{"id":845519,"date":"2026-09-12T18:12:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T18:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/845519\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T18:12:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T18:12:15","slug":"bears-caribou-and-other-animals-are-messing-with-this-researchers-equipment-and-hes-got-photos-to-prove-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/845519\/","title":{"rendered":"Bears, caribou and other animals are messing with this researcher’s equipment, and he’s got photos to prove it"},"content":{"rendered":"

LISTEN | How lynx, moose and bears keep destroying this wildfire researcher’s work:<\/p>\n

Quirks and Quarks9:38How lynx, moose and bears keep destroying this wildfire researcher\u2019s work<\/p>\n

Lucas Brehaut was hoping there\u2019d be a lot of interest in his research, though it might be a case of \u201cbe careful what you wish for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seemingly every animal in Newfoundland’s wilderness wants to know what he’s up to \u2014 and they’re not always gentle with his equipment. <\/p>\n

Brehaut, a wildfire research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service, is studying how forests in Atlantic Canada regrow after forest fires. Though the region is cooler and wetter than much of the rest of the country, forest fires are getting more common.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After a forest fire hit south of Grand Falls-Windsor, N.L., in 2022, he set out to understand how forests might regrow on a planet when temperatures are rising due to climate change.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To do that, he and his team needed to lug 19 open-top chambers (OTCs) through the forest and set them up around seedlings they\u2019d planted. OTCs are like mini greenhouses, and look like clear hexagons with an opening at the top. They can increase the temperature anywhere from one to three degrees, mimicking the effects of a warming planet. Brehaut’s study is currently in year three of five.<\/p>\n

Brehaut says he expected some difficulties \u2014 the treks of up to a kilometre in difficult terrain, and the infamously dour Newfoundland weather, for example.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But in September 2023, on one of his regular check-ins, he ran into a problem he didn\u2019t expect.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s when we started to notice that some of these greenhouses had some visitors, and might not have been as strong as I had hoped,\u201d Brehaut said.<\/p>\n

Those \u201cvisitors\u201d included caribou, moose, black bears, wolves, rabbits and owls. Brehaut found out who the culprits were because of cameras set up around the sites that were originally meant to look at snow depth over the winter.<\/p>\n

\"AA black bear dismantles a plexiglass greenhouse in Newfoundland. (Submitted by Lucas Brehaut)<\/p>\n

Out of 19 sites, 11 have sustained damage at some time or another. And the animals wouldn\u2019t just trample the greenhouses \u2014 some made off with the temperature sensors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe greenhouses had been completely obliterated. And by obliterated, I\u2019m talking broken, smashed to smithereens,\u201d Brehaut said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were certain times where we would spend more time at a site finding the temperature sensors than we would actually measuring the seedlings themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Brehaut\u2019s case, four \u2014 not 13 \u2014 is the unlucky number.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a site that I specifically call the problem child. Because every time I went to that site, it was damaged in one way or another,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s site number four, but I call it ‘The Problem Child.’ Every time I walk to it, I know that it\u2019s going to be challenging.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the animals aren’t always smashing \u2014 they\u2019re grazing. Brehaut has seen moose and rabbits go into the greenhouses for a bite to eat. They even occasionally manage to get through the top of the greenhouses without damaging anything.<\/p>\n

\"AA baby moose walks over a mangled mini greenhouse in Newfoundland. (Submitted by Lucas Brehaut)<\/p>\n

Brehaut isn\u2019t mad, just disappointed. He hopes that the animals are enjoying themselves, even if it\u2019s at the expense of his research.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see the amount of joy that, potentially, a black bear is experiencing by actually sitting in a greenhouse and playing with that plastic, and taking that temperature sensor and moving it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, the research gets damaged to some capacity, but we\u2019re in nature. This is their habitat. We are only visitors to this spot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AnA caribou rests near a mini greenhouse in Newfoundland. (Submitted by Lucas Brehaut)What are you doing in my backyard?<\/p>\n

That’s exactly why some animals are so keen to mess with equipment, says Kaitlyn Gaynor, an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia.<\/p>\n

“If someone puts something weird in your backyard, wouldn\u2019t you want to go investigate it?” she said.<\/p>\n

Gaynor, who studies the impacts of human disturbance on animal behaviour, said intelligent animals are especially curious about anything novel in their environment. After all, it could be a new source of food, or it could pose a threat. This boldness and willingness to explore could have been an advantage as species evolved.<\/p>\n

Bears are a great example, Gaynor says.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s in their nature to be curious about whether new objects are resources to be exploited,” she said. <\/p>\n

“They\u2019re these generalist omnivores that will eat a whole bunch of different things, and so when they see something new, the first question is like, is this food?”<\/p>\n

\"AA black bear walks by a plexiglass mini greenhouse in Newfoundland. Kaitlyn Gaynor, a professor at the University of British Columbia, said bears are especially curious about new objects in their ecosystem. (Submitted by Lucas Brehaut)<\/p>\n

Also, there’s the smell factor \u2014 we stink.<\/p>\n

“Often these objects we leave behind have our scent on them, and so our scent might attract animals to these places and to these objects,” Gaynor said.<\/p>\n

She added that researchers can lessen the effect of research on animals by getting in and out of the field as quickly as possible, by leaving as little scent as possible, and by obscuring or camouflaging research equipment.<\/p>\n

Down in Africa<\/p>\n

Animals interfering with research is a worldwide phenomenon. <\/p>\n

Gaynor has seen a lot of it during field work in Mozambique.<\/p>\n

“Baboons are always coming up to the cameras. We get a lot of great baboon selfies,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Hyenas just want to chew on everything, so they\u2019ll chew on our research equipment.”<\/p>\n

\"AA baboon takes a selfie in Mozambique on one of Kaitlyn Gaynor’s research cameras. (Submitted by Kaitlyn Gaynor)<\/p>\n

But the worst offenders are the elephants. They like to knock down trees and feast on leaves, which is bad news for research equipment.<\/p>\n

“Elephants are also just highly intelligent, and curious, and very large and destructive,” she said.<\/p>\n

Gaynor said animals are her biggest cause of equipment loss or failure.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s not that the electronics go out, and it\u2019s not\u00a0that things get stolen by people, it\u2019s that animals tend to be a little bit destructive.”<\/p>\n

\"TwoHartebeests stare at one of Kaitlyn Gaynor’s research cameras in Mozambique. Gaynor says animal interference is the biggest factor for equipment loss. (Submitted by Kaitlyn Gaynor)<\/p>\n

But, to be fair, Brehaut has also had issues with that most destructive animal \u2014 the homo sapien. <\/p>\n

“We’ve had some visitors accidentally run over these sites in the winter,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We have an extremely snowy winter in Newfoundland, and snowmobiles basically went over one of my plots.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LISTEN | How lynx, moose and bears keep destroying this wildfire researcher’s work: Quirks and Quarks9:38How lynx, moose…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":845520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":["post-845519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=845519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/845520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}