Symposium

Sören Decraene

Sören Decraene: moved from Belgium to Sweden in 2021, passionate about nature photography/filming and animal tracking (Level 4 T&S and level 2 Trailing), using the knowledge from tracking to get close to the animals I want to photograph.Working as a zoo- and wildlife veterinarian in Kolmården Zoo.

Bird Bones an skulls: Intriguing to say the least, bones are a frequently asked question on Cybertracker evals.In this lecture I will be going over some specific bones and skulls in the birds body and describe how you can recognize them so that at the end of the lecture you will have gained the knowledge to determine bird bones you find on your tracking-walks! “

Paul Wernicke

Dan Puplett

Dan Puplett is a freelance naturalist, conservationist and environmental educator. He has scored 100% (Level 4) in Track & Sign and is the author of the Field Studies Council British Bird Tracks & Signs chartand the new British Mammal Tracks & Signs chart. Dan teaches tracking and naturalist skills to a wide audience, including conservation professionals. He is a nature guide and has also contributed to a range of rewilding projects and tracking-based wildlife surveys. www.danpuplett.co.uk

Feather Identification and Interpretation: Feathers are often encountered in many habitats, and they can provide valuable information to the tracker. In this presentation we will explore ways in which we can identify which bird the feather came from and recognise main feather types. We will also cover some tips for telling age, state of health and where relevant, possible cause of death.

Francis Collie

Francis Collie: Francis is a CT certified tracker living in the woods by the Valley of Mankind, Dordogne (France), famous for the multitude of its prehistoric rock-art caves. In 2014, he founds the French tracking association Je Suis La Piste to share his passion through workshops, games, books, festivals, radio and internet. He has also created local tracker group Périgord Pistage and is co-founder of national association France Pistage.

Périgord Pistage creating your own local trackers intervention group:Périgord Pistage is an on-going attempt to give back to Tracking its social usefulness, on a local scale.  Launched in April 2022, discover our story, our achievements and the difficulties we encountered… in order to be able to launch your own local intervention group more smoothly , and why not keep connected on a broader supporting network.  Willing to put your investigative skills to good use ?

Oded Davidovich

Oded Davidovich: Has been practicing and teaching Tracking for more than 15 years in Israel, South Africa, Turkey and Belgium. He introduced both children and adults to tracking, and have trained professional trackers and field rangers. A professional tracker from the Cybertracker organization and a specialist in Track and Sign from SA.

Oded regularly publish his experiences and adventures in the field in this page and on Instagram. ( currently based in Belgium).

Trailing in different substrates: For me, trailing is an ongoing learning process; every time I’m out in the field I’m learning something new. Trailing can be very challenging and rewarding, there are a lot of variables that can influence the level of difficulty of the trail. One of them is the substrate we are trailing on. On this talk I will give a few insights about trailing in different areas: sand, leaf, grass and more.

Sylvia Meise

Sylvia Meise: Sylvia is a passionate tracker (since six years), photographer and writer. She does bird mapping and cares for one of ten peregrine breeding spots in Frankfurt. With tracking-courses for beginners she hands on knowledge and fascination for this basic cultural skill.

Asaf Ben David

Asaf Ben David: Ph.D. Student at the zoology school of Tel-Aviv university. A member of the Wild track research group. The author of the Israeli track and sings field guide and the founder of Makommifgash.org, the leading community of wildlife trackers in Israel. website: https://makommifgash.org

Reptile tracks and locomotion: details to follow

David Wege

David Wege: David is a freelance nature educator. He is author and illustrator of Mammal Tracks of Europe (due February), and co-author of Bird Tracks: a field guide to British Species (with John Rhyder – due in April). David is passionate about nature, wildlife photography and animal tracking (Level 4 T&S and Level 3 Trailing), and teaches wildlife tracking to a broad audience including conservation and ecology professionals. A life-long birdwatcher, David has had a long career in international bird and biodiversity conservation. www.davidwegenature.uk

Tracking at the frontier of our knowledge – reflections from tracking in Mongolia: Providing track and sign input on an expedition to western Mongolia last year was a learning experience for me that I’m excited to be able to share. I was faced with many new, unfamiliar animal species and greater diversity in some familiar groups, but there is no published tracking information for Mongolia which meant going back to first principles and testing how I could apply my existing knowledge from across Europe.

Kersey Lawrence and Lee Gutteridge

Kersey Lawrence and Lee Gutteridge: Are both Senior Trackers and Evaluators with CyberTracker Conservation. Kersey is also the Director of Education and Research for Original Wisdom and Lee is the Owner and Principal Trainer for Nature Guide Training. They run guide training, tracking, education and research programs across the world. Kersey holds a doctorate from the University of Connecticut in the ecology of tracking and the culture of trackers. She combines quantitative and qualitative methods, incorporating local knowledge and skill into modern science to advance our wholistic understanding of the natural world. Lee is one of the most highly qualified guides, and guide trainers, in Africa, and is the author of ten natural history and tracking books. Graduates of his training school have gone on to work at or establish some of the most prestigious lodges in Africa. Kersey and Lee’s work takes them all over the world, with the majority of their focus on the African savannas and the forests of North America. There, they teach tracking experientially, and ensure that trackers meet the internationally recognized gold-standard set by CyberTracker. Together, they facilitate TrackerMentoring.com, an international online education company and published The Tracker Mentoring Manual. Through their passion for tracking, Kersey and Lee strive to inspire others to appreciate and protect the diverse beauty of our planet.

Similarities of tracking (identification and trailing) across the world: Tracking includes track & sign identification, trailing, knowledge of animal behaviours, and recognition of aging processes. Kersey and Lee have spent years traveling back and forth between Africa and North America, with forays into Europe, India, South East Asia, South America, Indonesia, and Madagascar. While exact species and substrates can vary, there are remarkable similarities that help them to figure out what they are seeing, which they will describe here with examples.

Bob Cowley

Robin Rigg

Robin Rigg

Robin Rigg is a zoologist and conservationist focused on large carnivores. He is chairman of the Slovak Wildlife Society (hyperlink: http://slovakwildlife.org/) and a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Large Carnivore Initiative for Europe https://www.lcie.org/ Robin uses tracking to monitor wolves, lynx, bears and other wildlife and achieved Level III in Track & Sign at the first CyberTracker evaluation event in Slovakia in 2013. He is currently working towards his doctorate at the University of Ljubljana.

Tracking and genetic sampling: a perfect combination to monitor elusive wildlife

Using wolves in Slovakia as an example, this presentation will demonstrate how systematic tracking can play a major role in research, monitoring and conservation. Robin will share the results of the White Wilderness programme (hyperlink: http://slovakwildlife.org/en/activities/whitewilderness), which trains volunteer ‘citizen scientists’ to help conduct non-invasive surveys of large carnivores and their prey. Participants learn how to identify and record tracks and to find and collect biological samples for DNA and other analyses which provide a sound evidence-base for wildlife management.

https://www.facebook.com/robin.rigg.5/

Kim Cabrera

Frank Holmes

Richard Andrews

George Bumann

George Bumann: George is an artist and educator living at the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park with his wife, son and black Labrador. George spent much of his life as a hunter, trapper, angler, and researcher; he has observed and studied wildlife on four continents. George earned degrees in wildlife ecology studying the diets of eastern coyotes in the Adirondack Park of northern New York State and the predator prey interactions of the ruffed grouse across the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States with a focus on reading field sign to assess causes of death for birds and their eggs. He has been guiding and teaching in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem for over two decades on a range of art and ecology topics, and has gained a reputation through the use of his award-winning animal impersonations. This will be George’s first presentation for the ITP (International Tracking Symposium) on the topic of tracking through the use of sound. George is expecting the release of his first book with Greystone Press — “Eavesdropping on Animals: What we can learn from listening to wildlife conversations” — in the fall of 2024.Tracking Nature by Ear: Enjoy extraordinary animal encounters by activating an under-used sense.”

Tracking Nature by Ear: Enjoy extraordinary animal encounters by activating an under-used sense Discover how the sounds and behaviors of some of the most common animals can reveal some of the most elusive ones hiding in plain sight. The program will feature a case study built upon decades of field time and teaching in Yellowstone National Park. Join me as we activate a lesser-used sense — that of hearing — for better tracking and finding amazing wildlife encounters anywhere you live or travel.

Larissa Slaney

Larissa Slaney: Larissa is a founding member of the WildTrack Specialist Group, which specialises in the use of non-invasive methods for wildlife monitoring. She is currently a PhD candidate and works on cheetah footprint analysis at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland, U.K where she runs the @FitCheetahs research project. She has also been involved in otter footprint research, which was published in 2022. In addition, Larissa develops science workshops and has worked internationally as a science communicator. Her interests are in non-invasive wildlife monitoring, education and traditional tracking. She is CT certified at level 2 in Track & Sign.

Tracking for Research:

Tracking is as old as humanity and Louis Liebenberg has even described it as the origin of science. But is tracking getting the place it deserves in modern research? To what extent is tracking being used and what else does it have to offer? Should indigenous and modern trackers get more involved in academic research and in conservation projects? How could we make this collaboration work?

This talk aims to give an insight into the current status quo and is an invitation to brainstorm together for the future of tracking in research.

Social media handles:

Facebook: Fit Cheetahs, WildTrack

Instagram: fitcheetahs, wildtrackfit

Diemer Vercayie:

Diemer Vercayie: biologist and philosopher by education, works as a mammal expert and policy officer at Natuurpunt, the largest nature conservation organization in Flanders, Belgium. He is (amongst other things) co-founder of the Wolf Fencing Team Belgium which plays a important role in enabling peaceful coexistence between humans and wolves. Diemer is passionate about tracking and the application of it in science and ecological monitoring. In 2013 he wrote ‘Wild van sporen’, a guide with mammal footprints at full size on transparant plastic pages, originally intended to train volunteers in using tracking for ecological studies. Since many years Diemer hosts the Cyber Tracker evaluations in Flanders, which recently led to the recognition of tracking skills in government issued monitoring studies.

Tracking or camera traps? Recognition of tracking skills in modern ecological studies. In the ‘tracker community’ we all know how even a single field visit by a skilled tracker can result in loads of information on species presence and behaviour. But up till recently there was an (understandable) lack of recognition in science for this skill. Diemer will bring an example from Belgium how Cyber Tracker evaluations led to the recognition of tracking in government issued monitoring studies of wildlife passages. He will compare results from the tracking and conventional cameratrap monitoring on the ecoduct ‘Kempengrens’ in 2022. What is the added value of tracking and what does the future of tracking in official ecological studies look like?

Social media accounts

https://www.facebook.com/diemer.vercayie

https://www.instagram.com/diemer839/

https://twitter.com/DiemerVercayie

https://www.linkedin.com/in/diemer-vercayie-he-him-4979a821/?originalSubdomain=be

Drs. Zoe Jewell and Sky Alibhai

Drs. Zoe Jewell and Sky Alibhai: Zoe and Sky co-founded WildTrack (wildtrack.org) in 2011 to address a widespread need for less invasive and more cost-effective tools to monitor endangered species

WildTrack’s multi-award-winning footprint identification technology (FIT) research, based on traditional tracking skills, has now been published for species ranging from black rhino to Polar bear and mountain lion. This approach works in close collaboration with conservation efforts to engage local communities and particularly those with expert tracking skills. WildTrack is now developing an AI pipeline to accelerate the delivery of key data to conservation decision-makers. Jewell and Alibhai are Adjunct Faculty at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and Associate Academics at the Centre for Compassionate Conservation of the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia.

Tiny Tracks with a Huge Impact: Monitoring small mammals using trackplates: What exactly is a small mammal? Definitions range from any mammal species weighing up to 5 kg to the narrower definition of rodents, shrews and sengis. However you define them, small mammals occupy that critical middle ground in the food chain, being dependent on plants and insects, and being a primary food source for so much fauna in the higher trophic levels. As such they could be key indicators of environmental health.

However, monitoring this group to inform on environmental health is challenging. Current methods are expensive, invasive and labor intensive – requiring experts to visually inspect and identify each animal captured.

Here we report on a new ethical, non-invasive and cost-effective approach to small mammal monitoring using a combination of an old technique – trackplates – with footprint identification technology (FIT) analytics. We’ll share how this enables us to identify small mammal species, and demonstrate some unexpected and interesting initial results. As always, we’ll share opportunities for expert trackers to help in developing this work.

WildTrack Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WildTrackFIT/

WildTrack Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wildtrackfit/

Colin Patrick

Rene Nauta

Both Rene and John will be hosting this years event and possibly answering questions as part of the expert panel on the last day

John Rhyder

Both Rene and John will be hosting this years event and possibly answering questions as part of the expert panel on the last day