myself when discussing the goals of The Tiger Tool website, the scope of this new endeavor is much larger than anything I had envisioned with my Senior Fellowship. At this point, I am only one part of a much larger team making this possible. Big Cat Voices was officially co-founded by a group of five: Myself and four accomplished National Geographic Explorers - Steve Winter, Sharon Guynup, Alexander Braczkowski, and Bertie Gregory, who all share an expertise in working with big cats. 

A screenshot of the Big Cat Voices home page. Source: Big Cat Voices

The mission of the non-profit is to “Give Big Cats a Voice,” but more specifically we hope to use the power of media to make real changes in the world of big cats. Our work strategy is separated into three phases. Explore, Share, and Change.

The Explore category can be further subdivided into three main action items. The first is utilizing our extensive network of wildlife experts, journalists, and media creators to identify the most pressing issues surrounding big cats. The second is assembling specialized teams including leading scientists, photographers, and writers to travel across the world to research, document, and capture big cat stories. Then, the final step is creating world class media that puts big cat stories in the spotlight through a mixture of film, photography, and journalism.

The Share category is focused on getting the greater global community involved. Through our social media outlets and community of passionate supporters we will spread awareness about the central issues facing big cats. We will share our latest media, via Instagram and Facebook. But beyond that, we have created The Pride, which is a monthly donor program that offers exclusive access to everything about Big Cat Voices and even opportunities to join our expedition crew in the field.

The final category is Change. All the founders of Big Cat Voices have witnessed first-hand that media makes a difference. Ultimately, our organization strives to make the world a better place for big cats, their environments, and the people around them. By raising public awareness for big cat issues and partnering with conservation organizations, we are hope to make a lasting impact in the areas that need it most. 

Ever since the first brainstorming session Steve, Sharon, and I had last summer, Big Cat Voices has been a huge part of my life. Between workshopping ideas until they truly fit our purpose, building a website with a team of developers, or meeting with experts on non-profit formation and wildlife organizations, Big Cat Voices became an unexpected highlight of my Senior Fellowship.

Moving Forward

My Senior Fellowship at Dartmouth has been a transformative experience that has shaped my future in the world of big cat conservation. Coming into this opportunity, I could never have imagined how truly all-encompassing this work would become and the degree to which it would impact my post graduate life. Big Cat Voices will officially launch this summer and with the help of my incredible co-founders and our extended team, I cannot wait to see how we can help make this world a better place for big cats.

Thank you all for joining me on this journey…