Wildlife Tracking Southwest

Wildlife Tracking Southwest's classes are designed to cover a host of topics, or cater to individual aspects of tracking.  They emphasize a non-competitive, fun, and relaxed learning environment to ensure that everyone participating gets the most from the experience, and goes home with a much greater understanding of animal tracking and how to continue to grow in the field.  As each class will be exposed to different tracks and sign in the field, they may be taken as many times as desired.  Please contact WTSW with questions or to enroll in an upcoming class.

What to expect: The bulk of class time will be out in the field.  Depending on the topic, the day may start with a stint in the "classroom" (usually in the field as well) covering basics of tracking, trailing, etc.  Class time runs around 4 hours... which is a long time to be intensively focusing on track and sign.  Folks tend to "brain fry" if we push longer than that.  Bring water, snacks, a notebook and a tape measure.  Most classes will not be strenuous, (trailing being the exception, depending on where tracks take us) but be ready to do a bit of walking, poking around in the bushes, and kneeling.  Knee pads are helpful for some.  

Classes will be held at various locations, including the Rio Grande, Sandia Mountain (east and west side,) Ojito wilderness and the west mesa. During the winter and early spring months, classes start at 9am.  Locations will either be posted prior to the class or explained upon registration.

-Private Lessons:  $35 per hour.  (Know that we can pack a lot into an hour)  These will be extremely useful experiences as the lesson will be one-on-one and can be catered to specific interests.

-Track and Sign Classes: $45, class time running 4 hours, limited to 8 adults.  January:  20th, 26th; February: 2nd, 16th, 17th; March 15th, 29th, 30th. Learn in a more formal group setting with numerous sets of eyes, ideas and thoughts about what we're looking at.   

-Trailing Classes: $45, 4 hours, limited to 6 adults.  January: 27th; February:  3rd, 9th; March 2nd,16th. This class revolves specifically around the practice of following a set of animal tracks; we'll trail larger animals, and cover exercises for training the eyes and different trailing methods.  Classes will be held in the Ojito wilderness area.

-1 Month Intensives: $150 limited to 6 adults. Dates pending.                       Meet 4 consecutive Saturdays and one evening.  Class wraps up with a fun, no-pressure mini evaluation (a series of questions about various track and sign) to assess your growth as a tracker, demonstrate where you can strengthen your tracking ability, and of course, to learn and have fun.

Presentations:

February 6th, 7pm: REI, Abq.  "Wildlife Tracking for Enjoyment and Conservation" 

March 9th, 2pm: Abq Open Space Center (Coors) 

Services:

WTSW also provides the following: 

-Wildlife inventory/monitoring and corridor research for land owners, neighborhood associations, conservation groups, land developers, etc.

-Trainings in track and sign identification, movement and species prediction based on ecology and topograpy for biologists, volunteer monitoring groups or anyone interested in learning viable methods and technique for finding and documenting wildlife sign.

-Group examining ground-squirrel sign

-Sketches depicting tracks of coyote, cottontail and quail