North American Wood Ape Conservancy

Another Conference Under the Belt (more photos)

Thursday, 23 October 2008

Another Conference Under the Belt

Written by Alton Higgins and Daryl Colyer

Preparations for an event on the scale of the Texas Bigfoot Conference begin many months in advance. Obviously, speakers have to be contacted, and arrangements for flights and lodging must be arranged. The conference committee also has to secure a venue, select an artist for the conference artwork, approve a tee-shirt design and place the order, arrange for sound and presentation equipment, deal with caterers and restaurants, organize setting up tables, chairs and displays, sort out media requests, and on and on. Inevitably, last minute glitches sprout up. This year the committee had to scramble to find a substitute for Peter Byrne after his unexpected cancellation.

Once arrangements have been finalized, the results are left to fate. The 2008 conference ran smoothly and featured a wide variety of compelling speakers. While gross proceeds did not allow the TBRC to realize its lofty fundraising goals, the conference once again provided excellent opportunities for meeting others and establishing foundations upon which to build ongoing relationships. That is the true benefit of attending conferences, and in that sense, the conference was a huge success.

In addition to their conference day presentations, some speakers shared their knowledge with students in the Jefferson Independent School District. This year Henner Fahrenbach and Jeff Meldrum spoke to students in two high school science classes, and Alton Higgins presented an ecology lesson to seventh grade students. That lesson was recorded to show to other classes. Such activities enable the TBRC to fulfill the part of the mission statement indicating the objective of helping to "further factual education and understanding to the public regarding the [sasquatch]."

Daryl Colyer kicked off Saturday's conference with a wide-ranging review of encounters-related data derived from the TBRC's incident-report database, compiled by the TBRC's Corporate Accountant, Ken Stewart. Perhaps no other bigfoot-related organization has done as much to organize and share information with other researchers and the general public. Colyer also unveiled a new feature of the TBRC website, Report Explorer, developed by ideapark, the marketing and web design agency that developed the TBRC website. Report Explorer enables users to search the TBRC sightings database and visually display the results, using a limited set of criteria. Additional search criteria will be included in future updates.

Alton Higgins wrapped up the morning session with a discussion of costumes and criteria that can be used to disclose potential hoaxes and misidentifications. Normal human body proportions were compared to costumed individuals as well as possible sasquatch hoax photographs. Some highly publicized photos were closely examined, including the Georgia hoax and the Pennsylvania Jacobs photo of a misidentified black bear.

After lunch David Paulides discussed his recent book, The Hoopa Project, featuring drawings by forensic artist Harvey Pratt. Paulides emphasized that he always insists that witnesses sign an affidavit before he will interview them regarding alleged sightings. In his opinion, the accounts he researched from the Hoopa tribe, along with the drawings prepared by Pratt based on witness descriptions, indicate possible interbreeding between humans and sasquatches.

Dana Holyfield and Terral Evans discussed the so-called Honey Island Swamp Monster. Holyfield showed a trailer from her documentary and Evans described some of his sightings and experiences in the Louisiana swamps.

Evans extended an invitation to anyone interested in the subject to visit him and explore areas where the Honey Island Swamp Monster has been allegedly encountered.

Kathy Moskowitz Strain discussed her lavishly illustrated new book, Giants, Cannibals and Monsters: Bigfoot in Native Culture. Many Native American tribes have artwork, ancient legends and songs that may have been derived from experiences with creatures known in today's popular culture as bigfoot or sasquatch. Strain, a professional anthropologist who serves as the Forest Heritage Resource and Tribal Relations Programs Manager for the Stanislaus National Forest, spent decades developing relationships with tribal leaders and researching archival literature to unearth accounts from a wide range of cultures.

 

The next speaker, Robert Swain, provided one of the unexpected delights of the conference. Swain is a talented cartoonist who created Laughsquatch, a single frame cartoon series that he is attempting to syndicate. Conference attendees responded very positively to the sample cartoons and Swain's amusing commentary.

Dr. Henner Fahrenbach described sasquatch behaviors based on his evaluations of thousands of reports and, in particular, his own witness interviews and encounters investigations. He suggested that long-term habituation situations could hold the key to eventual documentation efforts.

A panel Q & A rounded out the regular sessions of the conference. Conference host Brian Brown moderated the event featuring David Paulides, Daryl Colyer, Jeff Meldrum, Craig Woolheater, Dana Holyfield, Henner Fahrenbach, Kathy Moskowitz Strain, and Alton Higgins. Rick Noll videotaped the panel discussion, along with all the other conference presentations (except for the Hoopa Project discussion by David Paulides).

An evening banquet, featuring crawfish and chicken etoufee, was highlighted by an extraordinary presentation by keynote speaker Dr. Jeff Meldrum. He discussed his trip to China to meet with scientists and amateur investigators involved with researching the Yeren, the Chinese equivalent of North America's sasquatch. A side benefit of his trip was the healing of a longstanding rift between the academic community and lay investigators. Meldrum met with witnesses and spent a little time in the remote mountainous region where recent sightings have been reported. Most significantly, he was able to examine casts of footprints that bore a remarkable resemblance to sasquatch tracks, indicating a possible relationship. Efforts are underway to secure copies of the casts for inclusion in Meldrum's university collection.

On Sunday, the day after the conference, a small group consisting of conference attendees, speakers and TBRC members, gathered at the local high school and traveled a short distance to meet on site with a young man who experienced a remarkable face-to-face encounter with a bigfoot in 1989.
 

Another Conference Under the Belt (More Photos)

Could Bigfoot Live Here?

Monday, 20 October 2008

In conjunction with the 2008 Texas Bigfoot Conference, the TBRC was asked to present a science lesson on the morning of October 17, 2008, to seventh-grade students at the Jefferson Junior High School, located in Jefferson, Texas. The lesson was videotaped for presentation to the remainder of the seventh-grade science classes throughout the day. The TBRC lecture was the opening lesson in an ecology module that includes the bigfoot connection as a way of engaging students. The teaching event was coordinated by the Collins Learning Academy, also located in Jefferson.



A set of specific Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) standards had to be addressed, including the following Seventh Grade Science standards:

The student knows that there is a relationship between organisms and the environment. The student is expected to

1. identify components of an ecosystem;
2. observe and describe how organisms including producers, consumers and decomposers live together in an environment and use existing resources;
3. describe how different environments support different varieties of organisms; and
4. observe and describe the role of ecological succession in ecosystems.

The Collins Academy is sponsoring an essay contest to answer the question, "Could bigfoot live here?" The essay will serve as part of the summative assessment of the ecology module. Students are expected to either refute or make a case based on their understanding of ecological principles. Judging will be based on how well students used these concepts to make their case. Winners will receive cash prizes, starting at $100. Dr. Jeff Meldrum donated a copy of his book Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science to go to the winner of the essay contest.



This event may represent the first time that an organization such as the TBRC, dedicated to substantiating the existence of the sasquatch, has been invited to help a public school with its science curriculum.

TBRC board member Alton Higgins, a biology professor at Mid-America Christian University, located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, prepared and gave the presentation. Henner Fahrenbach and Jeff Meldrum, both TBRC advisors, and TBRC board members Craig Woolheater, Chris Buntenbah and Daryl Colyer accompanied Higgins.



Later that same day, Meldrum and Fahrenbach gave presentations related to putative sasquatch ecology to Jefferson High School science classes.

BIPcast 5: Bigfoot in the Big Thicket

Why Did the Wildlife Cross the Road?

Sunday, 22 June 2008

16,969

Friday, 13 June 2008

Illusion of Reality

Thursday, 12 June 2008

In an interesting June 2008 BioScience paper, authors McKelvey, Aubry and Schwartz, USDA Forest Service scientists, liken anecdotal evidence to an illusion of reality. Specifically, they suggest that anecdotal statements regarding the occurrence of rare or elusive animal species, sometimes reported by trained and experienced biologists and "often accompanied by inconclusive physical evidence, such as castings or pictures of tracks, fuzzy or distant photographs, or nondiagnostic acoustic recordings," are "inherently unreliable." This unreliability factor increases with the rarity of the species, leading the authors to propose adopting a "gradient of evidentiary standards for occurrence records that increases in rigor with species' rarity." They argue that, in the case of undocumented species, the only acceptable evidentiary standard is a specimen. Three case studies were presented in support of the authors' contentions: the fisher (Martes pennanti) in the northwestern states, the wolverine (Gulo gulo) in California, and the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) in southeastern states.

There seems little in this paper that is objectionable, although some may find some of the authors' statements to be debatable. For example, concluding that "the ivory-billed woodpecker probably became extinct in the southeastern United States by the middle of the 20th century," based on the failure, to this point, of researchers and volunteers to secure definitive evidence, could be construed as a bit presumptuous given the expertise, background and reliability of those Cornell and Auburn researchers who are convinced that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is indeed not extinct.

The paper provides no alternative explanation for the fact that many sighting reports of rare or elusive species "are located in areas where the sighting is plausible, according to historical information on the organism's distribution and ecological relations." Minimizing the significance of such correlations potentially obscures the reality that some rare species may, in fact, exist as indicated by occurrence data. Such appears to be illustrated by the case of the Pacific states fisher as presented in the paper. Follow-up surveys, based on anecdotal reports, documented population pockets scattered throughout the indicated range. While the probable extent of the species' distribution was evidently overestimated, the range and habitat and existence of fishers was corroborated.

Not all anecdotal accounts of rare or elusive species are valid. That cannot be argued. The same thing is true of undocumented species reports, at least with regard to the sasquatch. However, the TBRC takes great care to sort out information that is dubious. Posted reports from reliable witnesses, including biologists and comparable professionals, demonstrate ecological relationships that cannot be reasonably dismissed as coincidental. The TBRC maintains that compelling photographic/videographic images can serve to document the existence of an undocumented species. Prominent scientists have endorsed that position. Upon recognition of the validity of the photographic/videographic evidence, additional efforts would then be necessary to secure the kind of indisputable physical evidence to enable the formal classification of either a new species or the rediscovery of a species thought extinct.

Source: BioScience. Vol. 58 No. 6. The Use of Anecdotal Occurrence Data for Rare or Elusive Species: The Illusion of Reality and a Call for Evidentiary Standards.

"There Are Some Who Doubt Their Existence"

Tuesday, 10 June 2008

Fishermonkeys?

Tuesday, 10 June 2008

The Bigger Thicket Update

Friday, 09 May 2008