Vancouver Island Is Recruiting “Poop Fairies” To Help The Wolves In BC & You Can Apply

Vancouver Island is in need of wildlife-loving helpers who aren't afraid to get really up close and personal with nature. Pacific Rim National Park Reserve is seeking volunteers to assist experts in studying the local wolf population, but not by tracking footprints. Pacific Rim is looking for volunteer "poop fairies" on Vancouver Island to hunt for and collect wolf droppings.

"Ever thought of being a Poop Fairy?" Pacific Rim National Park Reserve asks in a social media post. "Poop fairies", or "SCAT collecting scientists", will be trained and educated in the art of finding wolf poop. The goal is to support Pacific Rim in "understanding the diet, ancestry and kinship" of local wolves.

Victoria News reports that "poop fairies" will be required to volunteer for at least one poop hunt a month. Ideal candidates are locals interested in wolf ecology and co-existence who regularly go for hikes in the area. It goes without saying that if you're squeamish, this definitely isn't the volunteer opportunity for you.

Parks Reserve resource management officer Todd Windle tells Westerly News that volunteers will likely only find "one or two" droppings a month, but once you get good at it, you'll find them more frequently. Poop hunting is a skill like any other - it requires patience and practice to develop.

"Once you kind of start looking and get a little bit more of a trained eye you can detect them a little bit more obviously, but it’s not something that’s going to be a huge volume that’s for sure," says Windle.

Here's some good news, though. Windle says that, compared to dog poop, wolf poop isn't nearly as gross to pick up. “Wild carnivore scat is actually less smelly and less disgusting than processed dog food for sure,” he says. You can get a lot of valuable information about a species from their poop, so as a volunteer, you'd be doing important work.

"Poop fairies" are an important part of the reserve's Wild About Wolves research project, a five-year Parks Canada initiative that aims to improve coexistence with wolves "by raising visitor awareness of the species and the importance of sharing space."

If you're interested in becoming a "poop fairy" yourself, you can email Windle at Todd.Windle@canada.ca, or give him a call at 250-726-7165 ext. 227 for more information.

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