Wild Neighbors
The Yuba watershed is alive with creatures that share this place with us. This is a small window into who else lives here — caught in passing, mostly at night, by cameras we’ve hung in the woods.
Our work at YWI is forest health and education. But the forest has its own life going on, mostly out of sight, and we’ve gathered a few ways to share it with you.
Over the years we’ve hung motion-triggered cameras in the woods — sometimes to answer a specific question (do we still have ringtails here?), sometimes just because we were curious what would walk by. There’s no formal monitoring program behind it. What you’ll find on this page is a featured video from a local wildlife biologist, and a small gallery of what the cameras have caught.
Reading a western pond turtle
A turtle’s shell tells a story — its age, its sex, the seasons it’s survived. Wildlife biologist Jeff Alvarez walks through what he looks for when he picks one up, and what those clues can reveal.
Western pond turtles are one of California’s only native freshwater turtles, and they’re becoming harder to find. Watching Jeff handle one is a small lesson in how much a careful observer can learn from a few minutes with an animal.
Wildlife biologist Jeff Alvarez explains what the shell of a western pond turtle can reveal about its sex, age, and history.
What the cameras have caught
A small selection of the animals that have wandered past one of our cameras. Most of these moments would’ve gone unwitnessed otherwise. Click any image to view larger.
Trail-cam locations are kept loose on purpose — we move cameras around, change SD cards when we remember, and let the woods surprise us. If you’d like to log your own observations from the watershed, iNaturalist is a great place to do it.
More from YWI
Share what you see out there
Spotted something interesting in the watershed? Log it on iNaturalist — community observations help everyone understand this place better.