Donna Gail Shaw checks on one of her motion-activated cameras, which help her capture scenes of urban wildlife without human interaction.
Donna Gail Shaw looks over the footage she got of a black bear in late May.
Donna Gail Shaw checks on one of her motion-activated trail cameras. She hikes to her cameras once or twice a week to replace SD cards, which store the footage, or adjust the cameras.
Donna Gail Shaw trots across the street to give treats to a neighbor's dog as she heads out for a hike. She calls out to another one "Neptune! Neptunee!" on the way back.
In between, she checks on the 10 wildlife cameras she has installed in an area of Anchorage known as Far North Bicentennial Park. In actuality, the wildlife she encounters can be anywhere near or even in the housing development where she lives, which abuts Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson. It's something of a highway for urban wildlife, used by moose, bears, fox, coyotes, wolves, wolverines and an assortment of smaller creatures.
Once a week and sometimes more, the 70-year-old hikes a couple of miles from her house on the east side of the city to check on the motion-activated cameras, replace batteries if needed and switch out the SD cards, the devices that store the footage she captures of wildlife. She packs her camera gear, a .44, bear spray, and church hymns she has committed to memory.
"I've had to teach myself some hymns I thought I knew," she said. She sings them aloud to warn bears she's in their space.
Then she comes home and scans through what her cameras have captured.
"What made me internet famous was video from right here," Donna Gail said, her Texas accent still strong after more than 40 years in Alaska. She's referring to a video she took of a pack of wolves stalking a moose and its calf in the Campbell Creek. The wolves were able to take down the calf.
But she has also captured other scenes, usually hidden from the population of Alaska's largest city. Among them are moments of bears rubbing their backs against spruce trees or foxes traipsing through the woods, in search of food or possibly a mate, or marten scurrying over fallen branches.
"Late April, early May once the bears show up, it starts going nuts," she said.
The videos are posted on a Facebook group called Muldoon Area Trail Photos and Videos. https://www.facebook.com/groups/295985214145979
Today, on a sunny day that seems almost like the first day of real summer in Southcentral Alaska, Donna Gail dons gray Xtra Tuff boots and a baseball cap that reads, "Girls in Science." The devil's club is low to the ground, and sun has dried part of the trail.
A student of nature
Donna Gail grew up in Troup, Texas, but really in the country. She spent as much time outdoors as she could, awed by the natural world.
In the summer following her senior year of high school, she accompanied a friend to Tyler Junior College just to keep her company, with little thought to her own future. The college adviser saw something in Donna Gail, and soon she was enrolled herself. She became a science educator, first teaching in public schools in Texas before earning her master's degree at Stephen F. Austin State University and doctorate at University of North Texas.
Donna Gail moved to Alaska more than 40 years ago to take a job at the University of Alaska Anchorage as a science educator. Though she retired in 2011 as an associate dean in the College of Education, with a return between 2019 and 2021 in an administrative role, Donna Gail is still a science educator. Only she does it through social media and in her interactions with neighbors, all of whom seem to know her and she knows them and their dogs' names.
About 10 years ago, she started peppering Joe Cantil, a retired public health educator who is also a wildlife enthusiast, with questions about his motion-activated cameras. "I must have seemed like a nagging wife," she said.
It wasn't long before Donna Gail got her own cameras and became adept at operating them and collecting the footage and then sharing it on social
media. She has an eye for detail as she walks through the woods near her home. She notices a clump of fur on tree bark, likely left by a bear leaving its scent. She explains how different bends in the creek look on either side, and where she is not willing to walk alone past a certain spot because the vegetation make it too difficult to see what other fauna might be in the vicinity. She is especially careful in July, when the fish are in the creek and bear activity spikes.
Often, Donna Gail visits her cameras by herself, so she texts a friend who can track her phone to let her know when she is leaving her house, a form of the buddy system. She's had to use her bear spray on moose and bears, and she gives her companion a refresher on how to aim the can, just in case.
A threatened corridor
On one week worth of video footage, Donna Gail captures a black bear, two different brown bears, a bull moose she calls Mr. Paddles, one man and his dog, a marten, another moose, wolves, porcupine, and possibly a coyote.
Of late, Donna Gail has been concerned about a proposed fence the military wants to build that would change the wildlife corridor she knows intimately. It would effectively block off the residential neighborhoods in east Anchorage from JBER land.
"It wouldn't keep terrorists out," she said. "But it would keep animals from going back and forth between military land and park land as they do now."
As it is, Donna Gail has a recreational permit to be on JBER property. She logs in on her phone when she wants to enter JBER property, telling the military where she is going and logs out when she has completed her hike.
Not everyone who goes onto military property is so responsible, she realizes.
While loss of access to this recreational area would directly impact her quality of life, she is more concerned about the negative impact on the area wildlife.
"A perimeter fence would significantly disrupt wildlife movement, habitat access, and natural breeding patterns."
