Filmmaker Colin Ruggiero compiles his nature documentary Tracking Notes: The Secret World of Mountain Lions largely from a nature nonprofit's vast network of unmanned, automatic high-end trail cameras scattered in the region of the Bitterroot Valley wilderness (near the Montana/Idaho border).
Thus, in fascinating sequences, we see the behavior of native animals—cougars especially—minus any human interference or presence. That foreknowledge creates a special sense of excitement and you-are-there eyewitness privilege. Yes, National Geographic cinematographers risked everything for their shots, while these robot eyes sat passively, capturing amazing video/audio through pure luck or guesswork. Still, the effect is transfixing.
Mountain lions are the central focus, particularly a mother cat dubbed Willow. Researchers piece together her life over years, not only by scrutiny of the digital camera cards but also by careful DNA sampling and woodcraft tracking. Willow astounds her unseen followers by turning up with a litter of six kittens—twice the usual offspring a cougar can reasonably maintain (some theorize that Willow may actually have adopted orphaned or abandoned strays).
The cougars' struggle for survival encompasses other mammal species, predator and prey alike: bears, foxes, badgers, bobcats, elk, moose, and deer. Candid footage revises popular conceptions of carnivores in the wild. While solitary hunters, they seem to tolerate each other and co-exist to a hitherto-unknown degree, although relationships break down when food runs scarce, of course.
Several scenes stir Bambi-level emotion, such as when a lone, anxious kitten vainly vocalizes (in peculiar birdlike chirps) for a vanished Willow. If mountain lions are the star, foxes (described by one scientist as "dog hardware running cat software") are strong supporting players. Viewers will not quickly forget the tragedy of a den of fox kits raided by a pitiless cougar. Buyers may also want to know of one blurted swear word when, in a rare human-animal encounter, a cougar unexpectedly bursting from out of a den startles one scientist. Tracking Notes: The Secret World of Mountain Lions is a beautiful documentary that explores wildlife creatures with intimacy and reverence.
What public library shelves would this title be on?
Nature and science-of-the-outdoors shelves should not be without Tracking Notes. Rocky Mountain and western-prairie-connected collections should have special investments.
What academic subjects would this film be suitable for?
General Earth science, zoology, ecology, animal studies, and (potentially) forestry classes could well use the title in classrooms.
What type of classroom would this documentary resource be suitable for?
While the unsentimental depiction of animal death and predation (and one swear word) may make this a problematic choice for the youngest student grades, the feature comes recommended across the educational spectrum, especially in high school and college classrooms.
NOTABLE ASPECTS OF TRACKING NOTES | Written by filmmaker Colin Ruggiero
BEHAVIOR:
Tracking Notes documents multiple important behaviors in mountain lions for the very first time. Chief amongst these is resource sharing amongst unrelated individuals. While others have indicated this might occur, nobody has been able to prove it definitively with genetically identified individuals, much less film it. Tracking Notes contains the very first footage ever recorded of wild, genetically unrelated cats sharing food resources with each other. Additionally, these wild cats were uncollared and the behavior was documented on two separate occasions. The film, which relies heavily on a giant network of remote cameras, also contains many other shots and sequences of behaviors rarely if ever witnessed or recorded. Mountain lions killing foxes, mountain lions hunting and killing bull elk, wild interactions between mountain lions and black bears and between foxes and elk, Mountain lions listening to elk bugles and mountain lion kittens being abandoned - all of these things are behaviors that have never been filmed before. This film is a bonanza of revelations for people who are fascinated by the lives of wild animals but it’s the documentation of unrelated resource sharing that makes this film a paradigm-shifting contribution to wildlife science.
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT:
Unprecedented footage like this is difficult to come by these days and requires a significant investment to get. The film however was made with a very small fraction of the budget for most commercial natural history films. There are not any 5 consecutive minutes in most award-winning wildlife shows that didn’t cost more than my entire film. Tracking Notes was shot and edited by one person in a 50-mile radius of where I live. There was no air travel, no shipping of equipment, no crews to transport, no hotels or rental vehicles, etc. The footprint of this film is virtually non-existent in comparison with the average nature film. I’ve worked on films for many of the big broadcasters and I don’t necessarily take issue with devoting resources to telling these stories. But I think my film shows that local stories told creatively with a minimum of resources and impact, can be just as meaningful and valuable as giant productions. And I think that is worth recognizing and celebrating.
EDITING:
In making Tracking Notes I spent countless hours connecting the dots between pieces of research footage shot by a network of somewhere between 200-300 cameras that had been continuously deployed for 10 years. Much of this footage had simply been copied by interns, backed up and forgotten about. Much of it had never been logged and much of it had never even been looked at by anyone. I spent long nights scrolling through empty clips waiting for that one where an animal had passed by, triggered a camera and opened up a portal into the secret life of the forest. That in turn led to cross-referencing the camera data with the maps of genetic sample locations and dates to try to identify distinct individuals over time. Some of this had been done by the research team but much of it had not and my obsession with the footage led to a familiarity which in turn revealed a number of discoveries that had evaded the researchers. The editing task of finding and putting all of these puzzle pieces together was huge and comprised by far the largest amount of effort put into the film. What started as a 15-minute video ended up being 3 years of connecting together random clips shot over the course of a decade to create a feature-length film that tells the story of a lineage of mountain lions.
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