Having just returned from an extended stay in Montana, I’m still acutely aware of our relationship with wild animals and our stewardship of their habitat. While there, I was able to make several trips into Yellowstone National Park and to take two classes given by scientists working within the park system. I learned a lot about critters I’d never seen. Canada lynx, wolverines and about bears, which were winter sleeping on past visits.
After explaining his grant-funded project on threatened and endangered species, one scientist took us to see one of eight wolverine traps stretched out along Slough Creek in the bottom of Ice Box Canyon between Lamar Valley and Cooke City. All the traps were constructed of materials found on sight, fallen trees mostly, and looked like very small log cabins. He showed us how this one worked before disarming it for the summer. In two years, only four wolverines had been captured, tagged or radio collared and had blood samples taken before being released. I realized it was unlikely I would ever get to see one.
Lynx exist in the highest elevations of the Northern Range, but I doubt any of us will see them either. Some had been caught, however, and DNA samples showed one to be a hybrid between a lynx and a bobcat. Wow!
Bears, on the other hand, were everywhere, if sometimes visible only through a powerful spotting scope.
Before dawn one morning, we pulled into Hellroaring Overlook where dedicated wolf watchers gather. Through one spotting scope I could see the opening of a den deep in the canyon below. A gray female was sitting half in and half out of the den and two other wolves were lying just a few yards away. After awhile, the female got up and pretty soon two tiny black pups crawled out and tumbled around her feet.
Then I saw through another scope aimed less than 100 feet to the west, a cinnamon-colored bear curled up still groggy with sleep. As I watched, it stretched one front leg, then the other, lifted its head, yawned and then went back to sleep. Wolves and bear seemingly oblivious of each other.
Back in the classroom, I learned that bears mate in late spring or summer, but the fertilized egg doesn’t attach to the uterine wall. It just floats free without any nourishment, no placenta, nothing. When mom goes into hibernation the small clump of cells attaches and begins to grow, but not a whole lot. When the cubs are born, they are so tiny they would fit in the palm of your hand, mom permitting, which of course she doesn’t.
However, her milk is so rich (having bulked up on trout in the fall) that the cubs grow at an amazing rate quadrupling their size in a few weeks. By the time they leave the den, they actually look like little bears.
I also learned of the harm caused by non-native species, particularly lake trout, which are killing native cutthroat trout at an alarming rate. What I hadn’t understood is that lake trout live and spawn in deep water and so aren’t available to bears, while cutthroat trout hang out in shallow water where bears can easily catch them.
Wolves, on the other hand were native to the area before they were hunted to extinction. When they were reintroduced from three Canadian packs in 1995, there was speculation about their impact particularly on populations of elk, their main food source. Turns out to have been a good thing all around. Elk had become so numerous that they were decimating willows and other streamside vegetation needed by smaller animals. As wolves thinned the elk herds, culling older and weaker animals, the vegetation grew back providing habitat for river otters, marmots and beaver.
Coyotes have also benefited from the reintroduction of wolves. Hunting in packs, wolves can bring down elk and occasionally bison or moose, and when they’ve finished feeding, coyotes and ravens take what’s left. On their own, coyotes catch only smaller prey. And ravens have developed a symbiotic relationship with wolves, often leading them to winter killed elk or bison where they all feed together.
Interesting also was the reaction of park biologists to proposed delisting of wolves and grizzly bears. I would have thought they’d be opposed on principle. But they say delisting is proof that the Endangered Species Act works (as written, so no changes, please). The wolf population has grown from 30 animals in 1995 to about 300 last year. And even though they are protected inside the park, those who wander outside can be shot. In fact, younger animals from established packs have left the park to form new packs in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, whose state management plans finally have been approved by the federal government. We’ll have to wait to see how this plays out.
Meanwhile, those who haven’t been to Yellowstone might put the park on their list of places to see before you die. Winter is still my favorite season for solitude and silence (snowmobiles notwithstanding). But in spring all the babies are out and in fall the colors are astonishing. Summer’s a bit crowded, but even so, it’s truly a magical place.