How can we reduce this problem for wildlife so that both people and wildlife can move safely? And through this project we're hoping to identify places that are the biggest problem for wildlife and work with you and your communities to come up with creative solutions. So this is a partnership project with Maine Audubon. It also includes Dr. Fraser Schilling who's director at the University of California Davis Road Center. They're sort of the wizards behind the website technology and help us with data analysis. And then Inland Fishery and Wildlife and today you're going to meet Chuck Holsey who's the regional biologist up in the western part of mountains part of the state. And then Maine DOT is also very interested in this information and a partner on the project and Richard Bochlick's in the environmental office. I want to tell you Maine Audubon is a non-profit conservation organization that works to conserve Maine's wildlife and wildlife habitat by engaging people of all ages in education, conservation and action. So a little plug if you're not a member please consider joining your membership help us do programs like this one. If you've got your webcam on at the moment if you would please turn that piece off that would be great. Next tell you what we're covering today. We're going to start with why we're doing this project, a little background on the wildlife and the impacts. And then Chuck's going to talk about identifying and learning more about the wildlife that you may encounter. We'll go over how to survey your routes and report your observations on the website and have time for questions and answers. And again if you have questions along the way go ahead and type them in and Amanda will feed them to me as we go. So why are we focusing up in this region with this statewide project that we already have? This area of the state has been identified by many different initiatives as being important. If you look on the upper left part of your screen you see the state of Maine with the kind of red areas. This is an analysis that was done about human footprint and you can see kind of where the more green areas are areas where there's less development and roads. And so this is an area that's important for connectivity and movement of animals really internationally. And it was also important for regional movement as the geographic range of animals shifts and we want to make sure that they can continue to move across a landscape to adjust to those geographic shifts that may be changing due to climate change and weather and temperature changing the habitats that are there. So animals are just their basic daily needs food, water, shelter, rest for nesting and breeding. Young need to be able to disperse and find new habitats as the adults kick them out of their native habitat where they've been born. And then some animals need to move big distances like the bobcat who uses about 6,000 acres for its home range throughout one year. So that's a lot of ground to cover in a year. We do animals, small animals that move actually relatively large distances for them. This is a spotted salamander and an adult spotted salamander has been shown to travel as much as 820 feet between its breeding pools and then the adjacent non-breeding habitat in the upland. And juvenile spotted salamanders have been documented to go as far as about a half a mile away from their breeding pool where they were born. So that's a long way for a little animal and of course as they move they have to get across roads. And sometimes it gets difficult they can't get there from here. Road impacts are many. It's not just the roadkill but it's also loss of habitat from where the road and associated development goes. The fragmentation of habitat, habitat avoidance and again of course the collision. Movement is prevented through high levels of traffic. That's one of the main causes and also avoidance. And then high levels of roadkill are also possibilities. And where a road occurs is also really important in terms of how much I'm going to have on wildlife roadkill. Studies show that roads that are adjacent to or near water resources such as wetlands, ponds, streams, rivers have a substantially higher level of road vehicle collision roadkill than other stretches of roads. And this makes a lot of sense because we know that about 85% of Maine's vertebrate wildlife use habitat in or adjacent to these wet areas. So where roads occur on the landscape really makes a difference to wildlife. The amount of traffic is also really relevant to wildlife. On the bottom right, a country road with not very much traffic. You know, for most animals like deer and so on, it's not going to be a barrier. They're going to get across the majority of the time. It's not a problem. But for some animals, a road of low traffic like this can be a significant problem for such as for a turtle that's very slow moving and doesn't take too many collisions that are fatal to do a real number on the population of turtles. And then on a high volume road like this highway, when you get to about 10,000 vehicles a day on a road, studies are showing that it's a nearly complete barrier to wildlife movement. And that doesn't mean animals don't get across. They do.  Some animals won't be able to get across and those that do eventually their luck is probably going to run out. And it's not going to be sustainable. So don't worry about all the details on this, but it's just to show that when you add all of these different issues together to habitat loss, road avoidance, roadkill, these things end up making the population smaller and smaller. And eventually you may end up with population loss or extinction either locally or statewide depending on the sensitivity of the animal. Most vulnerable animals are those that are really slow moving and have very low breeding success like this wood turtle. It's a long time before they're old enough to breed, 10 years old or so, and most of the young don't survive and very few make it to adulthood to be able to breed. So when one of them is taken out of the population through roadkill or other means, it can do a real number on that population fairly quickly. Other animals that are vulnerable are those again that have to move a bit of a distance between their breeding and non-breeding habitats putting them at risk of crossing roads. It is a big problem. We know that vehicles are killing at least a million vertebrates a day. In the United States this is actually a study from 1987, so I would feel very comfortable doubling that number at this time because so many are not reported. They're cleaned up by scavengers and so forth, and we have a lot more traffic in roads now than we did then. We have billions of dollars of cost and injuries from deer collisions. In Maine, in a five-year period, we had 15,000 deer collisions and over 3,000 loose collisions. And birds are also actually killed on roads. It's something that may not be intuitive because we think they can fly and avoid, but many times they're flying low across from maybe one wetland to another or they're scavenging on the road, and it's an issue. So almost all animals are affected in some way. But there are solutions, and that's what this project is about, trying to figure out where. So if you all are familiar with the deer sangs, you get kind of numb to them and they end up not being very effective, but we need to figure out where the problems are so we can come up with solutions. The Greenwood Habitat Program is a program that is a voluntary informational program, collaborative with all these different organizations, the Inland Fishery and Wildlife and Maine Audubon and Department of Transportation and many others, to share habitat information with communities for their planning. And Greenwood Habitat gives out computer maps, and on that one of them is about where are the large blocks of habitat without roads for communities to plan. One of the pieces of information, of course, that was on the map originally was how do animals get from one side of the road to another. And so, Greenwood Habitat started a computer analysis of 10 different species to represent the diversity of species in the state and identify through computer modeling where the highest value habitat might be on either side of the road for that animal. So here's an example. One of the animals was a fisher. We used a land cover, which is the area on the left, and we assign using expert opinion and literature research, you know, what types of habitats are the best habitats for fisher, and came up, put that together with nine other species, and came up with these areas that are now in the beginning of Habitat maps, which are areas connecting habitats across roads between large blocks that may be areas worthy of trying to conserve and make sure that their connecting ability is maintained. But this is all done on her computers. So what we'd like to know is a little bit more about what's actually happening on the ground in some of those locations. So in this project, we've identified these dark green stretches, there's eight different segments of roads up in the western mountains that we're assigning through this project. And each of those will have some of those beginning with Habitat connectors on them that we'll get information about in the field. They've also been a season of winter tracking has been done on six of those, the northern most six of those routes. And we're hoping to do some culvert surveys, find out how what shape the culverts are, and would they be usable for wildlife to move through them currently. And then this project will add another piece of information, what are volunteers seeing in terms of roadkill or wildlife trying to get across the road even successfully. And through that, hoping to bring together all this information, you have a more comprehensive idea of how animals are moving in and where the barriers might be for that movement. So answers we want through this project, verifying those beginning with Habitat connectors, finding out where wildlife are crossing, what types of habitats, other common types of habitats that we're seeing patterns for or road characteristics, or hotspots where there's real concentration. And it's way too many miles of road for biologists to cover and that's where you come in meeting volunteers to that usually drive that route or go on that route to bring in a lot more data. And we encourage you to recruit your friends and neighbors and school groups to do this as well. A little bit about the solution. Right now on our website we're collecting a lot of data. We have points on the map. We have information about each point. That's just going to raw information, very interesting. But then we need to be able to really do something with it. And this is some very preliminary analysis just to give you an idea of the kinds of things we might do. The left is actually I295 where there's been a lot of data collected by volunteers. And the red areas along the place are hotspots where there's been concentrations of a lot of observations. So we're just getting a preliminary look at that and start thinking about what does that mean. The map on the right is someone's route down in southern Maine who went out last year and did some regular surveys. And again we're seeing density of where the observations occurred and we can start taking a look at what were the habitats there and what kind of species were there. Just to give you a little idea of the data. So what we can do with it. These are interactive turtle crossing sounds that are used in southern Maine when we have a couple of different endangered species and they're seasonal. They're flipped down most of the year and only flipped up when the turtles are active. And that really is wonderful because it helps with people who might be sensitive or become less sensitive to the signage and makes it more noticeable. There are also things such as wildlife crossings. These are small crossings. There's different kinds. This is one down in Massachusetts that's been very successful for herptile meaning amphibians like phthalomanders and frogs and turtles for getting across a small road. This is designed specifically for them. And you can see on the left the road with a grating on top that allows in moisture and light. And studies have shown that those type of crossings versus a culvert that has no top opening to it is much more effective. The ones that allow that light and moisture in. We're actually designing these now with an engineering firm that are made specifically for roads and path of safety specs and so on. So those can be effective if they're placed in the right place. And that they're done with fencing. Fencing for any kind of wildlife crossing is critical to making them work. It's what funnels the animals to that location. Otherwise you put your investment in and then the animals still cross across the road. The fencing funnels them in. The example up on the upper left is a drainage pipe or a culvert that was enhanced by putting it in this wildlife shelf for small critters to get through when the water is high and another possibility in certain situations. In some areas of the country and internationally they're doing very large wildlife crossing. This may or may not be appropriate depends on your location. Anywhere from the bottom left which is the Trans Canada Highway up in Banff, Canada. It's a green bridge. It's built for wildlife to get across from one area that internationally important national park to another. Incredibly effective along with fencing and keeping the large animals off the road. And I think collisions have reduced 80 or 90% quite successful. But it can be an overpass like the one on the upper left that's sort of over there and can enhance the wildlife or an underpass. That's built for wildlife getting across in critical areas. Another area that can really help wildlife are how we redesign our stream crossing. The one on the left is a really extreme perched culvert that perhaps used to reach down to the water but over time as the power of the water has carved it down. And as you can see, animals would not be able to get up and over, whether they be fish or small mammals. And as we replace those, if we replace them with something like the arch on the bottom right which retains some of that bank, stream bank, animals can then either go in the water or along the shores and successfully get upstream. And as I was saying, so many animals move along waterways that along with a little fencing that could help a lot of critters stay off the road. Another technique is traffic calming, just putting in speed bumps or making those roads sinuous or curvy. These are great in places where you're trying to keep the traffic slow for people's safety as well as wildlife safety. And then we can use the information for land use and transportation planning. Thinking about where's the traffic volume going to get high? Does this make sense? Is this a sensitive wildlife area? What should we do in that situation? Or if it's a successful crossing area and the traffic's not going to be very high, can we keep the area near the crossing undeveloped permanently so that it can continue to function that way? And just as we know, we've got about 23,000 miles of roads in Maine. About a third of them are the responsibility of the state, Maine DOT. But two thirds of them are the responsibility of towns and private owners. So there's a lot of decisions that get made on the local level as well. And in the DOT, there's opportunity for this data to help them with their project planning and stoping. If they look at four doors, they create plans every two and six years. They can take a look at this information and it can be one of the pieces they look at. Towns do open space plans, protection areas, road standards. Again, those are areas where this information can be helpful over time. So we'll share back what we learned to you and your community as well as our partners and look forward to working with you on the data collection. I'm going to adapt the introduction. Any questions on that before we move on to Chuck and learn a little bit about the animals that you may see as you're out there looking for wildlife? And the end is switching us over to another program. But go ahead and type in your questions if you have any. Good morning. My name is Chuck Halsey. I'm a regional wildlife biologist. I've been in the West Domain area for 25 years. The Wildlife Division has seven regional offices. And the other biologists and I cover an area that would be defined if you drew a line from Bethel to Skowhegan to Cobringor to the Forks. And we have 115 or so organized towns and townships in that area. My job in the region, both myself and the other biologists, is to really administer and implement all of the Department's wildlife programs that occur in that geographic area. So that's what I do. This is my first webinar. I've never taken a webinar course. This is my first being associated with webinar course. I'm very excited about it. And I'm going to discuss a little bit about the wildlife species you are likely to encounter on the roads that are part of the survey in this area. And their relative abundance. And also, I've known Barbara from going to conferences with her. And it's a pleasure to be able to work directly with Maynard Abon. I don't think I've had that opportunity before. Wonderful having you here today with us. Thank you. Okay. So I think that also needs to be in. Okay, so you could up there. All right. I'm going to talk a little bit about how to identify species and certain species and some of them, the general habitat, should find them in. And so the various ways to identify an animal, its shape, its size, its color, behavior, tracks, scat. Let me give you an example of behavior. We often investigate unusual wildlife settings. One way to tell if something is a feline or a canid, if you follow tracks long enough, cats like to sit and ambush things. So if you follow a tracks, you're not sure what it is, for a period of time, you eventually see where a cat will sit down and watch with these goers. Most other animals just are on the go nonstop. So that's where behavior would come in. So the occurrence of roadside wildlife is going to be affected by the habitats associated with that section of road, the season, age of the animal, sex of the animal. So let's talk about the cats to start with. In that area of those surveys, bobcat would be common. And one way to tell the physical features of feline, they have retractable claws. They have a leading middle toe. The track has a much higher percentage of hair between the pads versus the feline. So if you saw an animal across the road and you weren't really sure what it was, you could stop, see if there are tracks, and they might be helpful to you. If it was in the winter, such a survey would be almost a slam dunk. You'd be absolutely able to see tracks. And the top track there shows an asymmetrical pattern of a feline track, and the bottom track is more symmetrical for a canid. So just to give you kind of an idea of the relative difference in sizes for these tracks, a house cat would be the size of a golf ball, a bobcat the size of a tennis ball, a lynx the size of a baseball, and a mountain lion the size of a softball. We do have lynx in the area. I'm not sure I want to say rare. They're certainly uncommon. They, based on the number of credible reports, I would say there's a slight upward trend in lynx through that area. And one nice thing about lynx, for some reason they tend to be an animal that lingers and doesn't mind being watched a little bit from all the reports I've ever received from people. That you probably have a better chance of having a lynx stop and let you look at it than a bobcat. They have feet that, so if you saw an animal go by, let me go backwards. If you saw an animal go by, their feet are ridiculously big, and their legs are ridiculously long. That's, I mean, much exponentially more than a bobcat. They actually weigh about the same, though a lynx appears to be a lot bigger, but in actuality it's not. But what is a little tall? It is taller. One of the nice things about lynx versus bobcat, we've been given a really nice way to tell the difference. And one is a lynx the tail looks like it's been dipped in ink. The black is all the way around the tip, and it has very long ear tubs. So I would say a lynx is a relatively easy animal to identify. Compared to bobcat, the tubs are much shorter, legs are much shorter, and the black on the tail is only partial black tip on the tail. And that's relatively easy to see, even from a distance. It's very easy to see if you have binoculars. Not to the canine family. Their physical features are, they don't have retractable claws. When I, the nail drives under the substrate means that as a foot punches through, then you can see the nails forward in the hole. Like I said before, they have a symmetrical track shape. And here's the thing that makes, we use this a lot. If you look at the graphic on the right, if you can draw an X right through the left toe pads down the right side of the heel pad and mirror on the other. And we can tell canine versus feline even with very poor quality tracks. So again, if an animal goes across the road, and you're not quite sure, stop and look and see if it made some tracks in the side of the road, or as a mud. Robert, this is not a winter survey, am I correct? We're encouraging April through September, but if people are into it and are doing it year round, that's fantastic. Okay, so that is a really good tip for telling canine, the canine family. And we use it all the time. That's probably the first thing we look at when we're trying to figure out what something is, is, can we draw an X through it? Another nice thing for telling feline versus a canine is, again, the pads take up a very high percentage of the whole track with a canine and felines have far more hair in between. We call that area between the pads negative space. So the canine has a lot less negative space. It's not likely you would ever see a wolf, but I wouldn't ever rule it out. We have interesting reports in that area. We're currently investigating one right now with our game camera. It's been all winter, not very far from Canada with our owls. So it's plausible, but not likely. Again, wolves, kind of like lynx, really big feet, really long legs, very tall. If you have a lot of experience watching coyotes, then you can tell if you saw a wolf, it would really stand out. If you don't have a lot of experience watching coyotes, it would be difficult. Wide snout, short-rounded ears. Very pointed snout, very pointed ears, much shorter legs. Both colors, coyote can be gray, black, blonde. A wolf would be gray or black or something in between. And you would find, I'd like to back up just a little bit. I'm not going to go back to my slides, but if you look at habitat, the lynx is going to be entirely associated with younger spruce and fir forest. And the coyote, the bobcat would be a generalist, could be in any habitat. The coyote would be any habitat, including even places where people live. Foxes are also a generalist, we tend to think of them being just around fields and woodedges, but in reality they're also found routinely out in the big woods where there are no fields. They're common, as are coyotes. Coyotes don't like to be seen, they're far shire. Fox doesn't seem to care that much if you see it. Very easy to tell by the fur, there's not much variation in color. Huge tail, red color, black legs. If you see their track pattern, it's absolutely linear. You could pull a rope tight and line up all the tracks in one line. More so than any other animal. So even if you had poor quality tracks, they're all blown in with snow, the sun has melted them out, or you don't have all the tracks. If you can line them up like putting a rope between them and just pulling it tight and then I'll line up, that's a fox. They're also fairly small, a small track. So the weasel family, also common in the area where you'd be looking, no wolverines, so they are a member of that family. I don't think you're going to see any wolverines. If you do document a wolverine, you'll be in the national news that night. So the smallest ones we have is long-tailed weasels. They're voracious hunters. They need to be where there's some structure because they're very long and narrow. They don't hibernate, and if you're long and thin and narrow, in Maine, you lose a lot of body heat. So they eat nonstop. They're carnivore. They're not much.  They will scavenge, but they're constantly on the move. They have the lowest percent body fat of any mammal in Maine for a point of interest. A lot of us are envious of that. They also change color in the winter. They're called ermine, but it's the same animal in the summer. A very small animal. I was asked recently, the first one was having trouble with the chickens being killed by weasels, and they asked if a one-inch square mesh would keep them out. I told them I didn't know. I wouldn't dare to say if they could not. Yes, I know they could get through a one-inch square, and I don't think they could, but I encourage the people to use a half-inch square because they are small, much smaller than you might think. The next cousin up, which is common in the area you're going to be surveying, is Martin. They're a little bigger. They're a brownish and a blonde-ish color. You can see that blonde on them pretty well and a little bit of a white face. They can be arboreal, but they spend most of their time on the ground. You're going to find them associated with spruce fir, forest with lots of structure on the ground because they want to get under that. The structure holds up, provides cover for the animals that they're going to hunt, and it also provides protection from them from the cold. I do not have a picture of a fisher. Even though it's a common animal, I just couldn't pull it together. They're probably three times the size of a mountain. They're uniformly dark brown. They're called slaying black cat, fisher cat. They're not a cat. They're no way like a cat. But if you were looking directly into the sun and you were looking at a fisher, it might appear absolutely jet black to you. The brown is that dark brown color. You find them in mixed wood forests. They can handle openings better because they're big enough to not be taken as prey by avian predators. Or coyotes or bobcat.  So they don't really as an adult have any enemies. So they can then venture into openings. It's going to be more likely to venture into an opening than a pine mountain wood or a weasel wood.  You're very likely to find fisher and pine mime and coyote and links in those places because that's a very important part of their diet. One of their aquatic relatives that we have in that area is the mink. And they're abundant. They're common. You're really not going to find them away from streams, ponds, lakeshores, brooks. So anytime you're crossing those types of places, you can keep your eyes peeled. One year when I was deer hunting, every morning I went down and sat on a bog, this log over a bog, and I could almost set my clock to the time of the morning when this mink would come running down the shore. And I was up on this elevated log about six feet off the ground. And every time, every morning that week, he would run under that log almost within 15 minutes every day. That was his, that's where he went shopping. Well, she went shopping every morning for the food. So they're very closely tied on a quark environment. Their big brother is the river otter. Not going to find them associated with streams, but you will find them associated with rivers, ponds, and lakes. Even though I'd call them common, I don't see them that often, but they're around. And again, all you're only going to find them associated with a quark is if a road intersects a quark environment. You can often see them get coming in and out of the water up on the logs and up onto the ice in the snow with trails in the snow, because I like to slide, just like they look like on TV. I made up this family name, I made up this family name called Commonity, which is the commoners, because there's only really one in each, one member of the family in name, Raccoon. I think you're all familiar with that, but they're common, maybe even abundant, skunks, common to abundant, snowshoe hair, also called the varying hair because it changes color, and very closely associated with dense, spruce spur, conifer, or mixed conifer, younger stand, stands that are 10 years old to 40 years old. They require very low lateral visibility in terms of being able to see through the cover because their first line of defense is to sit still and let the enemy walk by. That's why they change color. They wouldn't bother to change color if you were going to try to outrun everything. They run when the jig is up. So those younger clear cuts that are 10 years old, up to 40 years old, low lateral visibility, I think that's what I was saying. And if you keep an eye out for those types of forest stands in your survey routes, that's where you're going to find a lot of other species that rely on the snowshoe hair as a primary food source. The DFM, I know you're all familiar with deer. The moose are common to abundant through the region, and you'll find moose. There's two ways that moose will be set. You'll see them along the road. One will be a purely random event with a cross in the road. But during May, June, July, they frequent the road signs to become an accumulation of salt in both the mud and the water and the plants that we put out during the winter so that we can drive 70 miles a day after a 12-inch snowstorm. So in May, we put out a lot of salt. And moose need salt, and they like salt. So watch out May, June, and July. If you're traveling those roads anytime, but especially dawn and dusk, be extremely careful because there's lots of them beside the road. Oh, let me back up. They, outside of that, they are going to be associated also with young clericites, especially in the winter. Stands that have been cut five to 20 years ago. They're brought in the summer. They feed on aquatic vegetation. Their aquatic vegetation is very high in the minerals and nutrients that they need, especially calves. But they, like deer, they become a browser of woody vegetation in the winter. So in the winter, the fall, winter, early spring, they're a browser. Other than that, they're more closely tied to a aquatic habitat. There's also two ways you can see deer near the road. One would be completely random events. The other is if you're from December to April, if you happen to be in an area where, it's associated with a deer-wintering area, deer numbers can be very, very high because that's where all the deer go to winter in that particular stretch or in that particular area. They're also very active crossing the roads during the rut, which is late September to late November. Where the bucks especially are on the move nonstop and so they're constantly crossing roads. And also in the spring, when they're all deer, when they're breaking out of those wintering areas, they become more active crossing the roads. Thought I'd just touch up on some birds. You're not going to see a piliated woodpecker sitting on the road, but I see them all the time flying across the road. I call them common in the area. Turkey numbers range from common to low to the more northern stretches of the road to be driving. Their numbers would be low, but they do occur. Places where they never occurred before due to the parliament bringing them back to the state of Maine starting in the late 70s. And rough graphs are very common. You don't usually get to see a picture of them sitting on a nest, but you do see them walking beside the road. They like to walk beside the road to get grip. Those all birds need that. The fonts on those are kind of small. So I told Bob that reptiles and amphibians were not in my wheelhouse, they're not in my area of strength, but I do really like snakes. That's a watermarkison. I don't believe we have any in Maine, but that's the best snake picture I had on my C drive this morning. Snakes are not common in the area. I've been there 25 years. I don't know whether I've seen three snakes run over on the road. But snakes that you could see would be a common God of snake, and that's probably the most, that's probably the most abundant. Towards the southern part of your route you could see a milk snake. Northern water snake, we have them, but I've never seen them in the road. I have seen them in some of our wetland areas. The ring neck, the red belly, and the green snake. Again, rarely ever see them in a road. So I would say the unlikely for you to encounter snakes in the road in those areas. When Bobby first told me about this, I said I don't really think there's many snapping turtles in that survey area because we're kind of at the end of the norm and end of the range of snapping turtles. The next day I was working with a district aim-worn who worked up in Eustace, and he is also a state trooper for 10 years in that area. He told me that he did see snapping turtles in Jim Plum Township, which is just beyond Eustace. So that surprised me. So as you get down towards Farmington, you can see, that's when you start seeing some snapping turtles. And wood turtles, they're state-listed special concern, but there are some survey routes there where we do know we have wood turtles. I've never seen one in the road, but I have encountered them along some stretches of rivers and large wetlands. So we are certainly interested if you talk any way you document wood turtles. And here's a list of, we consulted our, Barbara and I consulted Philip Dimeinardier, who is our, heads up our group on amphibians reptiles and vertebrates. And for your survey area, Philip relayed that he thought that there was a possibility of documenting ming frog, leopard frog, great tree frog, spring salamander, and blue-spotted salamander. Rare but possible. So if you encounter those, be sure to take a picture. And we'd be very interested in adding that to our database. So I'm going to talk, how am I on time? I'm going to talk a little bit about making observations of wildlife using visual data only, or something to look at. It's really tricky. Don't be afraid of seeing something and saying, I don't know what that is. It's much better if you're not sure to say, I don't know what it is. Because there's lots of things that can come into play that make it difficult. And scale is a huge problem. Is it bigger than a bread box? If it's not next to something of a known size, it is very difficult to estimate its size. And I have handled 30 black bears that have been caught. They were in a covert trap or a foot snare, and they had to be drugged. And they had to calculate the drug dosage. And to a person, we all overestimate their size. Even when you can have all day long to look at it. So size is a problem for every one of us. And one of the things that come into play with causing problems for us human beings with sizes, if we get thrown a curve and we know how big something should be, and I asked you, how big is that Rapala Law on the left? And you would say, well, I don't know how big a Rapala Law is. I've seen them. Well, that's the same Rapala Law on the right. So it can, pictures of things can be deceiving. It's tough. So just be cautious when using visual determination of how big something is. Color is also a problem because color varies on an animal based on its age, its sex, time of year, its geographic location, day versus night, and especially the position of the subject versus the light source. You've all seen professional photographers who've taken pictures of an animal. It's this black silhouette that's because the sun, they're shooting into the sun. And one time I saw, I was with another biologist. We were driving on this long stretch of road, dirt road, and you could see a long ways, and this animal came out into the road and it was jet black. And we go, what is that?  And on this road, you could drive really fast. And we're looking into the sun. Neither one of us could figure out what it was because it was black. So we go, what could be black? It's not a bear. What is it? We're driving down the road about 55 miles an hour. The animal crosses, goes in the woods, comes around to the left, and comes around with the suns on its back. It was just a blonde colored coyote. It was a natural colored coyote, light gray. But that animal went from black to light gray only because a little light was. So it's something I would share with you. Keep in mind where the light is if you're looking at what color it is. So with that, I'll ask if you have any questions. Go ahead and type in any questions on the keyboard if you do for Chuck. And then we'll start moving into how to go about conducting your surveys now. Okay. Chuck is here, so if questions come up you'll be here to answer questions in the end as well. All right. So I'm going to go ahead and start talking a little bit about how to go about doing your surveys. You will be sent.  One of which is going to be a map. This is a draft right here of one of the maps before. We'll be sent a map and data forms as well as some written instructions which are actually already currently on the website. So equipment you're going to need. We really recommend a safety vest and I think we're going to be able to actually, if you don't have one, send you one in the mail. A digital camera whether it's on your phone or separately. That is very strongly encouraged. We really need pictures when it's all possible. A cell phone is always good to have in case you have an emergency. That's just a safety issue and have your map and data form along. And then I also recommend for those of you who can, I have a little on my phone, I have a voice recorder. I have a smart phone and I have every voice recorder called Easy Voice Recorder and when I'm driving and I can't stop, I can just push one button and make a recording of what it is I just saw. We are going to encourage you to stop and look at what you're seeing but there are times I know when you're not on your regular survey and don't have the time. First thing, safety. We want to just really emphasize how important this is. We will be on roads. Other people not knowing, you're doing surveys. If you're on an interstate or the road is extremely busy or cars are coming in and out, don't stop. You should be able to pull completely off the road so other cars can get by easily and you should have no difficulty getting back on the road if you're doing your surveys by driving. If you're walking and biking again or a safety vest wear light colored clothing. Remember black clothing, you're not seen by vehicles when it's dark out if you're in dark clothing. So again, please be safe. If you don't feel safe then don't stop. Frequency. We are hoping people can commit to at least once a month from April through September. If you can do it more frequently, your routes that's fantastic. We're really trying to get as much data, what we really need is high volume of observations in order to start doing analysis. So if this is your everyday route and you want to do it more frequently every day, every week whatever you can do and works for you, fantastic. If you can't do your whole route and happen to be on part of it, please enter what you see in the database and I'll be going over the database after we go through some of these things. So again, numbers of observations is great. Timing. There's no required time of day. However, if you're out early in the morning you're likely to see more. If you're driving things won't be as scavenged or cleaned up. So you'll probably see things that were hit in the night that hadn't been cleaned up by scavengers yet. You'll have much more odds of seeing some of the small animals like the amphibians and reptiles. They get, they dry up very, amphibians in particular dry up very quickly and are scavenged by other animals very quickly in the morning. So, and if you are if you are driving, you're likely not to see those small animals if you're walking you have a much better chance of seeing those. Particularly if you go out the day after a rain, a rain at night. And again, we're looking for both live and dead animal crossings. I'll show you on the website you can report both. So, let's see. Speed. When, if you're deciding to drive your route, and these are a long route, so you can choose for driving, you can do the entire section or you can do a part of a section, whatever works for you. But if you are driving, please slowly. So that you can see as much as possible. If it's, but you want to be within within what the minimum speed limit is for the road. If you have other drivers behind you, please let them pass safely. And for identifying, be as specific as you can. As Chuck was saying, if you don't know what it is, you don't know what is. And that's fine, just reporting that it is an animal, or it was a bird, or you think it's an amphibian, that's fine. It helps us as well. And we have an opportunity for you to say how confident it is. You're really confident. You 100% know what it is. You're somewhat confident or even best guess. Photograph. Please, as much as you can take photographs, that's really, really, really helpful. We do go through them and our biologists here and working with ISNW, if it's a real tricky one, help us verify what species we're seeing. So if you don't know what it is, it's possible we will if we use a photograph. We will send you a ruler. So as Chuck was saying, you know, size can be so deceiving and if you can leave that in your car when you take a photograph, put the ruler down next to it and that'll give us a better idea of what size that animal is and help us with identification. Let's see. Okay. I'm going to go on to now. Again, when you're out in the field, what you're going to do is you're going to have that map that you see up on your screen with you and we'll send you a number of copies of that and mark on there exactly as close as you can what what you do. Number say number one observation, number two observation and so on for your day and then you're going to put it on your data sheet corresponding with the same number and there is if you see a cluster of animals you can use that as one observation if they're all the same species. Okay. I think Amanda can pull up the data sheet now so you can see what that looks like. So again there's some turtles for you. We're going to slide down towards the ends of these slides all the way to the end almost and there's just some critters and there's the data sheet and this is available online actually so you can always get more of them and I'll show you on the website where to find them and copy them but we're also going to be sending you out a stack of them as well and so you'll be filling those out with information and the information on here pretty much corresponds with the information on the website so just quickly going through it it's pretty obvious. You can put your name and your route number so your number which route you're on and the date of the observations if you know the temperature that's fine not critical. We like to know when it's been rainy or not general conditions. We like to know if you survey the entire route or just part of the route and what's really critical is if you do your entire route and see no wildlife, live or dead check the box that says no wildlife observed and go to the website and enter that information in. You did that survey and saw nothing. That is critical it's not intuitive but it really helps us with analyzing the data so the negative data or no data at all is also important information for us. I'll show you that on the website. Again you have your observation number and your photo number and and someone had a question. Observation points will vary and I'm not sure can you clarify type a little more and clarify or speak up and clarify your question so I can answer that one. This is Dan here, you hear me? Hi Dan, yes. You will not you're not anticipating we will establish observation points that we will repeat or look for something to record and then record there and then the next time we do the route it will be presumably in a different place. Exactly, so you're going to go so you're driving your route and you see a raccoon. You'll mark on your map this is where I saw the raccoon and you can use the map that we give you or you could use your delorum or whatever works for you to identify its location so you remember when you go to put it into the website and then you might want to this is optional but you can if you have a shovel in the back of your car or you want to shove the animal off the road or off the side of the road so that it's not counted again by you or someone else or by putting a scavenger at risk of being next to the road that's great not required but an optional thing but yes you mark your point for entry onto the website which we'll go over and then go on and say maybe a few miles down you see a skunk you mark that on your map and keep going. The next time you go out you're going to be using a fresh data sheet and a fresh map and you may not see anything in that location you may see something in a different location does that clarify? It is a similar point if I record no observations on the entire route that's clear enough if I observe no observations on the partial route I guess you'd want a map showing what part of the route was observed yes. Oh good point I'll do that on the data Right I'm going to think about that right and get back to you on that because I don't think there's a place on the website to say it was partially surveyed so I think if it's partially surveyed and you saw nothing I think we'll probably just not worry about it and not enter anything I think only if you do the entire route okay? Yeah it'll really vary okay a little more on the data sheets again the timies made the observation the species as far as you can tell dead or alive or if you saw more than one how many sometimes you might see a whole bunch of frogs in the same location the and there's sort of some tips on filling it out on the opposite side of the sheet but to your confidence best guess 100% sure or somewhat confident a description of the location that simply means you know is it a dirt road a gravel road house numbers any sort of description that might help you remember where that landmark is right after certain road or driveway that kind of thing healthy with the location then it's road type where they paved or gravel that kind of thing there's a time since impact so if you saw it happen or you think it's pretty fresh there's about a day over a day but under a week and then over a week best estimate it's fine if you don't know you don't know there's road features and it's pretty self evident there's a list of them and we also have some photographs of them we're particularly interested in things like guardrails fences bridges and culverts things that might influence how animals are moving or not moving and that that can be helpful and when you're taking the photographs you can also photograph the habitat you can take a picture of the animal one or two pictures of the animal and then a picture of one side of the road and a picture of the other side of the road and that gives us an idea of what kind of habitat we're talking about and if there's any other feature that you think is important you can go ahead and take a picture of that as well okay I think we're going to oh let's see let's go to there's another slide here go ahead one more I have a question on that sheet this is Carly yep go Carly where it says observation number and then photo number so my first observation would obviously I just put in number one correct you want us to start it that way exactly and then with the photos if they're numbered are you going to be giving us further instructions as to how to submit those and how to number them because we're going to be sending them digitally exactly they're on the website and I'm going to demonstrate this there's a place to upload photos so this is really for your your organization so if you've got a digital camera and it's picture number yeah yeah okay and sadly I think on the phones they're quite long numbers which is a bit tedious but just a way for you to remember okay this is the picture for this observation okay thank you okay and someone asked about the return route if you're walking in particular we ask that you walk up one side of the road and back down the other because you will see different things on the road or along the shoulder of the road if you're driving you know you may not you may see what's on both sides of the road on the roads that we're talking about as you drive one direction so it's not required to to turn around and go the other direction if you are you see something different great but it's not a requirement does that help you Dan? or I did not I'm looking it's a checkbox right checkbox I'm not clear what you want to check oh I observed on route um um let's ignore that so if I drive the route I'm always going to drive it twice because I have to go home right I think we're going to ignore that checkbox I think I think it doesn't well this was developed for another similar project and I think it just is more confusing here than helpful so we'll go ahead and ignore that oh you can clarify that later I just wanted to ask because it was right in front of me no that's a very good question yep okay last form I just wanted to alert you to Chuck mentioned some of these amphibians that were quite rare and how uncommon some of the reptiles are up in that region so the biologists who anyone fishing wildlife biologists who works on these species asked us to share with you and Amanda will email this to you it's a form where they record amphibians and reptiles so if you see any reptiles dead or alive on the road or off the road which would likely be things like the wood turtle the snapping turtle etc please take pictures and fill out this form and send it on up to Bangor in the fishery wildlife office they are eager for those kinds of records up in that part of the state and the same for amphibians particularly those rare species but probably most species if you can get a good picture of an amphibian whether you know what it is or not if you get some good pictures they'll take out and the location information they'll take a good look at that and it might be important records for their state database on amphibians and reptiles I just want to alert you to that and we'll send you the information that's kind of a another project that's going on but they're very closely related and Chuck together oh and if you do have a GPS unit and know how to use it take a GPS location for the animal that you've seen and that will be very helpful as well and you can also if you don't have a GPS unit and or both you can click on the map that I'm going to show you on the website and even if it's an off-road occurrence you can go ahead and use the wildlife road watch website to put it in there and we'll share that with IvanW as well okay now we're going to move over to the website and we're going to do a little live demonstration of how to get that information now you've gone out you've done your surveys okay now what now let's get that information shared okay so this is what the website looks like the address and again we're going to send you links to all of this but it's wildlifecrossing.net forward slash main and again we'll send you there it is Amanda's highlighted it for us the first thing you're going to need to do is create a new account if you aren't already a member you'll click here on the right hand part of the screen and create a new account pretty straightforward you do this one time fill in the form particularly the things that are starred in red are required to display name which can be your name or something else your first name your last name your username which is something that we need you need to send us your username because we won't necessarily if it's something not intuitive we might not know what it is your email address and then the other information optional contact address by clicking on the gray bar you can let us know your experience and that's helpful if you want to spam protecting little thing click on the create new account button and then the system will send you an email with a temporary password and you click on that link and create yourself a new password and then you've got your username and password and your set and never have to do that again so I'm going to go back to the home page and I'm going to actually type in a username I hope and login so username password click login and here is what it will look like once you have your account you will get some opportunities to enter data and before I demonstrate that I just want to sort of orient you a little bit we have news here on this page where you can see here's the western mountains project and other projects there's a blog opportunity where you can if you see some interesting things you can share it with all the other people on the program and they can then comment on that and that's always very interesting you can click and see a map of all of the observations in the last three months or you can actually click on that and it will give you an identification number that's a snowy owl click on the link and it will tell you a little bit more about it and if there was a photo that would pop up too so you can just explore information other people have shared or you can look at it those are all the animals you can see the data just in the list form instead of the map form and over here again on the right you'll see my observations and my maps when you click on those it will just show you your data without the rest of the volunteers data so you can sort of get keep a handle on your own data and you've made an observation and you're going to be able to choose actually let me back up the thing you're going to need to do beforehand is you're going to be telling Amanda which of those routes you're going to survey on the overview map and you're going to be giving us your username and we'll need both of that because you will not see this no wildlife observation choice when you register until we assign you your route and then that will pop up so we're going to need that information first and we'll be emailing you back and forth about that so now you've done your route and you've made an observation so you'll click on I'm going to enter my observation it's a dead observation and I'll just walk you through it it's the exact same thing for live wildlife observation and that's how we know if it was something that you saw running across the road or dead on the road so the first thing you do is go to animal and you type in what you saw so let's see wood so you start typing and some options are going to come up in this case it was actually a wood frog we'll say if you have no idea you can write it in the write-in section instead either or, up to you then you do need to click on whether it's an amphibian, a bird or a mammal if you want to be more specific you can open up the plus sign here say if it was a well here it was an amphibian and it was a frog don't need to do that you can just stop at amphibian it's really up to you keep going this is important and required is how confident you are 100% certain somewhat I'm going to say it was pretty flattened so it was my best guess okay then you go to and every time you open up these boxes these gray bars you click on them to open them up monitoring this is when if you've made an observation on your route or anywhere in the state because we take observations anywhere in the state we don't have to be a specific survey route but the way we know it was done during one of your specific surveys is by you clicking on this monitoring so if you've got a route you've done your route with the maps it's very important to click on the monitoring and then check off the box that will be the name of your route and that won't be there until again you give us your user name and we assign you your route but once we do that then you'll have that option click that then where now this is the real power of this project is that now all of a sudden we can get location data from everyone everywhere around the state you'll type in the name of your road we'll just say route 1 and then you interface with the map and I'll just I know many of you probably already know how to use this kind of map from google maps and driving directions but I'll just start from the beginning and show you how this particular map works so here's it comes in as the state of Maine and so you click on the cursor and hold the map down by holding down the cursor there click on the map the mouse clicking button so try and click the area that you're surveyed in the middle and then you can either use the wheel of the mouse to scroll in or out and use the little plus button and now I'm getting a little off center so I'm going to move the map over and click the plus button again or you can use this little bar you can see here and I can pull it up whoops it went way too far I didn't like that so I'm going to pull it down again and that happens there we go I'm using the mouse cursor better okay so let's see okay here's one of the routes whoops went way too far we'll go back in here's one of the routes 16 and I'm going in again then you can if you look at this on the right hand top there's this thing it looks like a stack of sheet of papers you click on that I want the map to look so I like google maps hybrid click on the little button and now you get the aerial photo you can close that so it's not in your way and then I can zoom in move my map zoom in so I can really find oh yeah it was on this curve of the road where I saw it you can see the scissors of the landscape so it was okay I think it was pretty much right here I go up again to the right hand side there's a pencil with a plus sign click on that and then click on the map where you thought you saw and it puts down a little pin a little red box with a plus sign on it I don't like where that is no problem I say oh that wasn't quite right it was actually I saw it over here and you can do that until you get it to the place that you're happy with okay and then so that's just putting it on the map just really you know the power is that here now you've made an observation and now I and us using the database that's being created here have that geographic information locked in and we can then do GIS computer analysis of all that information where it's in the landscape okay the next thing is you can it puts in today's date so if you did it a week before you just go in and actually it wasn't 07 it was on the first and you change the date the time is a 24 hour clock so if I saw that at one o'clock I'd type in my 13 13 and it was actually 1315 and you don't have to be you don't have to be as precise of exact minutes but if it was around three you know around one o'clock or one 15 that kind of thing if you have exact time that's fine too the next are your visual uploads okay this is where we were talking about putting your pictures so the first thing you need to do is get your pictures onto your computer from your camera or your phone put them in a folder once they're there on your computer you can go to browse and then I don't know if there are any pictures on this particular computer I'll go under pictures and see if there's any sample pictures fabulous oh Kuala so if you saw what I did maybe I should go back and went a little fast I went to the folder where there are pictures clicked on it and then I opened it oops opened it and then I picked the picture and you do have to do this one picture at a time click the open button now it's got the link here and I just hit the upload button be smaller than 8 megabytes per picture and these are the formats that are allowed JPEG GIF PNG and JPEG and there it is and now it's uploaded and you can give it a title if you want if there's any information but you don't have to that's optional and then if you have another photo maybe the habitat you can say habitat on this side of the road habitat on that side you go through the same process you can see all the other files all your photographs the last section are the field notes you don't necessarily it depends on some of these you fill out the animal count you only use if you've seen a cluster of dead animals like maybe a family of raccoons all in the same location you see three of them it defaults to one animal so you don't have to do this if you just saw one animal but say you saw three you click here three you're done if you're not 100% sure how many there were it was a range it was like well it was between 2 and 4 or 20 and 50 you can give the range the animal specific information again is if you know the gender most of the time you won't so you just leave that blank if you know the age the juvenile or adult most of the time that's an optional field but if you have that information go ahead and put it in the time since death was on the field on the forum and here are the options again you click on those and roadway specific is where you put in that you were either driving or on a bike or walking and so forth so say we were in a car this time how often you travel the road this is particularly helpful when you're doing a random observation rather than your survey but also it can be useful they go there daily type of road that's dirt, local paved these are single lanes this is just one lane in each direction or four lanes state highway, interstate and the roadside features we were talking about again these are the different guardrails, types the median barriers, curbs is there a curb on the road culverts, bridges, fences and we have pictures of those in the instructions that we're going to make sure you have a link to or a copy of any field notes, anything you need to share about special circumstances you click here and then the last bit is you just hit the save button and it will save your record I'll say I probably didn't put in all the required information to reply give me a little error message I did it and it's created and you're done and that there's the picture of the koala we're going to really confuse the biologist when we're reviewing this data that'll be fun so that's the end of the website demonstration questions that are circulating about using the website or anything else we've been discussing so far we're pretty much just a quick one so if we have the written sheet we take our notes on that then you enter the data in the website that we can destroy the written sheet any of those in is that correct so I would request it's really up to you but I would request that you hold on to them for six to eight months because if we are going through the data and have questions we might want to contact you and verify if something comes up so if you're able to that would be really helpful to hold on to them for six to eight months giving us a chance to get through all the data also because we'll probably hold off looking at this data until fall or winter and sometimes for some people they've found if they've had some difficulty with entering the data again we can help over the phone with that or even enter the data for you if it really is starting to just build up or some people are more savvy with the computer than others so in that case you can send us in the data sheet but that's not required talk to me a little bit about birds two turkeys in the ditch are an obvious observation but chickadees little unidentified brown birds at a distance right good question we're really looking for things that are interfacing with the road that look like there might be some issues with crossing or getting hit so birds up high soaring overhead not really looking for a bird a hawk perched right next to the road looking like we're going to pound on something yes that would be helpful or an owl right in front of the car in the dusk yep that would be interesting to know or excuse me crows you know what I wouldn't bother with the crows they're really fascinating but I think they're so common and scavenge along the roads that it's not going to really tell us anything about the road to the turn what's that the crows will tell you that there's a road tail setting up yeah right and so you might keep your eyes open in that circumstances eagles keep a close eye on you may have heard in the news in some parts of the state there's a real problem with eagles who are scavenging on road kill and concern and I don't know Chuck have some gotten hit also yes so we've had some bald eagles getting hit because they are scavenging dead animals on the roadside and they can't furl on the road and they can't get up and fly quickly like a crow it's very difficult for them to take off that quickly so you might see something like that and reporting that would be very helpful cluster of turkey what's that that brings up a related thought well crows tell you that there's a road kill and I know that sometimes the road kill will be off the road deer and moose is there a have you talked about defining the corridor I mean now you want an observation of the ditch do you want an observation just outside the ditch alongside the road there's got to be a limit there right great good good good thought so we don't have a specific distance because it will vary circumstantially but certainly anything that's on the shoulder of the road or a ditch that's associated with the road we would definitely want anything you know sometimes it's an open field area so if something sort of headed towards the road but it's quite a bit ways off go ahead and include that I think that's very helpful I don't know if Chuck has any thoughts on that any particular species but we do want anything that feels like it might interface with the road if it's you know sometimes an animal will get hit and kind of get flung a little bit from the road and so scanning for that is helpful pretty much pretty much you know unless again it's a songbird that's pretty far from the road and not looking you know just doing its thing up in the trees so it took a rinse for all animals yes yes better to be inclusive in that case is helpful and I guess I want to reiterate I showed you how to you know I actually went off the website prematurely I mean if you bring that back up it reminded me just a couple things thanks for the question I just wanted to reiterate that I demonstrated the dead animal recording but you also have the identical recording sheet I'm not going to go through it for live animal here but also then I wanted to show you the know wildlife observation you've done your entire route and you saw nothing it was just everything's been cleaned up or nothing had happened you do click on there and this is what comes up very much more simplified all you have to do is check that I was your route that you surveyed you enter the when information and your any field notes you want to share yeah I went out but I didn't see anything and you know so forth we also have you'll see a section that's called wildlife tracks and signs observation we're not really using this for our analysis at this point but it is something that you know if you do see something interesting you can you have the opportunity to observe that and we haven't decided what we may do with this over time but spore type means some sort of animal signs of feather for hair tracks and so forth but again it's not something we're going to be really using for analysis but I just thought I'd let you know that it that it is there because you will run across it and see it I also wanted to let you know you'll see this add adopt a route road route here we've already identified the routes for this project but this is for people who want to create their own routes there may be another route that they just go regularly and they're really gung-ho and they really want to you know do a lot of surveys there's an opportunity to actually go in name and route and draw the route you need to share that back with us and it gives directions right on the website and not part of this project but I just thought you'll see that when you look at the website and wonder what it is but anybody who wants to do their own route certainly can great deal with that thanks more questions super we do have a question from Lloyd let me see some weather like an iPhone 5 takes GPS points I mean I don't know how to do it but yeah you know what that's a really good question I don't either I do know that some of the smartphones and iPhones they definitely do have GPS so if you're savvy and your iPhone does your iPhone does have a GPS and with the right app you can record points whether that'll be helpful here or not they've got a very nice sort of a point and click interface which is much easier than trying to transcribe you know XY data exactly and we do not it does not have the capability to upload GPS locations someday we might add that but we haven't done that at this stage but again if you see one of those rare amphibians or reptiles the GPS location is very useful for those biologists Lloyd if you anticipate using your iPhone for GPS in the areas where they have the routes you're going to need to purchase one of the GPS in memory because you're not going to have a live but have worked in real time otherwise that's possible and Chuck has a comment for us on this I have a diamond for my personal truck that's three years old a dash mount with him and I can take a waypoint on that okay so people have a a dedicated GPS for their vehicle probably will take a waypoint okay did you all hear that about but then you do have to translate that into where that is on a map and then point and click on our website so other thoughts and questions you've got two identified routes up this way do you have notions about who you want on which route and how well you're covered have you thought that through I have some suggestions for one of your routes because I'm looking at it at the moment but there's another one to the west of town that I wonder if you need help with so we would like people to choose as many people as possible on each route and we're not going to limit it to just two or three volunteers per route because we're really trying to get a lot of data and we do have a way of sort of telling if we're getting duplicate information so that are more information than less and you are completely welcome to choose the route that it's going to be best for you and if you know people who might do the other route or even your route as well please encourage them to join in and I also want to encourage again those random observations that you or your friends make that are not associated with the route are also going to be useful over time as well and we'll communicate with you I don't know if anybody wants to say right now which route they want to do and Amanda will make a note of that but she'll also be communicating you via email to firm that up I can certainly guarantee attention to the route 4 route because it's right here but if you need help with the route over by Richardson let me know and I'll try to work some in I might not be on a guarantee full coverage of it great and that's Dan is that Dan sounds good sounds good no one has to commit today to their route but you can share that if you like good I think that is we're a little over time I don't want to respect people's time I think we've covered most anything everything again we're going to be sending you both physical information and emailing you some information questions come up please contact me or Amanda and I really really appreciate your time this morning to join us and learn about the project and I really want to thank Chuck who's sitting over here for his time and expertise I really learned quite a bit listening to him with his local knowledge and real deep knowledge of some of these animals so I greatly appreciate that any final farewells or questions before we sign off just will you be sending us the link for logging on and creating our our account on the website then yes we will and do we have everybody's email address I would assume yeah and I can send them directly to that link when we close out the webinar great so she will send you directly to the link when we close out the webinar but we'll also send you a follow-up email with the link and all the information you need to get started thank you that's all I have great okay well thank you all enjoy the rest of your Sunday and look forward to hearing your about your reports from the road take care bye


Now, let me invite our discussant, Steven Ongina from the University of Zurich. Steven, the floor is yours. Very good. Pleasure to discuss this paper partake on this event. Somebody did a really good job of presenting paper and it investigates, as you by now, the impact of the California cap and trade program, U.S. plans. It's really nice, has plant level data, and basically what's going to find is that it has a good shock as all the ingredients. And what it's going to find is that financial constrained firms are going to shift in missions. And there is a story to that shift in the sense that they're going to do so with national plans that are underutilized. They're going to do that shift to other states that are going to be more lenient. And the real downside is that in the end, unconstrained firms are not going to reduce, or unconstrained firms are actually going to increase their total emissions total. This is really a shifting of those emissions. And to some extent, then negating this impact of this intent, the intent impact of this regulation. As I already said, it's really nice because it uses plant level data. The findings also is interesting, intuitive, well explained in the paper. It's carefully done. There's a number of really nice specifications. Here and there, the R-squares are a bit higher than that. I really don't have a lot to say on this paper also because it was actually recently accepted by general financial economics. And I think that's obviously super nice. And I think to the extent that I could even say that, this is of course rightfully so because it's a really nice paper. Super well done, super great data. So always difficult as a discussion to discuss such a paper that somehow is of course also rounded out. It's there, it's published. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to try to place it a little bit and link it to ongoing work that I'm engaged in also that people in Zurich are engaged in. So, and I'm then going to ask a little bit the question where some of these transition risk are going to go. There's also a question that some of you are asking at the end, which firms and banks are going to focus a little bit more on the banking sector. So I'm going to talk a little bit about, say, a critical exercises where one looks at differences in, in some cases, changes in. Climate regulation. And then to ask the question will be shifting activities, not using the loaded regulatory arbitrage wording but who is going to shift activities well so those that have to those that can and those that want to even though in that case comes maybe So on the vertical axis going to have the real sector and the financial sector, because I'm going to focus a little bit on the world that the financial sector may play. It actually has an interesting this point here in the in the paper because financial constraints are going to matter as you as you heard. And so to this extent there may be also financial sector that could play a role. And then I'm going to on the horizontal axis. There is going to be the short versus the long one. So the paper that you saw presented is basically that some present is basically showing that these capital constraint firms are going to do the shifting. And they're going to do so to the extent that they have excess capacity. So that's the part we were fully undoing the regulation. And let me now go counterclockwise, because actually, a paper that looks at the, the change in the EU, so the cap and trade three, where we actually find, and it's related in the sense that we're going to find that those firms are actually going to buy this firms are going to be able to almost use these permits to lower their own financing cost. And so also again undoing the intended consequences of this regulation so so the, the, to some extent, this permit is now going to be viewed by financiers as therefore these firms are going to obtain lower financing opportunities and thereby actually being able to ramp up their, their activities. Now, in a paper which is not yet in the public domain. So what we're going to look at is how these are getting maybe more importantly, local diesel car restrictions are actually going to change the financing conditions and what we're going to find is that captive banks but actually not only captive banks are going to offer lower interest rates for diesel cars. So what they're going to try to do is of course to promote to stimulate the purchases of these of these cars and again, this is this is potentially a side effect of this type of local diesel car restrictions that was was a bit unforeseen. Banks may not be pricing fossil fuel all that much. And maybe more relatedly here, the banks may also finance fossil fuel in more lax countries so to this extent the country policy stringency may play a role in in the ability to willingness actually of banks to finance and I'll come back to this point in a second, in relating it to to some of this paper. And then finally, I'm going to end on a, on a discussion of where some of the fossil fuel the transition was going to go and they're going to go to very big banks, and that some of these fossil fuel firms are going to be no longer financed as much by bonds as by by very large banks. Here we have, again, using the loaded world regulatory arbitrage by firms. Now this within firm, which Sonka and his quarters demonstrate very, very nicely in the paper may actually be more difficult on a global scale for various reasons. Clearly the financial sector may actually play a role in doing part of the shifting and so maybe firms in other countries may gain because the banks are going to be shifting some of their financing, according to the stringency of regulation so this within firm shifting may may be more difficult on a global scale and of course to be investigated further. Now, one of the takeaway could potentially also be that environmental regulations should not focus so much on on outcomes, but actually more on processes and, and to this extent, that would also partly corner the financiers to do this. Now what is the role of financiers here during transition clearly in the paper, I mean that there's no role in the sense that they are not necessarily mitigating the cap constraints but interestingly, the financiers could have played some beneficial role to the extent that they would have at least partly modulated these constraints and that would have reduced the to reduce the spill overs. But finance me financiers may not always play this role. As I already said, if the firm is actually owning a pollution permit this may actually be used by by firms to lower their own financing costs and thereby increase their polluting activities and the same maybe tool for diesel car loans that are granted by financiers to stimulate actually purchase of cars that would be necessary that would be possibly affected by these restrictions. And then providing more and cheaper financing to fossil fuel firms, especially very large banks seem to be now collecting such exposures. Now, why is this actually that we really see quite a dramatic compilation of collation of fossil fuel from risk on very large banks balance sheets. Partly it could be because to investigate this is very complicated is that there's joint with many other long terms as over time across product across banks and competitions in the case syndications are complex. Maybe the banks have sort of a blank spot for this type of transition with to maybe that bit oblivious to it the short side of conservatist careless, but maybe a better story for for the observation that indeed a lot of these transition with the very large ones and the fossil fuel and, and the very large fossil fuel firms are now being financed by by the largest bank in the world is that basically these banks are politically connected. And possibly they are knowing that at the national level, they, they, they feel they are somewhat shielded, and they're in control of this position is because at the end of the day. All of this comes from the regulatory side and to the extent that these banks do have this sense that they can control this up to a certain point. They may actually be doing the right thing by by starting to finance these these transition with. And of course, related to some of these two big to fail banks also know that their balance sheets are actually too big to strength in the sense that once the once the financing is there. It's going to be very, very, maybe more difficult to bring this banks. This is basically last slide this fossil fuel firm exposure on the blanks bank bank balance sheets may actually make those to big to strength and picture very dramatically actually from Tasmania where these, these mammals were actually not to big to stand them in any case, this is a very nice investigation I really couldn't bring myself to start, you know, picking on estimation details all the ingredients are there, the publication is there. Try to create some value in the context of this conference with a review slightly biased towards some of the things that we're working here in the shop in Zurich I was almost going to say the sweatshop in Zurich because it's really one of these spillover issues. And so a lot of success with the your investigation and future papers looking forward to reading them. I'm sure many of your colleagues have the same opinion. Thank you very much.