People interested in bears can view a recent webinar to learn how they’re doing in Pennsylvania.
Dr. Doolittle could talk to animals. Chances are you can’t.
But you can listen to and talk with the biologists who manage them.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission is increasingly trying to use social media to reach those interested in wildlife.
It recently did webinars, or online seminars, featuring biologists talking about bald eagles, fawn predation and black bears. Members of the public could sign up to sit in, hear a lecture and ask questions. Hundreds did, said Steve Smith, director of the commission’s bureau of information and education.
The commission can handle up to 1,000 people at a time, though, and hopes to get closer to that with upcoming webinars.
A webinar on the use of fire as a habitat management tool was also held. Others, on fledgling eagles among them, will follow on dates to be determined, Smith said.
You can view the webinars held to date here.
The commission is also planning to broadcast 10- to 15-minute podcasts – or online radio programs — featuring biologists, land managers and others talking about why pheasants have disappeared, the drop in hunter numbers, oil and gas leases on game lands, and the growing number of predators and their impacts on game populations, he said.
In the meantime, it will continue to produce Youtube videos and operate wildlife cameras, like the one that, in fall, gives viewers the chance to watch Pennsylvania elk in real time, Smith said.
The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission has a Youtube channel, too, and a new video – in whole or in parts – should soon be on there, too.
The commission made a video of a little more than 20 minutes in connection with the celebration last month of its 150th anniversary. Plans are to use it in various venues, said Ted Walke, chief of its division of outreach, so the public can learn a bit about the agency’s past and what it does today.
It’s also produced a video – in long and short versions – looking at its cooperative nursery program. There, program leader Brian McHail talks about how the program works and how sportsmen’s clubs and others can get involved.
Co-ops, for those who don’t know, produce about one quarter of all the adult trout stocked in the state in a year’s time.
The 12-minute version of the video can be seen here; the 7.5-minute version is here.
