 Well, little is known about the rough grouse, but thanks to a project at Central Lakes College, new information is being recovered for future generations to study. Clayton Castle takes us inside the project for this week's Northwood's adventure. Dr. Gordon Gullion and ecologists from the Clocae, Minnesota area spent years studying the rough grouse and how the species interacts and adapts in different environments and climates. His work was recorded on 69,000 note cards and a project at Central Lakes College will recover and preserve the data for future study. He worked with rough grouse primarily up there. He did some other work with some of the predators like goss hawks and some of the other animals that affected grouse populations. Dr. Gullion passed away in the early 1990s, but his work was thought to be unfinished before his death. Unfortunately, he had a lot of work he was still planning on doing at the time of his death that to this day is kind of buried in that data somewhere and we're hoping to get some of that out and get new understandings of some of the work he was doing. Now one of the many aspects of the project is data entry where students will take one of these note cards and manually enter it into a database which will preserve the data and information for generations to come. Ironically, the cards are in really good shape. These were all put on index cards, but it's kind of the pencil and some of the writing that's deteriorating. We're having trouble even now picking up. So we're trying to get that in. Once we do, we have technology today that wasn't available in Gordon state. The technological differences allow today's students to understand and study the work in different ways than Dr. Gullion did. So they had to use mark and recapture methods where they had to trap the birds and collect the information that way, whereas we can take and put a transmitter or a GPS on the bird and study them from a lab. The study has provided a valuable learning experience for the students as well. I've learned actually a lot about how rough grouse act and what kind of habitats they prefer and everything about them. Well, I'm still learning a lot, but I didn't realize there was such a big database of gross information that Gullion put together. The project is expected to last a total of four to five years. Reporting in Brainerd for this week's Northwoods Adventure Clayton Castle, Lakeland News. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.