"Step By Step" Training

Animals

This page has been set up to share photos & video relating to the "Animals" appendix of "Step By Step, A Tree Planter's Handbook." Visit www.replant.ca/books to see books about tree planting.


This chart will help you identify the differences between black bears and grizzly bears.




Here are a couple of grizzly bears, photographed near Whitecourt in Alberta.




Caribou are a lot smaller than elk, and look slightly different. Look for the white chest if it is a caribou, otherwise, it's probably an elk. Caribou are fairly rare throughout BC.




Here's an elk. You might very occasionally see one in various parts of BC. However, if you travel through Jasper National Park, you're almost certainly going to see many of them.




A cougar, or mountain lion, is a rare sight. There are probably only about a thousand of them in Canada. You'll probably never see one. However, some coastal planters see them occasionally, as the highest concentration of their population is on Vancouver Island (especially on the north island). In remote towns on the north Island, such as Port Alice, residents usually carry a stick when walking around, in case a cougar gets too curious. To the best of my knowledge, no tree planter has ever been attacked by a cougar. They prefer to eat deer, and are quite wary of humans.




Sometimes, you may see feral horses on your blocks (especially in southern Alberta).




This chart illustrates the difference between a lynx and a bobcat. Unless you see them frequently, they're not easy to tell apart.




This photo of a wild bobcat shows the tail fairly well.




This bobcat is hiding in the shade beneath a tree, but it's still possible to get a fairly decent look at its facial features.




This is a mule deer. They're easy to tell from a whitetail when they're running, because they do a hop instead of a four-legged stride.




The tail of a mule deer is also very different from the tail of the whitetail. The mule deer does not raise its tail when it is running away from danger.




The whitetail deer raises it's white tail as a warning sign when it is spooked.




You might occasionally see bighorn sheep if you're working in the Kamloops area, or in any southern area with dry gullies and steep slopes. More commonly, you may see some bighorn sheep if you're passing through Jasper National Park, because there is a large herd of probably fifty or more animals that often hangs out beside the Yellowhead in one specific section of the park. Don't confuse mountain sheep (which are beige or light brown) with mountain goats, which are white.




Here are two young bighorn sheep. They look somewhat similar to mule deer, however, mule deer have black noses, and a different shape to their horns. As these bighorn sheep grow older, their horns will slowly grow and curve further around in the spiral.




This is a mountain goat. It's the only mountain goat that I've ever seen in the wild.




Porcupines are not a common sight on planting blocks in Western Canada. Are they more common in central or eastern Canada?




You will probably see hundreds of rabbits every summer. They often like to stand on the edges of gravel roads before dusk, enjoying the heat from the road surface.




It is quite uncommon to see a skunk on a block. They are mostly a creature of the night.




Wolverines are (thankfully) quite rare. They are very fierce animals, despite their relatively small size.




Click here to see a page listing books related to reforestation in Canada. If you received a photocopied version of this book from your planting company, or you're a trainer at a Canadian planting company, click on this link for more information.