A woman living in a coastal B.C. community is spending her retirement surrounded by nature and watching wildlife.
“I don’t feel this age,” she says. “Getting out and in nature, in the woods, it’s a different experience and it’s well worth the effort."
Mary Beth Pongrac, 65, left her federal government job in Ottawa back in 2018 and moved to the Sunshine Coast. She hasn't looked back since.
“I’ve always wanted to live in B.C.,” she says. “I so badly wanted to live by the ocean… it’s incredible.”
Pongrac remembers watching a news story a few years ago about people in Calgary setting up trail cams. She couldn’t believe what they captured on video, so she was inspired and decided to give it a try.
“That is so cool to be able to see wildlife being themselves, they don't know they're being watched and it's just, it's perfect,” she says.
“It’s the next best thing to being there.”
Her 11 trail cameras are spread out all over the Sunshine Coast. She will often take her e-mountain bike or kayak from her home in Sechelt to the cameras to check on them.
“I check them every three weeks,” she tells Glacier Media.
Some cameras have SD cards she will switch out and bring home to see what animals were caught on video.
“It’s like Christmas Day opening up your presents. It's amazing. I really look forward to coming home and looking at the cards,” says Pongrac.
The location of the trail cameras is kept top secret so the animals aren’t disturbed and people don’t try and go where the animals were spotted.
She’s happy to share her secrets to her success.
"If you really want to see wildlife, you need to do tracking, you need to look, you got to be observant,” she says.
When out in the forest, Pongrac will look for tracks or animal feces.
“You are looking for signs of animals,” she says. “You look for signs of them feeding.”
When it comes to elk, she watches for the tops of ferns being chewed off. For cougars, she’ll watch for tracks or scratch markings. Similar to a house cat scratching furniture, a cougar will stand on its hind legs and drag its claws down a tree trunk. While these scrapes may be part of the grooming process, Pongrac says it's one way to mark their territory.
One of her videos shows a cougar walking up to the camera and lying down in front of it. Another camera captured a spotted skunk, a bear and a Western screech owl.
“The birders here were very interested in the owl because one hadn't been seen for many years, and they weren't sure if they were still around here,” she says.
“It’s really exciting.”
Pongrac shares her videos on a local Sunshine Coast Facebook page, the BC Wildlife Facebook page and also with the Sunshine Coast Bear Alliance.
“There’s some pretty cool things out there,” she says.
Her cams have even captured people walking by right after an animal, unbeknownst to them.
“It's incredible how we really are living in harmony with wildlife, even though we don't realize we are because the wildlife aren't attacking us,” she says.
“The wild animals are just trying to survive. They have it a lot harder than us.”
