Project update 1

I met with my friend, Kent Laudon, who is the field team coordinator for the USFWS Mexican gray wolf recovery program on Tuesday at his office in Alpine, AZ. Kent told me that his team could collect scats for me! This will save quite a bit of money, and my plan now is to use the funds I raised for the next phase of my project, which is scat-DNA-PCR identifications from the collected scats. We will try to collect approximately 200 scats. If this doesn't work out by Spring of 2016, then I will continue to collect them on my own. I must how buy three cases of 125 mL fluorinated high density polyesther sample collection bottles; this will cost about $700. These bottles are expensive because they are made of low 0ff-gasing plastic.

I will probably have this work done at Dr. Lisette Waits' lab at the University of Idaho in Moscow, ID. My next immediate step is to get an estimate from Dr. Waits on the cost for scat-DNA-PCR of 200 scats, identifying the species and individual.

Thanks again for your help on my project!!