Most people love seeing wildlife, and are quick to share stories of close animal encounters, from tiny chipmunks to “charismatic megafauna” like elk, mountain goat, bear, or cougar. In recent years, I’ve become interested in those things rarely seen. Did you know, for example, that over 300 species of insects live inside a decaying log, chewing and drilling until it’s completely decomposed? How about those moths and butterflies that skitter past, largely unnoticed? On a recent field visit with an Evergreen intern, I enjoyed a full day of searching for the little things that often escape notice.
Mount Rainier National Park attracts over 2 million visitors per year that pursue a wide range of outdoor activities, but there’s more to the mountain than recreation and adventure. Tahoma is a gigantic outdoor science lab too, ground zero for dozens of research projects that span the breadth of the sciences. One of the park’s most important and longest-running studies centers on its lakes, where organisms and water quality are key ecological indicators of ecosystem health. Each summer, aquatics technicians hike into a handful of these azure and emerald gems, many of them without names or established trails leading up to them. The hike to Lake Allen, which lies on the flank of Mount Wow up the Westside road (wau being an Indian word for mountain goat), is a doozy of a bushwhack that ascends ever higher through dense forest, seemingly forever. Once there, researchers inflate small rubber boats and make other preparations for a full day of water sampling, surveys, and other measurements. In early August, I tagged along on a survey at a pond/small lake just off the White River road, not far from Fryingpan Creek and the Summerland trailhead.
Once we’d lugged armloads of gear down to the water’s edge, made a plan and had our safety talk, two technicians rowed off in their boats to take mid-lake water samples. Donning chest-high waders and brandishing a short-handled net, I helped the other technicians conduct an amphibian shoreline survey. We sloshed and slogged the water’s edge in search of all things amphibious, hoping to net, count, and measure any frogs, toads, newts, or salamanders we might encounter. We netted some prehistoric-looking dragonfly larvae, each about an inch long. We made note of softball-sized globs of translucent egg masses, floating lazily just under the water’s surface. The technicians quickly identified some of them as belonging to snails and others to northwestern salamanders. Occasionally we netted northwestern salamanders, some up to five inches long, one of the park’s most abundant amphibians. The Grand Prize—and an aquatic biologist’s dream—was the presence of western tadpoles. THOUSANDS of them! It was impossible to make an accurate count of the ginormous congregation of knuckle-sized tadpoles milling about, so we did the best we could, by making a SWAG. An abbreviation for Scientific Wild-Assed Guess based on experience and feel, we swagged several thousand western toad tadpoles. That’s quite a few in a pond about the size of two Olympic-sized swimming pools; only a few will survive to adulthood.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) lists the western toad as a candidate for the Endangered Species Act (ESA), reflecting its declining numbers and loss of habitat region wide. That makes them a focal point for research biologists, who find them at just a handful of lakes at Mount Rainier. In a nighttime breeding survey at Tipsoo Lake two years ago, we counted dozens of breeding toads, the smaller male perched atop the fist-sized female, four eyes eerily reflecting our flashlight’s shine back to us.
After the shoreline survey and lunch, we began our other task: the removal of introduced, non-native fish from the lake. In the less-enlightened times of the early twentieth century, the National Park Service stocked thousands of lakes throughout its system for recreational fishing. With today’s better understanding of the impacts of introduced species on ecosystems, Mount Rainier’s Fish Management Plan aims to remove all non-native fish from nearly a dozen lakes in the park.
Our target was the Eastern brook trout, a member of the Salmon family and native to the eastern United States. Because the trout can escape the lake via a seasonal creek that empties into the nearby White River, the stakes are high. Portions of the White are critical habitat for bull trout, which the USFWS lists as threatened under the ESA. The “brookies” predate on young bull trout, and the park is obligated to do all it can to protect bull trout numbers.
The first step in removing brook trout from the pond uses electricity to lightly shock the fish, then net and remove them. It sounds crazy, combining electricity with water to do science, but it’s an effective way to remove the fish while minimizing the harm to non-target species. Using the lowest possible voltage stuns the fish without killing them; non-targeted fish usually recover quickly. Mounted on a backpacking frame, a technician wears the electrofishing unit while holding an insulated pole that ends in an aluminum hoop. When he submerges the hoop in the water, calls out, “Charging,” and flips a switch, electricity surges through the hoop. The charge stuns fish in the immediate vicinity; they float to the surface, and are netted and removed. All told, we pulled a few Eastern brook trout from the pond, making life a little safer for bull trout fry in the White River.
Reflecting on the work of these aquatics technicians and other researchers I’ve followed through the brush, into the deep forest, and onto glaciers, I admire their tireless, meticulous attention to detail and their boundless enthusiasm for their work. Most of all, I admire their commitment to and respect for all of nature. Like the many unseen processes and organisms they work on behalf of, their work too, is often invisible. The next time you chance upon a trail crew, a ranger, scientist, or technician collecting data or making notes, take a moment to ask them about their work and thank them for their commitment. In the meantime, keep your boots dry and your spirits high.