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| Caught in the trap: A raccoon was 'trapped' by a camera set up in the California coastal wilderness by Chris Wemmer and Reno
Taini. Courtesy of Reno Taini and Chris Wemmer |
Hunting wild animals – with cameras
Paparazzi naturalists catch nature in the act with strategically placed motion-sensitive cameras.
from the April 10, 2008 edition
Page 2 of 3
But Wemmer's proudest "catch" was the mountain beaver – not a buck-toothed, granite-gnawing behemoth, as the name might imply, but an obscure rodent whose primitive kidneys compel it to guzzle water. Last year, Wemmer crawled on his hands and knees into a thicket of coyote brush and blackberry at Point Reyes National Seashore here in northern California to find hollowed corridors that the critters use as highways beneath the brush. Only there did his camera capture their nocturnal movements.
Mountain beavers don't range this far south, but as Taini and Wemmer return to the car, they banter about what else their cameras might capture: wild pig, wood rat, coyote – maybe even mountain lion?
• • •
Camera trapping connotes a look-without-touching ethic of exploring the natural world. But a string of blemished rifle shells that sit on a bookshelf in Taini's Woodside, Calif., home reveal a more complicated story.
Taini used those shells to fell songbirds on the slopes of 18,490-foot Pico de Orizaba in Mexico in 1965. He and Wemmer, both students at San Francisco State University, were working a research expedition organized by their zoology professor, Larry Swan.
The troop of youngsters explored Orizaba up to its summit, collecting wildlife every 1,000 feet. The fine powder shot in Taini's brass shells downed birds without damaging them too much for biological study. They were the first samples collected from Orizaba in a century. Conditions were primitive.
"I had a 5-gallon can of formaldehyde," says Taini. "I'd shoot birds, tag them, and put them right inside this ... can." They supplemented their rice by stewing the meat and bones of the rodents, squirrels, and rabbits whose hides they mounted. "And I think we might have eaten gophers, too," says Wemmer.
Wemmer's career in zoology later took him to Asia and Indonesia. And for 38 years Taini ran an outdoor education program for nearby Daly City's Jefferson Union High School District. He trained students to climb and rappel on ropes in fir trees that stand on the same plot of land where he and Wemmer are placing cameras.
They still carry the ethic that Orizaba distilled out of them 43 years ago, one drop of sweat at a time. "Kids these days don't know how to use their hands," complains Wemmer. "Put pliers or an ax in their hands and they don't know what to do." Taini grunts in assent.
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