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CapitalPress.com
January 29, 2016
Biologist changing way wolves are tracked
Dave Ausband relies
less on collars and
more on cameras,
analysis of scat
Dave Ausband
Age: 41
Hometown: Coeur d’Alene, Idaho
Position: Research wildlife biologist specializing in carnivores
Education: Bachelor’s and master’s degrees and is completing a
Ph.D. in wildlife biology at the University of Montana
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Family: Wife, Liz, and a 9-year-old son, Sam
Capital Press
Innovation: Developing a predictive model to locate wolf rendez-
vous sites throughout Idaho and helping the department move
away from radio collaring as its primary means of monitoring
wolves in favor of scat analysis and remote trail cameras.
BIG
Photo submitted
Dave Ausband, who joined the Idaho Department of Fish and Game in May as a research biologist
specializing in wolves and other carnivores, poses with a tranquilized wolf. Ausband will help the
department shift from monitoring Idaho’s wolf population with radio collars to using scat and remote
cameras.
Ausband explained it’s
costly to capture and collar
wolves, and using collars
has become too labor-inten-
Specimen: 3” to 10” Caliper
MOSCOW, Idaho — As-
sisted by a small staff of Uni-
versity of Idaho undergradu-
ates, Lorie Ewing raises tens
of thousands of tiny plantlets
each spring, fulfilling the first
step in production for most of
the potato growers in Idaho,
and many in Washington and
Oregon.
Ewing, manager of UI’s Po-
tato Tissue Culture Lab since
Tr
ee 90
D ”
ig
g
er
By JOHN O’CONNELL
208-850-8601
IDIN16-1/#17
collared wolves in Idaho.
“We don’t collar any-
where near all of the packs
in Idaho, which means there
Key figure in potato industry plans retirement
TREES
nathanmelad@gmail.com
sive for tracking the Idaho
wolf population of at least
770 animals.
There are currently 88
are known big holes in our
map,” Ausband said.
The University of Ida-
ho will conduct the DNA
analysis of wolf scat, which
should provide Fish and
Game biologists with “fin-
gerprints” to assess the
numbers of breeding fe-
males, litter sizes, sex, pop-
ulation trends and other elu-
sive data.
Lisette Waits, head of
UI’s Department of Fish
and Wildlife Sciences, said
DNA from fecal samples
will also be matched against
saliva on livestock carcass-
es to determine which indi-
vidual wolves are respon-
sible for depredations, and
against DNA of harvested
wolves to estimate harvest
rates.
Waits, who has been
working on DNA analysis
of scat and hair since 2007,
said they are “accurate and
cost-effective approaches”
for understanding wolf pop-
ulations.
Ausband has created a
predictive model to narrow
possible locations of wolf
rendezvous sites, where
wolves gather in large con-
centrations with their pups.
The model should reduce
the search area by 90 per-
cent for the Fish and Game
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1983, is regarded by colleagues
as an unheralded figure who,
nonetheless, fills a central role
in Northwestern potato produc-
tion.
In Idaho alone, UI econo-
mists estimate the potato in-
dustry is worth more than $4
billion annually and responsi-
ble for more than 30,000 jobs,
and almost every commercial
spud can be traced back to the
tissue cultures raised in baby
food jars in Ewing’s small lab.
Ewing, who devised UI’s
tissue-culture program, plans
to retire in July and is currently
interviewing candidates to fill
her position.
“It’s kind of a focal point
that has a lot of downstream
economic benefits associated
with it, for which she’s proba-
bly never gotten the attention
and credit that she’s deserved,”
said retired UI economist Paul
Patterson.
Emma Atchley, a member
of Idaho’s State Board of Ed-
ucation who also raises early
generation potato seed, said
several people in the spud in-
dustry have encouraged UI to
hire a new lab manager as soon
as possible to give Ewing time
to train her replacement.
“We have bought hundreds
of thousands of plantlets from
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Courtesy of the University of Idaho
Lorie Ewing, manager of the Uni-
versity of Idaho’s Potato Tissue
Culture Laboratory, stands in
the Moscow, Idaho, greenhouse
where her program develops
prenuclear seed for other potato
seed growers to plant. Ewing
plans to retire in July.
her over the time she’s worked
at the university, and we’ve nev-
er had an issue with disease,”
Atchley said. “She’s also kept
costs down and been very cog-
nizant that plantlets tend to be
one of the larger costs for early
generation seed programs.”
Tissue cultures can be
raised in a disease-free envi-
ronment and enable programs
to rapidly produce plantlets to
provide seed growers.
UI had no protocols for
tissue production when Ew-
ing first started her job, as the
technology was in its infancy.
She read publications, visited
with other experts and relied
on trial and error to develop
her system.
“All of the different state
certification programs were
kind of learning at the same
time,” Ewing said.
Fortunately, the lab was
small in those days, producing
plantlets of about eight variet-
ies. Nowadays, the clone bank
includes about 300 lines, and
the lab produces 120,000 tissue
culture plantlets every spring.
When a new potato line ad-
vances to the Western Regional
Trials, Ewing starts producing
plantlets for growers to eval-
uate. She starts by allowing a
single tuber to sprout, sanitiz-
ing the sprouts in bleach and
cutting them into segments
at each node to produce more
plantlets. The plantlets are
raised in an antiviral jelly and
exposed to hot temperatures
until some of them emerge
pathogen-free.
The clean plantlets are
tested by UI viralologist Alex
Karasev and certified by Ida-
ho Crop improvement Asso-
ciation. Ewing increases the
plantlet supply by cutting sub-
sequent generations into more
segments, raised in a nutri-
ent-rich medium.
interns and part-time em-
ployees who will seek out
rendezvous sites and scat.
Ausband, originally from
Pennsylvania, has spent
the past nine years study-
ing how to better monitor
wolves, including Idaho
packs, for the University
of Montana and will soon
complete his doctoral the-
sis analyzing the effects of
hunting on wolves.
Jim Hayden, a Fish and
Game regional wildlife
manager, said the state will
spend in excess of $400,000
this year on wolf manage-
ment, with federal dollars
and matching funds from
Idaho hunting licenses and
firearms and ammunition
taxes.
He hopes Ausband’s ap-
proach may prove to be
cheaper and more effective,
given that additional fed-
eral funding for managing
wolves as an endangered
species is no longer avail-
able to the state.
“I think it will be a fas-
cinating project — very
useful not just to Idaho, but
to anybody who manages
wolves,” Hayden said. “I
think it will help us refine
our management.”
This story first appeared
on Dec. 2, 2015.
Lorie Ewing
Job: Manager of the Univer-
sity of Idaho’s Potato Tissue
Culture Lab
Innovation: Set up the lab re-
sponsible for supplying tissue
cultures used to produce the
vast majority of Idaho seed
potatoes, as well as seed
potatoes planted by growers
in Oregon and Washington.
Age: 59
Family: Husband, Steve
Ford, and three adult children,
Becca, Jesse and Gareth
Hometown: Genesee, Idaho
Education: Bachelor’s
degree from Montana State
University and master’s de-
gree in plant pathology from
Cornell University
Ewing also maintains a
clone bank of plantlets, keep-
ing the tiny tubers produced
from tissue cultures as a back-
up. The program also produces
about 3,500 pounds of the first
seed used in potato production,
called the prenuclear genera-
tion, from greenhouses in Mos-
cow and Tetonia.
“She’s the foundation to
the whole Northwest potato
industry,” said Jeanne Debons,
executive director of the Potato
Variety Management Institute.
“Every (PVMI) commercial
potato pretty much starts with
her.”
IDIN16-1/#17
COEUR D’ALENE, Ida-
ho — Dave Ausband has
been given the job of im-
plementing a new and more
accurate approach to track-
ing and counting wolves in
Idaho.
The effort should pro-
duce the best estimate of the
state’s wolf population ever.
Biologists believe many
wolves go uncounted using
traditional means such as
radio collars.
After this winter, the
state Department of Fish
and Game plans to move
away from the use of radio
collars as its chief tool for
monitoring wolves.
Ausband said radio col-
lars may retain a limited
role in tracking wolves
where conflicts are report-
ed with livestock, but the
broader program will shift
toward DNA analysis of
wolf scat and a network of
roughly 200 remote trail
cameras scattered through-
out Idaho. The cameras will
cover Eastern Idaho and
“big chunks” of the Frank
Church wilderness that have
been missed by collaring.
They should also help Aus-
band monitor cougars and
black bears.
Fish and Game hired
Ausband, 41, in May as a
research wildlife biologist,
giving his position a new
focus on large carnivores,
and a special emphasis on
wolves.