Defenders of Wildlife Blog

David Gaillard and volunteers get ready to embark into the wilderness of the Centennial Mountains

Spend a weekend in the Centennial Mountains looking for hairs from a grizzly bear? Talk about a needle in a haystack! Yet after a conversation with a biologist friend who recently appeared in the newspaper using the same technique to document grizzly bears in the mountains south of Bozeman, Montana where I live, I decided I had to give it a try (an excuse to get out of the office and enjoy the end of Montana’s fleeting summer did not hurt!).

Friday evening we met at a local supermarket where we got final supplies and packed into the rental cars for a 3-hour drive.  As twilight fell, a pair of sandhill cranes ghosted above us  indicating we had arrived in the Centennial Valley home of the Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.  Sleeping under the stars for the next two nights and hiking all day long made for a full weekend and darned if we did not find and collect quite a lot of hairs, though it will be months before we know if any came from a grizzly bear.  Read on to learn how we did so, and be sure to check out my homemade video of the experience as well—cheers all!

—Dave Gaillard, Rocky Mountain Region Representative.

Background:

The Greater Yellowstone grizzly bear is listed as Threatened under the Endangered Species Act, in part because it is isolated from grizzly bear populations elsewhere in North America.  The Centennial Mountains along the Continental Divide that divides Montana and Idaho west of Yellowstone National Park is at the western frontier of the Yellowstone grizzly bear’s current range.  It also provides one of the best hopes to re-connect the Yellowstone grizzly bear with other populations in western Montana and Idaho, because of its east-west axis that is rare in the Rockies, which predominantly run north and south.  Documentation of grizzly bear use in the Centennial Mountains will help managers maintain this area for grizzly bears, when making decisions about livestock grazing, timber sales and other land use activities (this area is largely public land dmanaged by agencies that include the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service).

Ordinary citizens with an interest in grizzly bear conservation and the ability to live and hike through remote, rugged country can gather reliable scientific data to document the use of an area by grizzly bears.  Powerful new genetic analysis make it possible to confirm presence of a grizzly bear from a sample of their scat (droppings), or even a small tuft of their hair.  Grizzly bear hair is remarkably easy to find once you know what to look for, given that bears like to rub against trees and fences for a good scratch, and possibly to leave a scent mark to communicate with other bears.

This spring, we reported on a proposal to turn a vast, undeveloped basin south of Jackson Hole, Wyoming into a major industrial oil and gas field.  This summer, our Rocky Mountain staff had the opportunity to visit this area and document the unique wildlife values at stake. Check out my photos below:

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Pronghorn antelope

Pronghorn antelope en route to the Hoback Rim, an area proposed for oil and gas development.

Sagebrush

Looking north from the sagebrush meadows to the forested Hoback Rim, a vital wildlife travel corridor.

Camera1

A photo of a camera we deployed to document wildlife using the area.

Camera2

A second camera we deployed that evening in the forested corridor of the Hoback Rim. The same well pad is about a quarter-mile from this spot.

Yellow field

The main access road from the Hoback Rim down to the Noble Basin.

Noble Basin 1

Three of the 17 proposed well pads are to be located within a mile of this spot, the closest within a couple hundred yards.

Noble Basin 2

Noble Basin 3

Aspen

An aspen stand as we head back up through the Hoback Rim corridor.

The Upper Hoback area provides habitat for an entire suite of wildlife, including pronghorn antelope, mule deer, elk, moose, black bears, mountain lions, wolves and possibly grizzly bears (it lies at the southern frontier of the Yellowstone population’s current range).  Yet our chief concern is the potential impact of this project on the imperiled  Canada lynx.

Lynx are exceedingly rare in the greater Yellowstone area, such that their entire population is believed to be fewer than 10 animals! The northeastern portion of the Wyoming Range, where this oil and gas project is proposed, provides some of the very best habitat for lynx in the entire state because of its abundance of snowshoe hares–the lynx’s main prey.  And if that isn’t enough cause for concern, the oil and gas project is located right next to a vital travel corridor for lynx, and its main access road goes right through it!

Don’t just take our word for it, here is some language from the **Forest Service’s recent environmental impact statement that describes the importance of this area to Wyoming’s imperiled lynx population:

Portions of the project area including the South Rim and parts of Middle Beaver Creek drainage have been described as prime lynx habitat… Experts have described the southern portions of the project area and the land immediately south of the project area as vital to the survival of lynx in Wyoming, and as the highest quality lynx habitat within the state… Recent research has shown that the unprecedented density of snowshoe hares present in the area likely contributes to the quality of the habitat as well as the consistent history of occupation in this area by lynx… Hare densities in this area are the highest ever observed in the greater Yellowstone area… Besides naturally occurring lynx, reintroduced lynx from Colorado have, on several occasions, dispersed to the area immediately south of the project area… The nearest denning activity to the project area has been documented in the vicinity of the South Rim about 1 to 2 miles west of the project area…

Radio collared lynx from the Wyoming Range have been tracked making regular long range movements through the project area. A single male made extra-territorial exploratory movements to the north of his delineated home-range each of at least four summers. The male used the South Rim as a travel corridor to travel to and from his home-range each year. The South Rim may represent vital linkage habitat, connecting lynx habitat in the Wyoming Range to suitable habitats with the Wind River Range, the Gros Ventre Range, Yellowstone and other suitable habitats farther north…

(**The project lies in the Bridger-Teton National Forest, so the Forest Service has authority over if and how the drilling is conducted.)

Here is a map of lynx movements through this area from a research project.  The project area is outlined with a white box.

Source: Squires et al. 2003, Distribution of lynx and other forest carnivores in the Wyoming Range, southcentral Wyoming, Final Report. Rocky Mountain Research Station and Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

Hope!

There is still hope that this potentially devastating project can be stopped, or at least scaled way back to ensure minimal harm to lynx and other wildlife.  A unique coalition of conservation advocates like Defenders of Wildlife, plus hunters, outfitters, residents and many others who know and love this area have joined forces to do just that.  Visit www.wyomingrange.org to learn more, and how you can help!

“Fracking” is shorthand for Hydraulic Fracturing: a drilling method used to extract oil and gas by injecting fluids into a deep well. The practice threatens ground and surface water quality, which is particularly worrisome to local landowners and given the project’s location at the headwaters of the Wild and Scenic Hoback River, a tributary to the Snake River.

Folks may recall the exciting news I reported last month when one of our intrepid “citizen scientist” volunteers Kalon Baughan managed to photograph a wild lynx while surveying a transect not far from his house near Lincoln, Montana.  Well, during the weeks that followed (we enjoyed an unusually long winter out here, even by Montana standards), Kalon and his partner Dan Kreutz upped the ante yet again by first photographing wild wolverines and then capturing one on video!

As I mentioned in my previous post, our non-profit wildlife research partners at Wild Things Unlimited trained Kalon and Dan and dozens of other citizen scientist volunteers to identify and record tracks in the snow and other wildlife observations in this area.  Other groups collaborating with us in this citizen scientist project are Montana Wilderness Association (see their slide show of one of our training sessions here) and Winter Wildlands Alliance.  Patagonia Corporation generously funded this project through its environmental grants program (we can’t link to a for-profit corporation, but you know how to find them).

“Hopefully, citizen scientist volunteers can help make a positive difference for sustainability of our perishable and precious natural world,” said Kalon. “This is very empowering for an avid nature enthusiast, such as myself.  Average people can make a difference.”

Most of us are superbly lucky if we ever cross the tracks of one of these elusive carnivores, but by taking advantage of an elk carcass and then a nearby boulder field strewn with wolverine tracks, our volunteers captured the remarkable images shown here.

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Snow cave

Snow cave

Snow cave

Snow cave

Wolverine track

Wolverine tracks

Wolverine trail

Wolverine

Wolverine

Wolverine

Unidentifiable carnivore tracks

Lynx trail

Lynx tracks

Lynx

Lynx

Bear claw marks on an Aspen tree

Snow piles up at Upper Moose Creek

The infamous and ever-elusive Hydromantia plastisol--the free-roaming water bottle.

Check out Kalon’s notes (primary report and addendum) and see not just more of his lynx photos but also three wolverine photos and a wolverine video taken with the use of his remote camera.  The beauty of this methodology is that it is “non-invasive,” meaning no animals were harmed or significantly influenced by the observers.

“Hopefully, citizen scientist volunteers can help make a positive difference for sustainability of our perishable and precious natural world,” said Kalon. “This is very empowering for an avid nature enthusiast, such as myself.  Average people can make a difference.”

Congratulations and thank you to Kalon, Dan, and our research partners at Wild Things Unlimited for their extraordinary efforts and perseverance necessary to collect this exciting new information, which we will use in our work to help ensure the long-term survival of these magnificent animals in this wild and remote area of Montana.

Buried in my email Inbox was a message from one of our citizen volunteers with the unassuming subject line, “South_4_Transect_Variation.”  This subject actually meant something to me — it was a report from a route that this person had recently snow-shoed or skied near Lincoln, Montana, looking for signs of rare carnivores.  It was sent by one of dozens of citizen volunteers that we helped train to identify and record tracks in the snow and other wildlife observations in an area where the Threatened Canada lynx and other rare carnivores were recently documented by the non-profit wildlife research group we partnered with for the trainings, Wild Things Unlimited.  Yet I was busy with reports and phone calls and merely flagged the email to open and read later, so there it sat for several days.

Imagine my surprise when cleaning out my Inbox that Friday afternoon, I open the message to learn not only did this volunteer find and document tracks in the snow from the Threatened lynx, he also captured four full-frame photos of one visiting an elk carcass!

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Lynx 1

Lynx images captured on remote camera in Montana.

Lynx 2

Lynx photo captured on remote camera in Montana.

Lynx 3

Lynx photo captured on remote camera in Montana.

Lynx 4

Lynx photo captured on remote camera in Montana.

Lynx tracks

Citizen scientist Kalon Baughan measures lynx tracks in the snow.

Lynx print

Citizen scientist Kalon Baughan measures a single paw print in the snow.

The volunteer behind this remarkable report Kalon Baughan had already won our 2011 citizen scientist MVP award (informal designation), for identifying and documenting not just lynx tracks but also tracks from the equally imperiled and elusive wolverine.  Yet with these photos his title has now been upgraded to citizen scientist “Rock Star” (equally informal designation, but quite justified).

Check out Kalon’s field notes (Citizen Scientist Trip Report 04 15 11 public) and see his lynx photos taken with the use of an infra-red remote triggering device.  The beauty of this methodology is that it is considered to be “non-invasive,” meaning no animals were harmed or even affected by the observer, since Kalon simply used an attractant that was already present in the forest to capture this lynx on film.

What’s next? Photos of a wolverine perhaps?  Wish our volunteer Rock Star good luck for the remainder of his extraordinary field season!

Defenders Talks Meso-carnivores on LA Talk Radio

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While we await Kalon’s next report, you can learn more about lynx, wolverines and fishers by listening to the radio clip above. I was invited on to the Hill & Dale show yesterday on LA Talk Radio to discuss efforts to conserve these meso-carnivores. The segment starts with a wolverine snarl (at the 12-minute mark) and covers the basic biology of the three species as well as threats to their survival in the wild. Don’t miss my radio debut!

In response to two recent court decisions, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will reconsider the designation of lynx “critical habitat” for a third time.  The Endangered Species Act requires critical habitat designation for all areas necessary to recover a listed population, and prohibits “adverse modification” of these areas.  The big question this time around is if the current designation will be expanded to include the southern Rockies area:  lynx habitat in Colorado and adjacent states.

Lynx recovery relies on the designation of "critical habitat" by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

A federal district court in Montana recently ruled that the Fish and Wildlife Service provided insufficient grounds to exclude potentially important habitat both in Colorado and Montana (the Service had claimed that future of Colorado’s reintroduced population is still uncertain, so the importance of its habitat to the recovery of the lower-48 lynx population is premature).

Another federal district court in Wyoming ruled that the Service must revisit its economic analysis of the effects of the critical habitat designation in Washington State.  Defenders and several other groups represented by Earthjustice intervened in this lawsuit filed by a Washington snowmobile group, and successfully defended the bulk of the current critical habitat designation from this legal challenge, losing only on this narrow point that an environmental assessment that accompanied the previous designation was found lacking.

The Fish and Wildlife Service had considered appealing both rulings, but has instead opted for revising its designation a third time to address these two court rulings.  The agency’s initial designation in November 2006 was essentially limited to national parks that were already protected, and was thrown out by the courts after evidence that the decision was tampered with by Bush Administration officials.  The agency’s second designation in February 2009 covered a much larger area—approximately 40,000 square miles—but again was found deficient in these two rulings issued last year.  Defenders will actively participate in this latest update of the lynx critical habitat designation affecting lynx across the contiguous U.S. to ensure that all of their key areas are included.

We believe a recovery plan is the best way to translate lynx protections on paper to recovery actions on the ground, where they matter most to lynx. Recovery plans for other listed species like grizzly bears have made all the difference between just “hanging on” and making tangible, forward progress toward achieving recovery goals.

We look forward to a resolution of the critical habitat issue so that we can turn our attention to the greatest need facing lynx in the lower 48: a recovery plan.  We believe a recovery plan is the best way to translate lynx protections on paper to recovery actions on the ground, where they matter most to lynx.  Recovery plans for other listed species like grizzly bears have made all the difference between just “hanging on” and making tangible, forward progress toward achieving recovery goals.  These goals are specified in their recovery plans and include:  population goals (numbers and distribution); limits on mortality; targets for reproduction and survival of young; standards to maintain key habitats; recommendations for interstate and international collaboration and cooperation; and (very important for lynx especially) a strategy to adapt recovery actions to the anticipated effects of climate change.

With ongoing help from our members and supporters, Defenders will continue its leadership role among the many other advocacy groups, scientists and agency officials dedicated to the survival and recovery of this beautiful and majestic wild cat of America’s northern forests.

To learn more about lynx and climate change threats, watch this episode of Jeff Corwin’s Feeling the Heat: