Animal Planet is Filming in North Carolina

Steve Lyttle of the Charlotte Observer reports on one of the six episode series Animal Planet is working on. Currently, they are in North Carolina, but plan on visiting other Bigfoot hot spots like Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Oregon and Washington.

From what we have gathered, a town hall-style meeting will be one of the consistent staples of the show. This will allow the producers of the show to gain local knowledge before the expedition takes place.

Bigfoot Search Begins Nearby
Animal Planet follows Salisbury man tracking creature in area forest.
Charlotte, NC (charlotteobserver.com) — A national cable television channel is sending a film crew to a national forest 75 miles from Charlotte to join a Salisbury man in his search for Bigfoot.

The Animal Planet plans to document Michael Greene's search for the creature, which Greene says he captured on videotape nearly two years ago.

And Greene plans to lead an expedition of volunteers into the forest Saturday in hopes of finding Bigfoot.

Tahli Kouperstein, director of communications for the Animal Planet, said the crew will join Greene at the Uwharrie National Forest in Montgomery County as part of the network's six-episode series on Bigfoot sightings around the United States.

"They are using modern technology to finally find the legendary and elusive creature," Kouperstein said.

She said crews are visiting "areas of the country where videos or photos have shown convincing evidence of Bigfoot sightings."

Greene, who moved to Salisbury from New Jersey last year, says he has been chasing Bigfoot for several years, trying to find the legendary creature - generally described as half-ape, half-human - in forests from Canada to the southern United States. He said he had a breakthrough about 11:30 p.m. April 28, 2009, somewhere in the Uwharrie National Forest.

Greene says he took three minutes of video, using thermal-imaging equipment, showing a large creature walking through the forest. He says he baited the creature, using a Zagnut candy bar.

Greene has a website that displays several videos, but it is unclear if any are the footage that he claims shows Bigfoot.

He said he was attracted to the area after spotting a Bigfoot in the forest in 2008, but he said he didn't get video of the creature.

Greene - who has a varied background including a master's degree in psychology, a private pilot's license and a former career as an EMT - said he realizes there are many Bigfoot skeptics.

"Until I saw it myself, I did not believe it," he said. "It was like a fairy tale."

Greene says others in the area near the forest, which at 78.7 square miles is the smallest of the four national forests in North Carolina, have seen Bigfoot. At 3 p.m. Saturday, he said a group of those interested in the case - possibly accompanied by the Animal Planet film crew - will head into the woods.

"That should be pretty interesting," Greene said.

Chris Cagle, of the Eldorado Outpost, where Saturday's expedition will gather, told the Montgomery Herald he is skeptical about the creature's existence.

"If there was a Bigfoot in the forest, he would already be mounted on some guy's wall," he told the newspaper.

Kouperstein said an airing date for the show has not been set. Crews also are planning visits to Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Oregon and Washington.

Read more >>

EXTERNAL LINKS
Charlotte Observer: Bigfoot search begins nearby
Charlotte Observer: How to Join The Search
Mike Greene's Bushloper.net

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More Sasquatch Ecological Niche Modeling

An Ecologist from North Carolina, Melissa, breaks down one of our favorite Research Papers. This paper, from the Journal of Biogeography, presents ENMs for Sasquatch. They base their ENMs on putative sightings, auditory detections, and footprint measurements primarily obtained from the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO).

The best thing about this post is she briefly explains, in layman terms, what software was used and how it was used. She also does a great job explaining expected results and conclusions.

North Carolina, Feburary 6, 2011 (Science Storiented) In the science of Sasquatch it's all about distribution. Where is he (or she) and how can I get a photo? The photo I'll leave up to you, and hope you are good at keeping your camera steady to avoid those embarrassingly blurry pictures. The where is he part can be figured out by utilizing user-friendly software, publicly available biodiversity databases, and ecological niche modeling (ENM).

A scientist named Grinnell proposed the ecological niche concept in 1917, so it isn't new. Overall, it's pretty simple. Each species needs a specific set of conditions to survive. The range where these conditions occur is where a species can maintain a population. Since 1917 the concept has been expanded, most notably by Elton in 1927 and MacArthur in 1972, to include a species as part of an ecological community. With this type of model it is possible to characterize the ecological needs of a species, predict and anticipate it's distribution, predict changes in it's distribution with changing land and climate, investigate patterns of speciation and niche divergence, and build scenarios for unknown conditions and behavior. "The basic premise of the ENM approach is to predict the occurrence of species on a landscape from georeferenced site locality data and sets of spatially explicit environmental data layers that are assumed to correlate with the species’ range." That's how the paper I'm presenting today describes it. What does it mean? Input known, locally collected data and make reasonable predictions of species occurrences given the current modelling technology. That known, locally collected data is becoming more and more available and accessible via museum databases and online data portals.

Sasquatch, or Bigfoot, is currently (pseudo-)classified as a member of a large primate lineage descended from the extinct Asian species (Gigantopithicus blacki), but there is some phylogenetic analysis indicating a possible membership in the ungulate clade. Regular reports have Sasquatch inhabiting the forested lands of western North America, although a type specimen is unavailable. This paper, from the Journal of Biogeography, presents ENMs for Sasquatch. They base their ENMs on putative sightings, auditory detections, and footprint measurements primarily obtained from the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO). Events were assigned geographic coordinates on USGS quad maps and atlases and the ENMs constructed using the maximum entropy niche modelling approach using the software MAXENT. Then environmental layers were constructed for 19 BIOCLIM variables in the WORLDCLIM dataset. The final set of environmental variables included annual mean temperature, mean diurnal range, isothermality, temperature annual range, mean temperature of wettest quarter, mean temperature of driest quarter, precipitation seasonality, precipitation of driest quarter, and precipitation of coldest quarter.

The ENM showed that Sasquatch should be broadly distributed in western North America, with a range comprising such mountain ranges as the Sierra Navadas, the Blue Mountains, the Selkirk Mountains, and the Cascades. The bioclimatic variable that was the best predictor was precipitation in the coldest quarter. And so, it is likely that the distribution will be altered due to global climate change.

Running with that result, the scientists examined the potential ramifications of climate change on remnant Sasquatch populations to predict how the frequency of sightings might change in the future. To do this they projected ENMs generated from the WORLDCLIM data into bioclimatic layers simulated for a doubling of atmospheric CO2. The model predicts that Sasquatch will abandon lower altitudes and lose habitat in coastal regions. But the species will potentially gain habitat in the northern part of the range as well as in several other montane areas. This means that, in the future, you should expect to sight Bigfoot in northern latitudes and at higher elevations.

Another suggestion: Look for American black bears (Ursus americanus) and you may sight Sasquatch. Now, I'm not advocating lurking around bear dens or walking right up on a black bear, but the predicted distribution of Sasquatch is similar to the range of the American black bear. So much so, that it is thought that some Bigfoot sightings were, in fact, misidentified black bears.

Up for a hike in California? Bring your camera.
Here's the paper:
J. D. Lozier, Aniello, P., and Hickerson, M.J. (2009) Predicting the distribution of Sasquatch in western North America: anything goes with ecological niche modelling. Journal of Biogeography: 36(9), 1623-1627. (DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2699.2009.02152.x)

EXTERNAL LINKS
Science Storiented
Predicting the distribution of Sasquatch in western North America

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The Voice of Russia: Tea party with the Yeti?

At the Russian news source, The Voice of Russia, Alexei Chernichenko reports a new enthusiasm for the Yeti. Capitalizing on Yeti Day November 11, locals continue to capitalize the enthusiasm for the the cryptid by offering to host a tea party and a custom-made furnished chill-out room. Read the rest below, including an endorsement from Igor Burtsev.

Tea party with the Yeti?
Alexei Chernichenk

KUZBASS, Feb 6, 2011 (The Voice of Russia) -- Enthusiasts in the Russian Siberian region of Kuzbass continue to search the region’s remote areas for the Yeti in a drive that was earlier endorsed by Kuzbass Governor Aman Tuleyev. He jokingly announced the payment of one million rubles to a person who he said will be able to bring the ape-like cryptid to the governor’s residence so that the three could have a tea together. The announcement came in the wake of the establishment of the Yeti Day in Kuzbass.

For their part, local business people were quick to capitalize on the Yeti boom by opening a fancy restaurant in the Gornaya Shoriya mountains, thought to be Yeti’s habitat. The restaurant includes the Abominable Snowman’s personal chill-out room, where the owners said he will “really enjoy himself.”

The Yeti boom kicked off in Kuzbass in 2010 after unverified information about the Yeti allegedly being spotted by local hunters in taiga near the Gornaya Shoriya Mountains. The news immediately hit the headlines, with readers especially amazed with the photograph of the Yeti’s alleged footprint.

Experts remained downbeat about the news, which was understandably hailed by PR agencies and tour operators. A number of monuments to the Yeti has been installed across Kuzbass since then, and Russia’s special presidential envoy to Siberia traveled to a cave where the Yeti was ostentatiously tracked down. No traces of the Yeti were discovered at the time.

Even so, many in Kuzbass still hope against hope that Aman Tuleyev will be lucky to finally see the Yeti coming to his place for a tea party. Echoing them is Igor Burtsev, a Moscow-based Yeti expert, who argues that that the information about Yeti is first of all music to businessmen’s ears.

"As I see it, Kuzbass business people are almost sure to benefit from this," Burtsev says, referring to the Yeti ballyhoo in the United States, where businessmen do not think twice before capitalizing on the matter. "Dozens of corresponding cafes, restaurants and museums annually open their doors there," Burtsev goes on to say, also citing a host of scientific conferences and open-air concerts to this effect. "Jokes aside, I do believe that the Yeti really exists, and keeping in touch with him remains my top priority," Burtsev says.

He piled praise on Aman Tuleyev’s announcement of a possible tea party with the Yeti, which Burtsev said is a right way to try to lure the cryptid into meeting human beings.

In the meantime, mass production of souvenir birch bark bugles has started in Kuzbass. Tour operators insist that these bugles’ sounds allegedly attract the Yeti….

EXTERNAL LINKS
The Voice of Russia

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