Dana Morrison

Division III This article is part of a Climax Div III Issue.

 Animals are tricky. Discretion is the watchword for a healthy ecosystem, and so even seemingly conspicuous creatures&mdash;like the moose&mdash;can prove elusive. Our state is, in terms of evolutionary history, densely forested. A brief interlude due to human development caused Massachusetts to turn pastoral for about 150 years, but now the woods, and the moose that live in them, are making a comeback. In an attempt to figure out our moose situation and whether or not they&rsquo;ll &ldquo;pose threat to people or other wildlife,&rdquo; Dana Morrison developed her Div III around tracking moose using their scat: a technique she learned in Africa, working on a project with large antelope during a semester abroad. It took a lot of scanning. To collect her data, Dana walked 200m transects through Cadwell Memorial Forest&mdash;a protected area in the Pioneer Valley suspected of harboring moose. So should we be bracing ourselves for an onslaught of moose? &ldquo;So far I can definitively say&hellip; moose do inhabit the Cadwell. The total number of moose in the Cadwell is still being determined, but we know that during the winter at least two moose visited the Cadwell. [White tailed deer] are also present, in greater numbers, with at least five, perhaps more. Both moose and deer appear to prefer browsing on black birch trees, but as the two species vary in height, competition for this resource is essentially nonexistent.&rdquo; Dana plans to make her career by studying animal behavior. She has recently been accepted to Washington State University, and will be attending in the fall to begin her masters in behavior, ecology and earth sciences. &ldquo;In the end I hope to procure a teaching position at a university where I can teach and spend my summers conducting research.&rdquo;