A University of California wildlife research project needs your socks -- clean and gently used, that is.
The Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Project uses the socks to hold chicken bait at camera stations to capture images of the Pacific fisher, a rare forest carnivore. The bait-filled sock is attached to a tree trunk. When the fisher climbs the tree to chew on the sock, this triggers a motion-detecting camera.
Researchers are going through 250 socks a month as they monitor the effects of forest thinning at a U.S. Forest Service project near Bass Lake in Madera County. The goal is to determine how the logging, intended to reduce wildfire risk, will affect wildlife, habitat and water resources.
By obtaining donated socks, the researchers hope to save not only money but time shopping for socks that could be better spent in the field. The researchers don't need new socks. They would prefer old, unmatched socks without holes -- the kind gathering dust in dresser drawers because their mate has gone missing.
Socks can be delivered to the Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Project, 40799 Elliott Dr., Oakhurst, CA 93644. For more information, contact Anne Lombardo at amlombardo@ucdavis.edu or visit http://snamp.cnr.berkeley.edu.
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