Ep. 495: Future Wild – The Future of the American West’s Great Hoofed Beasts with Kevin Monteith

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Elk, mule deer, pronghorn, moose, bighorn sheep.

00:00:05
Speaker 2: When you imagine the American West, it’s likely animals like these that swim through your mind. They grace the covers of our magazines, they run through our dreams, and they populate our national parks, forests, and wilderness areas.

00:00:20
Speaker 1: And for some of us, they even fill our bellies.

00:00:24
Speaker 2: The great hooved beasts of the American West in many ways have made this place what it is.

00:00:31
Speaker 1: But in an American West that is.

00:00:33
Speaker 2: Rapidly changing with new people, new weather patterns, new development, there are very real questions about how these animals will be able to.

00:00:42
Speaker 1: Make it going forward.

00:00:45
Speaker 2: Joining me today to explore this question in the current trends latest research and key factors impacting the future for these ungulates and the key factors impacting the future of the American West’s most iconic ungulates is Kevin Monteith, a professor at the University of Wyoming, a renowned wildlife biologist and researcher, and the founder of the Monteith Shop, a wildlife research lab specializing in intensive field research that shines a light on the real lives of individual ungulates to learn what influences their behavior, growth, reproduction, and survival in the face of a changing world. Thanks for being here. This is Future Wild, brought to you by Conservation First Bank. Kevin Monteith, thanks so much for being here.

00:01:43
Speaker 1: Hey, my pleasure, Mark.

00:01:44
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. I’ve heard you in so many different places. I’ve read about your work. I’ve read actual reports from your work. And it’s just always been fascinating. So very much looking forward to this. But I want to start with maybe an unexpected question, digging a little bit into your biography. And it’s a piece of shared biography. Maybe I’m speaking too much for my, I’m giving myself too much credit. I’m a little bit like you in this way. So Let me just get to what I want to ask you. Has being a hunter made you a better scientist and wildlife biologist or vice versa? Has being a scientist and wildlife biologist made you a better hunter?

00:02:30
Speaker 1: Which of those do you think might be more true? That’s a fantastic question. I think.

00:02:37
Speaker 3: This may seem like it would maybe is not what folks would maybe expect, but I think the former is more true than the latter. Now, certainly from the perspective of being a scientist and, you know, as I often describe, one of our goals is to understand what makes these animals tick.

00:03:01
Speaker 1: What’s their day-to-day experiences?

00:03:03
Speaker 3: How does that scale up, you know, integrate all the way up to what we see at the population level? those bits and pieces you might, you know, it helps us understand the biology and you would think might make me a better hunter.

00:03:16
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:03:17
Speaker 3: Maybe it does, but I, to some degree, but I think a lot of what it does is, uh, and what we hope to impart on, you know, our hunter stakeholder groups is just a newfound respect and appreciation, um, and inspire kind of the way we think about those animals.

00:03:37
Speaker 1: So I think it, does more a lot to that.

00:03:40
Speaker 3: Um, and then maybe some like little nuances associated with why we see certain behaviors or, or not. So it probably has played a role there, but I think, I hope perhaps where it’s even played a bigger role is sort of, I don’t know, my, my sort of hunting outdoor background played a role in science and, and, mainly from the perspective of kind of how we think about things with respect to the animals, how we measure and integrate some of those principles into the science that we actually do in part from being able to take it all the way full circle to kind of the backdrop of why it matters, why it should matter for us as hunters, why it’s a matter for us as, as conservationists, uh, as we then go, go into the future and hopefully, Well, as a scientist or an academic, there’s certain expectations that we need to fulfill. We want to be able to contribute to scientific understanding, advance the field.

00:04:45
Speaker 1: But ideally, it keeps us out of the ivory tower. It’s not exactly where we want to live in.

00:04:50
Speaker 3: It’s not who we want to be. And so I hope that it allows us to speak well in that regard with respect to what we learn. Because, I mean, those are our hunter stakeholders, like I’m just one of them. Those are, those are our people. And so we want to be able to, um, learn things that apply across the board, but then be able to have engage in those conversations at that level as well.

00:05:15
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:05:16
Speaker 2: It seems like your style or your version of, of academic work keeps you very grounded in, in the actual applied side of things and how, you know, your learnings impact the world can impact management, all that kind of stuff.

00:05:32
Speaker 1: Um, So that makes a lot of sense to me. One thing, though, that I think.

00:05:39
Speaker 2: That I understand, I guess this is what I was speaking to earlier, what I can relate to, but I think many in the traditional, maybe environmental world or wildlife world, many struggle to make sense with is how can someone study and advocate for wildlife? while also being a hunter and sometimes kill wildlife. This is like the hunter’s paradox. I’m sure you’ve had questions like that. I, of course, get questions like that. But as someone in your position, you have this position of leadership. You have this position as a professor, as a scientist. How do you reckon with that? How do you explain that to people when someone comes into your shop who’s maybe an undergrad studying wildlife and they’ve never hunted. They just love wildlife, want to see more of it out there. How do you help them understand how those two things can coincide in the same person and in the same shop with the.

00:06:39
Speaker 1: Work you guys do?

00:06:42
Speaker 3: Another fantastic and maybe somewhat difficult question all at the same time.

00:06:47
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, these animals are here for a reason.

00:06:51
Speaker 3: And I think, you know, it’s on us and our responsibility to one be good stewards of those resources and then simultaneously they’re also here for our enjoyment and our sustenance at the same time and so from the perspective as a hunter I mean it’s some of the the best food that exists in the world and it’s frankly it’s how I feed my family and have since I was a kid in fact it was even more essential as a kid just because we didn’t have the resources for food otherwise. And so it’s, it’s part of our bread and butter and, and what fed us. But then all the while thinking about it from a conservation and in sort of so-called environmental perspective, if you want to think about it that way, those two things don’t have to be in conflict. And in fact, they shouldn’t be. And while we may think about like, you know, preservation perspective and national parks and those sorts of things, um, you know, uh, Teddy Roosevelt’s definition of conservation was wise use of resources.

00:07:57
Speaker 1: And so that doesn’t mean non-use. It means wise use of resources.

00:08:01
Speaker 3: And I, I believe in that firmly and hunting in many perspectives can be essential from a population perspective. It’s not always critical, but in many instances it is. And at least certainly right now, you know, when I think about perspective of North American model and where we’re at today in this country, it’s also the bread and butter for our wildlife management agencies and conservation mechanisms. It’s where the vast majority of our funding comes from to be able to do that. And so point being, they both have their place, but they also don’t have to conflict with each other whatsoever. And I also hope, I mean, my respect and my ethical perspective with regards to these animals as we’ve continued to learn more I hope has only grown in, in that regard. And again, not in a way that conflict conflicts, but just compliments each other very nicely.

00:08:59
Speaker 1: And it’s probably where we should be.

00:09:01
Speaker 2: Yeah. Do you think that if, if there was not a hunting population out there interested in, in the animals that you study, would you have the funding and resources to do the work you do? Because I always think that Having this invested stakeholder group of hunters who know these animals so much, who care so much about them, who have this intimate connection with them, that’s so valuable to the long-term future of those animals, at least the way I look at it. Do you think that proves to be true in your case with the work you’re doing and the investments people make in the work that you do? Would that be possible if hunting wasn’t a thing, if there weren’t a bunch of people as hunters who cared about these mule deer and elk and pronghorn, etc.

00:09:45
Speaker 1: Yeah. Great question.

00:09:46
Speaker 3: And you also bring up another aspect of, you know, hunters by and large are often more intimately connected with these animals than many, just because there’s the opportunity to participate in that process of, being the predator engaging with the animal in that way appreciating the animal in that way so that draws us that draws us or should draw us that much closer from the funding perspective with regards to where our resources come from it would be it would be very different especially for a group like ours where we are doing the applied work. We are doing work that helps inform how we think about hunting management and conservation and those sorts of things. Fact of the matter right now, you know, one of our central partners, both collaboratively from a field perspective in the work, as well as funding, comes from Wyoming Game and Fish Department. And that agency, while it’s different across a number of agencies, the vast majority are largely funded by Um, by excise tax put on hunting, hunting goods, Pittman Robertson funds that then gets mashed at the, at the federal level one to three, of course. And so it’s like the bulk of those resources. And at least for our state agency comes from license dollars. If there was no license dollars, there wouldn’t be, there wouldn’t be wildlife management agency. And so just by way of that process, that’s where a lot of our resources comes from oftentimes, but then also. A number like the nonprofit groups within the state of Wyoming, for example, like Mealy Fanatic Foundation and or, you know, even Wyoming Wild Sheep Foundation National, like those organizations contribute in great ways as well to our research. And that is largely coming from, you know, Hunter stakeholders. We certainly get funding that’s not tied to that, but certainly the meat of it comes through those avenues. And so it would look very different. And I think we probably wouldn’t be able to do a lot of the things that we’re able to do now or have as sort of productive as a program in the absence of that. So we’re certainly relying on that as well, just like our state management agencies are at the same time.

00:11:58
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, whether you’re a hunter or not, I feel like when you think of Wyoming, you know, where you’re at, or you think of Montana, where I’m at, or anywhere in the American West, You think about that place, I think one of the first things you see, maybe you see deserts or mountains or grasslands, but then you’re going to see the animals, right? If you’re painting this picture in your mind, and probably, I mean, nine times out of ten, some of those animals you’re going to imagine are going to be some of these ungulates, right? You’re going to think about moose or elk or mule deer or pronghorns or bison or bighorn, right? I mean, those are the iconic animals that, of course, you and I as hunters know. we’re hoping to someday pull a tag for, but even somebody just driving through, right?

00:12:44
Speaker 1: They’re going to love seeing those animals.

00:12:47
Speaker 2: And my hope, Kevin, is, you know, given this interesting kind of intersection that you have as a person and then the work that you’re doing, you have this unique insight into what the road ahead looks like for those animals in our region. There’s a lot of change going on right now. Of course, you know.

00:13:07
Speaker 1: Full well firsthand.

00:13:10
Speaker 2: So I was hoping if you are game for this to kind of go species by species through a handful of our most iconic ungulates of the West and get a little bit of a take, a quick take from you on, this is where they’re at right now. This is the trend we’re seeing. These are some of the different factors impacting what’s happening to them right now in the future. And I know with a lot of these animals, you have firsthand experience studying them various projects. So we’d love to hear, you know, some of the specific things going on there in Wyoming. And, and with that in mind, it seems like mule deer is, is a topic and animal that people can’t get enough of right now. There’s a lot impacting mule deer right now. You’ve got some fascinating studies that have been underway for a number of years there. So when it comes to muleys, can you, can you kind of set the stage in 2026?

00:14:03
Speaker 1: Where are we at with mule deer?

00:14:06
Speaker 2: You know, but maybe if you can speak maybe broadly from some of the other things you’ve heard outside of the state, you know, where do mule deer stand today? What’s that trajectory at this moment? There’s been a lot of concern about them. Is that still the case now?

00:14:20
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:14:22
Speaker 3: So certainly as I mean, is the conversation kind of across the board and gets highlighted in all kinds of different ways to create momentum, but mule deer population certainly aren’t what they used to be. and have, by and large, not been trending positively over time.

00:14:43
Speaker 2: And so there’s been, certainly at least since the 1950s, 60s, or whatever, name that sweet spot within that window of time, mule deer populations have kind of just in general been in decline.

00:14:56
Speaker 1: And that’s certainly still present today.

00:15:00
Speaker 3: And of course, as we speak of like all of these different critters, this isn’t ubiquitous across the board, right? Every location, every population has various nuances of contributing factors.

00:15:13
Speaker 1: And, you know, some mule deer populations are growing.

00:15:16
Speaker 2: Some are just stable, some stable at a good level, some are stagnant and some continue to decline. And as we, I think the other perspective also, even just like as we talk about numbers or just general trends. I also think it’s important and we’ll probably maybe hit on it along the way, uh, just to also like have the perspective in mind that we as people, I think just always want more, more is always better. And for every one of the animals that, you know, we’re going to talk about, depending upon your perspective, more may get you something, but more isn’t always better. And then that manifests in what we see within dynamics within populations. And truth be told, like big perspective, as we look historic to where we are now, the only way that we could even either have the desire, I guess we could have the desire, but to have the have the assumption that it’s possible to get back to what we once had with the exceptionally high numbers also assumes that we have the landscape, the habitat, the food to be able to support the same numbers that we once had. And of course, we all know we don’t have that. Our landscapes have changed and generally negative ways and mule deer is one of the ones that However you want to look at it, canary in the coal mine, perhaps, you know, as we’ve, our knowledge base for mule deer over the past decade has increased immensely. And some of.

00:16:56
Speaker 3: The elements of a mule deer that we didn’t have the appreciation for previously, that we certainly do now, is they’re an incredibly faithful animal that are strongly tied to their home, whether it’s a resident animal or a migratory animal that migrates, you know, well over a hundred miles. Once their home ranges are established and their migratory route to their seasonal ranges, they remain incredibly faithful to it. They’re also so intimately tied to it in a way where even their entire, their reproductive program.

00:17:30
Speaker 2: So the reproductive chronology, the timing of conception, the birth is tied to their landscape and to their summer range. and where they’re going.

00:17:40
Speaker 1: To head to. And so as.

00:17:42
Speaker 3: Time goes by, we more and more see just how faithful, how in tune, how sensitive mule deer are to their landscape. So then the flip side of that though is as a landscape changes, when they’re so tied to home, that just means that they’re less able to make all the associated adjustments with regards to those changes that occur.

00:18:08
Speaker 1: Especially when those changes are not in a positive way.

00:18:11
Speaker 3: And so when we, you know, when we talk habitat loss and fragmentation, of course, because of our presence or our needs or how we use the landscape, um, to increase traffic volumes in, you know, various places across the landscape, uh, habitat succession, fire suppression, you know, um, Smokey the bear may have done us a lot of good, but also may have done us a lot of bad over the longterm, uh, as well, especially for mule deer being a, kind of early successional species, you know, the, the tall forest, you know, choking out everything else, you know, having that understory, um, forbs and shrubs, uh, are really important. Also, you know, weather has changed too, you know, we, whether it be volatile, severe winters that pop up here and there, um, which may affect the population for at least a moment, but then just like chronic drought that has happened across a lot of the West, um, turns out it takes that precip to grow the good food that mule deer eat and specialize in. And so, and then you kind of stack on top of that, you know, CWD kind of expanding its grip across the West as well. And when you just kind of take all of that together, it’s a lot of kind of cuts here and there that we see across, you know, across the West as to what it means for our mule deer populations that are generally kind of Few things are going in their favor in most places. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean like mule deer are going extinct or we’re going to lose them all sort of thing, but. it does affect what we can sustain across the landscape in one form or another which then has to has to frame up what we should expect in that regard.

00:20:02
Speaker 2: So so imagine this example Imagine there’s a herd of mule deer that have lived in these foothills for forever. And then this summer, a new road gets built into this set of foothills. And this old ranch that used to be open now gets subdivided into five acre lots or 10 acre lots. And now we’ve got homes built on this stretch. So there’s a new road. And there’s a bunch of new houses getting built on five or 10 acre lots in this area. I think there might be someone who maybe lives in that neighborhood who’s going to say, well, Hey, I see deer going across the road all the time. They don’t seem to be bothered by the road. I see deer feeding on my new flowers I planted. They seem to be surviving just fine here. They’re eating all my shrubs. You have collared many, many mule deer and actually tracked and observed deer what they do in scenarios like that, where they go, how they change their behavior, and then what that leads to from a body fat perspective and health perspective. What actually happens when that scenario plays out?

00:21:15
Speaker 1: Or maybe it’s drill pads built, whatever it is.

00:21:17
Speaker 2: But what have you learned about how mule deer actually are affected or how they change their behavior when that happens in their home?

00:21:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, great question.

00:21:28
Speaker 3: And one that we haven’t We haven’t always had the opportunity to be monitoring deer before something like a rural development comes into play or energy development comes into play, for example, and then monitor it through and then on the other side. Now, we certainly have on winter ranges, for example, some long term studies that we’ve been a part of in western Wyoming that Hall Sawyer, you know, originally led to begin with. And then we worked in collaboration with Game and Fish thereafter. You know, deer don’t like energy development. is the gist of it. And so as those things come onto the landscape, it displaces them and pushes them off. They do their best to continue to live where they are, but it pushes them off it, which means there’s food that’s left behind. So there may still be some food there, but they’re less willing to make use of it. We also know from some other work that some colleagues of mine did here in western Wyoming that as animals are migrating, what they end up doing as they bump into basically our presence on the landscape, whether it be, you know, roads or, um, other, you know, energy development that exists on the landscape is they rush through it.

00:22:37
Speaker 1: So they don’t necessarily want to be there. And so they rush through it.

00:22:39
Speaker 2: And so what that means is kind of gets them out of sync with that green up that they’re tracking in the spring and taking advantage of those good resources. And then they kind of hang tight on the other side of it and wait for that new green food to catch up with them.

00:22:53
Speaker 1: And then they pick up.

00:22:53
Speaker 3: And so, Each one of those aspects that influences how these animals are able to use those landscape is resulting in what can be basically a net loss in food. And especially when it comes to mule deer, for example, though this principle applies kind of as a whole and can be a good way for us to think about these things. But it’s very important to mule deer that are so faithful to You know, you punch a rodent somewhere, you have a rural development, and you’re basically either displacing deer or let’s just imagine you’re cutting habitat away from those animals. Same thing that we measured with energy development on a winter range. So, for example, for every one acre of direct habitat loss that’s associated with punching in the well pad, there’s 4.6 acres more lost by way of mule deer because of their unwillingness to use it.

00:23:47
Speaker 2: Wow.

00:23:49
Speaker 1: You’re functionally putting fences.

00:23:50
Speaker 3: Imagine just like putting fences around these areas and saying, you can’t.

00:23:54
Speaker 1: Use this anymore.

00:23:58
Speaker 2: We may just think, oh, they’re just going to go somewhere else. Well, maybe mule deer are going to try really hard to hang to what they know because they’re so faithful to it. But either way, you’re wiping food off the landscape. And if you don’t have deer going to those places anymore, using that food, Just think of it as like a net reduction in food available to the population. So what that means over the long term, you’re not going to have as many animals because you’re taking food away from the population. You don’t have animals going to the places that they’re used to anymore, which is also why one of the main reasons all the movement behind migration and why it’s so important for large, robust populations is, yes, it benefits the individuals that go do that. And sometimes by migrating, they can often obtain food. better foods than they would access without migrating. But one of the critical aspects of that is each.

00:24:51
Speaker 3: One of those animals that’s migrating to those places, they’re going to places and functionally they’re acquiring that food, but then that’s basically increasing the food that’s available to the population because they’re going to those places. They’re integrating that food into themselves by way of body fat, and then basically inviting it into the population. And so when we do things or we lose spots on the landscape that animals are going to, either the habitat’s destroyed or we cut them off from being able to get there or via other means, if animals aren’t using those places anymore, that’s a full-on net reduction in the carrying capacity of the habitat. So the habitat could be there, but if animals aren’t using it, then it kind of functionally doesn’t matter within the scope of the population.

00:25:37
Speaker 1: And I believe.

00:25:37
Speaker 3: Firmly what we’ve learned over time with how faithful these animals are to landscape, how that faithfulness can be transferred and inherited across generational time is that whether it be mistakes we made over time, habitat loss, fragmentation, whatever it was, we have places along in the landscape where there used to be.

00:25:59
Speaker 1: Deer and there’s no deer anymore.

00:26:01
Speaker 2: All of those losses are a net reduction in carrying capacity simply because the population isn’t using it anymore. And what then that also means is we can’t expect to have what we had previously. It also means if we can regain occupancy of those places over time, that’s a huge win for the population of mule deer because it’s a really quick increase in carrying capacity because you have animals using places and integrating that food that they weren’t otherwise before. So there’s a lot of factors here that seem outside of our control, and then some that seem inside of our control. It seems like, at least in the short term, we can’t really influence whether or not there’s going to be a horrible winter. We can’t influence whether this drought continues or not. All those things, I’m sure, are hampering their nutrition, their ability to survive. But of course, this habitat stuff, the fragmentation, the actual destruction of habitats, connections, all of that, that seems within our purview. What have we found actually is a lever we can pull that makes a real difference right now? Given that there’s this death of a thousand cuts going on, I know there’s been all sorts of interesting work being done by the Wyoming Migration Initiative and some of the stuff you guys have done, looking at those migration corridors and crossings and connections.

00:27:27
Speaker 1: What is.

00:27:28
Speaker 2: the latest on what works, where we can put our dollars and our time and our money and actually make a positive difference.

00:27:38
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:27:39
Speaker 3: Still work being done in that regard to understand what we can do in various places because there’s nuance from place to place. One of the big things, one of the biggest things is to be mindful of the fact that in a lot of places when we’re working to protect space or protect habitat, For mule deer, we’re also protecting memory and access to those places over time.

00:28:02
Speaker 2: So one is a change in perspective. We’re not just protecting space. We’re protecting memory within the populations for the animals that use it, which is really fundamental to maintaining populations over time from winter range to summer range to those migratory corridors and the pathways that they, essentially the pathways they need to be able to connect them. So that’s fundamental.

00:28:25
Speaker 3: What that also then means is everything from, you know, fence modifications to improving, uh, road crossings to underpasses, overpasses, those sorts of things are all protecting some in that way and increasing that fluidity of movement. So we can do things that way, but a lot of it is also just like protecting and being mindful of what we have from the perspective that if we lose it, it doesn’t mean we just get it back.

00:28:52
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:28:52
Speaker 3: Once we lose it in some of these instances, like it’s potentially lost forever. And so that’s, which that sort of seems kind of sad and very negative, but that’s just the reality.

00:29:03
Speaker 1: We have to have a firm appreciation of that.

00:29:04
Speaker 3: Of course, as we think about habitat, you know, habitat treatments that help facilitate like pushing back succession and increasing those forbs and shrubby habitat that deer have access to in that regard is also, you know, it’s their bread and butter and their sustenance through the seasons. The other thing, too, and you kind of mentioned it, like we may not be able to control bad winters. We may not be able to control drought. And you’re absolutely right. The one thing that isn’t always as palatable as everybody wants it to be, while we can’t necessarily keep those things, events from happening. We can also work towards managing a population that helps buffer them from the perspective of those events. And certainly it’s variable from, from place to place, but in some places, you know, um, and certainly, you know, much of the Rocky mountains, for example, and even some of the air and space out west. The aspect of more isn’t always better is certainly playing out, and we’ve measured it directly with our work in western Wyoming. As populations increase in size, there’s more competition for the limited amount of resources that are there. Animals are less fat. Also means animals are less productive, if you want to think about it from that perspective. But less fat animals means they’re less buffered and prepared to contend with the drought, the bad winters that come, which means… the population loss associated with the bad winter is going to be higher, for example. Uh, and also productivity is going to be even more compromised when it comes to perspectives like drought. So even though we talk numbers and like, how do we get them to grow?

00:30:44
Speaker 1: Right.

00:30:44
Speaker 3: There’s also the side of more isn’t always better and you can maintain a more robust, fatter and more productive population by way of population management.

00:30:55
Speaker 1: And that’s pretty unpopular. I get that.

00:30:59
Speaker 3: Um, But it is the reality, and it’s something that is important for us to be mindful of. A great example with that is our long-term work on deer in the Wyoming range.

00:31:12
Speaker 1: We’ve seen huge changes within that population over time.

00:31:16
Speaker 3: Of course, the 22-23 winter that everybody talks about, we lost 70% through the course.

00:31:21
Speaker 1: Of that winter.

00:31:21
Speaker 3: We had two bad winters leading into that, 16-17 winter, 18-19 winter. Those two winters, because of the population reduction and the recovery in body fat of females, is what saved us in the 22-23 winter. Based on our models, we would have probably lost over 90% of the population, maybe all of it during the 22-23 winter, had our females not been fatter because of those two population reductions that occurred in the prior winters. And now, based on the course of our studies since 2013, we have the fattest, most productive, biggest birth masses of fawns, highest fawn survival that we’ve ever seen through the course of our study. And that’s been maintained ever since the 22-23 winter. And so, you know, I think that’s also an important perspective for us to grasp. We’re talking about the same population that’s been pretty stagnant for a long time and head scratches as to why we’re not growing to the huge abundances.

00:32:19
Speaker 1: That we saw in the 60s and 70s.

00:32:22
Speaker 3: And then after that huge population reduction, we now have a very fat, very rapidly growing population. But it’s the same population that we’ve been studying the whole time.

00:32:32
Speaker 1: Why are they growing?

00:32:33
Speaker 3: Well, the biggest change that occurred isn’t the food that’s being grown there because we haven’t had great years of food growth.

00:32:39
Speaker 1: It’s because there’s so.

00:32:40
Speaker 3: Much less competition for food and the individuals that remain are benefiting from it.

00:32:45
Speaker 2: So what happens, though, when you have that kind of mass die-off?

00:32:49
Speaker 1: 70% of the herd dies off.

00:32:51
Speaker 2: You talked earlier about, you know, needing to preserve memory, right? That like institutional knowledge of the herd. When you lose 70% of the herd, that’s got to be a massive amount of learned knowledge about migration routes and about the right winter range and the right place to go in the summer. So have you, in the years since, I know you’ve documented how fat and healthy these deer are, but do we have any sense yet? Like, hey, are they figuring these places out again? Are they able to relearn their habitat and expand if we were at 10 mule deer, just simple numbers, if we were at 10 mule deer before 22, 23, and then we dropped down to three mule deer because of that 70% reduction, do you have a sense yet that because of this increased productivity, are we going to be able to get back up to 10? Or are we now going to have a new ceiling of 7.5 or something like that?

00:33:42
Speaker 3: That’s a brilliant question. And one that we are actively working on. And part of What you’re speaking to is this concept called the rose petal hypothesis, and that we’re seeing sort of play out in how animals adopt migratory routes or inherit migratory routes over time. And with our work before the 22-23 winter, what we saw is that about two-thirds of young females adopted mom’s migratory route. So as they grew from birth all the way to adulthood, they adopted mom’s migratory route. One-third deviated, but one-third actually, interestingly, found a different migratory route, but ended up on a different winter range, which means they held to their summer range, which aligns with the concept of the rose petal hypothesis, where you have a matriarchal female that is maybe a center petal on the rose, and then her daughter’s granddaughter set up shop around it. So you end up with these matrilineal lines of related females that live in space and then occupy those summer ranges. when you have a 70% loss, no matter what, we lost roses, we lost matrilineal lines of females in memory to space on the landscape. So then the question becomes, you know, on the flip side of we’re preserving memory on the landscape, what happens when we lose it? So we’re working to understand what the long-term consequences of that could.

00:35:01
Speaker 1: Be and what it could mean.

00:35:03
Speaker 3: For animals going forward from here and basically restoring occupancy to that space.

00:35:09
Speaker 1: It’s a bit.

00:35:10
Speaker 3: Early to tell Well, right now, in line with these super high fat levels and the low population density, we seem to be having females dispersing into more in different places than we have ever seen before. So could there be a natural mechanism within populations that when animals are disproportionately fat for the range that they live in, that perhaps it gives them a nutritional buffer to then go, explore and push into new ranges. And it’s too early to tell because we’re not far. I mean, our first cohort of the, the, the, the female young born to fat females happened in 2024. And so it’s those two year olds that we’re seeing right now, um, after, after that big change. And so too early to tell, hopefully we have the opportunity to follow through and be able to demonstrate that all the way through, because if that, if the sort of like anecdotal or preliminary findings we’re seeing hold true or are consistent with time, that has huge implications for how we think about population management and population either expansion or maintaining ranges within that perspective.

00:36:25
Speaker 1: So it’s pretty exciting. It’s completely contradictory to the, well, you have to hit high population density and that pushes them out. We were at high population density and we just, that wasn’t something that we were seeing. And so it’s completely different now.

00:36:40
Speaker 3: And rarely do we ever have the opportunity to study a growing population. And so I think there’s, there’s a lot to be held within that. Hopefully we can, we can unlock with time. And that’s also, I mean, I should mention as well, you know, so many things that I have the opportunity to share. It’s a massive amount of work, a massive amount of support that’s gone into making that happen from, Wyoming Game and Fish Department, BLM, Forest Service, our agency partners that both contribute from a funding perspective as well as collaborative field perspective. Our team, you know, my team has poured blood, sweat, and tears into the work that we’ve done over time, but I get to speak to it, I guess, like in this instance, but it’s a massive monumental amount of effort that’s, you know, brought many of these results to the table that we can then share and talk about.

00:37:30
Speaker 2: So, Credit certainly shouldn’t go to me, but should go to all those people. And then we’re blessed to have the opportunity to speak on behalf of it and hopefully speak on behalf of the animals.

00:37:39
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:37:40
Speaker 2: Speaking of that fascinating research that you and this whole wide group of people are working on, another one of the projects you’ve worked on that’s very interesting, I think, not just to myself, but so many other people out there, is this study you guys have done in kind of South Central-ish Wyoming area. about the kind of interaction of mule deer and elk, right? Because it seems like, you know, it comes to elk, another one of our favorite poster childs in the wildlife world.

00:38:09
Speaker 1: We’re all infatuated with elk.

00:38:12
Speaker 2: It seems like, and I know this is speaking broadly, but they seem to be doing generally a lot better than mule deer.

00:38:18
Speaker 1: Can we speak to elk a little bit? What’s the high level status there? Where are they headed?

00:38:24
Speaker 2: Um, and then I’m going to, I’m going to dig a little bit into that study too, but, but give me your high level prognosis of the elk situation and what you’ve seen heard.

00:38:31
Speaker 1: Yeah. Elk are completely different than mule deer.

00:38:35
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:38:36
Speaker 1: Uh, not that it goes so far as to say this.

00:38:38
Speaker 3: But it’s, well, maybe I’ll just say it, but they’re, it’s, they’re almost like the white tail deer of the West, even white tail deer expanding West as well. But the beauty of elk and it’s certainly like, it’s the heyday of elk. right now and probably will be for quite some time but one of the primary reasons why that is is because of some of their attributes that are very different from mule deer elk are so plastic they just adjust adapt do whatever they can change things up in a pretty quick hurry it doesn’t mean that things don’t affect them on the landscape they’re just so much more plastic and adjustable than mule deer are They’re also, the diet that they persist on, in part because they’re a much larger ruminant, deer are highly selective. need generally high quality good foods. An elk can persist on those high quality good foods and they can use deer food just fine, but they’re adaptive enough given their digestive system that they can also persist on the foods that deer wouldn’t necessarily persist on, the grasses and other things that are just of lower quality on the landscape. And so you combine the two of those things, and what we’re seeing is large, robust populations. We see large and sometimes too robust of populations taking advantage of this private-public interface, which again is just a reflection of their adaptability. They figure out with time where they can seek these sort of reservoirs of safety or these refuges that they can just kind of be protected from. They ball up in these giant groups. you know, make them, make them hard to hunt, uh, in, in that way. And also we see them expanding just into ranges where they weren’t before. I mean, the turn of the, you know, turn of the 20th century. And we were looking at, you know, very low populations of elk and they’re kind of relegated to the mountains, right.

00:40:39
Speaker 1: Where they were.

00:40:40
Speaker 3: Less susceptible to being killed. So our long sort of thought was, well, that’s, that’s elk habitat. Well, probably you name it, whatever we have is elk habitat, you know, and we now have them thriving in the deserts where they, you know, perhaps weren’t historically, which again is a reflection of their adaptability, but they can, they can just do well almost anywhere essentially. And that puts them in a different place than what we see, what we see with mule deer.

00:41:10
Speaker 2: So what about the habitat fragmentation, the roads, the habitat loss issues, all like that, even with elk’s ability to adjust so much, is that still impacting them? I mean, there’s been all sorts of interesting migration work done by some of the people you’ve worked with in the past, like Arthur Middleton, I know, around these incredible migrations that elk are ongoing. What’s the unique aspect with elk and their ability to.

00:41:40
Speaker 1: Adjust to that versus mule deer? Yeah, great question.

00:41:44
Speaker 3: And we certainly see faithfulness by elk to these historic migratory routes. I mean, as you mentioned, you know, some of the work with Arthur Middleton and Matt Kaufman and their work in Northwest Wyoming with elk coming in and out of Yellowstone, the same principles apply just as an example that, you know, if those places are cut off or those animals are cut off from those places, then we’re going to see those consequences over the long term. What we see in elk that’s different from mule deer is elk will switch even just naturally, even if something hasn’t changed on the landscape, we may see an elk be resident one year and not migrate, and then they’ll migrate out the following year. And so just that situation in and of itself is a reflection of their adaptability. And part of the like switching or some of these animals becoming resident is when they find agricultural crops, for example, or these places where they’re protected, but the food is good consistently through the year, they may well just switch and just stop.

00:42:51
Speaker 1: Migrating and then take advantage of those places.

00:42:53
Speaker 3: And so while we can certainly see habitat fragmentation and loss affect elk in a negative way in various places, just given that adaptability, one, we see more flexibility in that regard that helps them persist even in a Even if we see negative trends in some places, as a whole, we see growing and expanding populations with time. And so that’s just kind of the general trend that elk are on. They just do exceptionally well. And they taste good, too. And probably in many instances, we need more tasty elk being harvested that are happening right now.

00:43:35
Speaker 2: So what about that study you guys did down there? Gosh, I don’t know. It was around Rock Springs, maybe.

00:43:41
Speaker 1: Is that right? how are elk.

00:43:45
Speaker 2: Competing with mule deer potentially? I mean, I’ve heard about the elk and mule deer competition. I’ve also heard, and I don’t know if you have any insight into this, but I’ve also heard, you know, that, you know, white tail deer are keeping, you know, they’re spreading like rats. They’re pushing out mule deer out competing mule deer.

00:43:58
Speaker 1: Is there truth to any of that? Yeah.

00:44:01
Speaker 3: So speaking from the elk perspective specifically, and while it probably varies from place to place as to how it plays out, what we saw in South central Wyoming. So basically like high elevation kind of arid, deserty, deserty landscape essentially. Uh, and we know also from work that’s been done at Starkey experimental range, um, in Oregon.

00:44:28
Speaker 1: And we showed it demonstrated here.

00:44:30
Speaker 3: Again in South central Wyoming is deer don’t like elk, like pretty much across the board. Deer don’t like elk elk will displace deer. So you take and level that up with these super groups of elk or what we see when elk move into various places. And then you layer that with elk adaptability. They do very well on deer food and other food. And so when they come into play and we have that interface, which again, competition is very hard to measure.

00:44:57
Speaker 1: It’s a very difficult thing to document.

00:44:59
Speaker 3: And so the question being growing elk, declining deer, is that coincident? Or is there some legit correlation between the two of them? And what we saw, South Central Wyoming, deer don’t like elk. Deer that are exposed to more elk use within their home ranges gain less.

00:45:18
Speaker 1: Fat through the course of the summer.

00:45:20
Speaker 2: You consider that perspective, then that translates into lower overwinter survival. Then that translates into lower fat in the spring, which then translates into lower fawn survival the following year.

00:45:31
Speaker 1: And then with time… those animals that end up in those or were living and are faithful to those elk holes, essentially, they’re just, they’re less fit over time.

00:45:44
Speaker 3: They’re, you know, survival, their offspring are compromised, their survival is compromised. And then we can just see basically those animals kind of lose out over time. And it’s, Many could speak on behalf of various places in the West where it was like, man, this ridge was covered in mule deer previously and now it’s just an elk hole. I don’t see a mule deer there at all. And so what that points to is while that’s anecdotal, our evidence would suggest that elk are certainly one of the negatively contributing factors to what we see in mule deer populations. Granted, there’s probably some nuance from place to place. Some work in Utah seems to have shown that maybe it’s.

00:46:23
Speaker 1: Less of an issue, but that also probably depends upon the density of elk, where deer are living all at the same time.

00:46:30
Speaker 3: But the cool part about that is elk then and elk management potentially represent like a landscape scale management action that could be used from the perspective of making things better for mule deer.

00:46:47
Speaker 1: But we’re faced with this sort.

00:46:49
Speaker 3: Of crossing point of, you know, do we manage abundance of elk for the sake of mule deer to some, to some degree?

00:46:57
Speaker 1: We can’t always have our cake and eat it too.

00:47:00
Speaker 3: And again, even as we talk about abundance of mule deer, like if you put another mouth on the landscape, that’s utilizing food that deer would otherwise have access to, like it is going to play a role once it gets to a level, um, sufficient to negatively impact them.

00:47:18
Speaker 2: Okay, so mule deer. We’re going to categorize them maybe as losers. I hate to say that, but we’re going to call them losers in the era of modern humans, maybe, in this current moment, while elk maybe are winners in this current moment, seemingly.

00:47:36
Speaker 1: What about pronghorn? Where do they sit? Are they winners, losers, or somewhere in between at the moment?

00:47:40
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:47:42
Speaker 1: Pronghorn, I’m kind of a sucker for pronghorn. I love pronghorn so much, and One of.

00:47:47
Speaker 3: The interesting elements of pronghorn is, I mean, they’re so unique compared with all of our other ungulates. They’re literally in a family all their own, have so many different attributes that conflict so greatly with our other ungulates. And yet they’re kind of bread and butter in the West too. And certainly within the state.

00:48:09
Speaker 1: Of Wyoming where we hold the lion’s share of the world’s population. So pronghorn are certainly, I.

00:48:19
Speaker 3: Wouldn’t characterize them as winners if we were gonna classify them in that way. A lot of their ranges are being fragmented or they’re experiencing habitat loss over time. And the same principles apply to how we’ve talked about habitat loss with mule deer elk. Like we lose space, we lose food on the landscape and it’s gonna manifest in population level changes. And then we’ve also seen, You know, drought that’s persisted in many instances across the West that hasn’t necessarily been to the benefit of pronghorn. And then we see, of course, bad winters that come in and escalate and cause complications in a number of different ways. One of the interesting aspects of pronghorn, which many would already know and appreciate, is just also.

00:49:07
Speaker 1: How they navigate fences.

00:49:09
Speaker 3: And when we consider, you know, what we’ve done across the West, um, we fenced the crap load of it.

00:49:16
Speaker 1: Right. And while pronghorn can do okay, they bop.

00:49:19
Speaker 3: Under fences, which also means seep fencing can be very difficult for them to navigate through. But one of the greatest complications is when we get those bad winters, you know, everybody, you know, you hear the phrase of, you know, pronghorn stacked up along the fence line and just a bunch of them dying right there. Well, Part of what we’ve learned and colleagues of mine here at the university have demonstrated, part of the way in which pronghorn mitigate or cope or contend with bad winters like that is they move. They can move great distances to be able to contend with and navigate those environmental conditions. But when they get bumped up against fences like that, they don’t have the freedom to move and then they get stuck there.

00:50:05
Speaker 1: And then what ends up happening is we lose a lot of them.

00:50:09
Speaker 3: And so those there, there’s a very clear sort of pathway to how we can do better on behalf of pronghorn in that way. Um, but also be mindful of what that means for them over time, especially when we have bad winters, drought and other aspects as well. You know, the same sort of thing, the more The more we can facilitate freedom of movement, access to resources, the better it is.

00:50:32
Speaker 1: For the animals.

00:50:33
Speaker 3: And pronghorn are a bit more maybe nomadic or adaptive in that perspective, best we know anyway with regards to how they use the landscape. But they have to have the freedom of movement to be able to capitalize on that at the same time. The other cool part about pronghorn, which we can see in various places, is their reproductive capacity and ability to grow is, I mean, next level compared with all of our other ungulates, just at the level which they twin or even produce triplets in that regard. So we can really, we can definitely see those boom and bust cycles within pronghorn populations over time. We just haven’t seen sort of the boom and return maybe that we’ve seen in the past in a lot of different places. And how quickly can pronghorn adapt to new habitat, to new crossings or blockages on their routes? You know, if mule deer are very stuck in their ways and elk are very plastic, our pronghorn, where do they sit on that front? Yeah, much more adaptive in that regard, in part just because of their, essentially their more nomadic behavior in that regard, which some of my colleagues here from Halsoria to Jared Merkel and others have demonstrated here in Wyoming. And they’re also, to some degree, means of habitat fragmentation or disturbance across the landscape, they’re also less sensitive to. For example, while there is certainly direct habitat loss associated with wind energy development, they seem just less sensitive to it than some of our other ungulates and are more willing to take advantage of those places. So that does give us increasing potential, right, to be able to facilitate a landscape that can then that pronghorn can then take advantage of at the same time. So certainly more plastic in that regard.

00:52:28
Speaker 2: So same thing with mule deer, if we can establish more crossings, more corridors, connectivity of habitat, reducing those, those blockages, that’s one of those most impactful than levers we can pull.

00:52:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Yep.

00:52:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Here’s an animal that I’m wondering, I’m guessing, from what I know, would imagine is very different in how it’s being influenced by the modern world, and that’s moose. You’ve done some interesting things with moose as well. I’m very jealous of how you’ve been able to do so many of these different projects with so many different amazing animals. But you’ve been looking, it seems, like a lot more on the impacts of weather patterns and climate and things like that and habitat impacts.

00:53:15
Speaker 1: Than on moose.

00:53:17
Speaker 2: We’re where’s, uh, where’s Bullwinkle these days? How, how are moose doing in Wyoming and elsewhere? And, um, you know, are the same things that are impacting moose in the North, Northeast impacting them here in the West?

00:53:29
Speaker 1: Cause you know, I’m familiar with a.

00:53:31
Speaker 2: Lot of the winter tick issues and whatnot that really seem to be an issue in that part of the country.

00:53:36
Speaker 1: Um, is that manifesting here too?

00:53:39
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:53:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, it absolutely is.

00:53:41
Speaker 3: And so it’s, can be localized or variable, but it can certainly influence our moose and our moose populations here. What we’ve seen through some collaborative work that we’ve done, and we kind of already know to some degree with regards to tick, but it essentially corroborates it, and then ties it back to these weather patterns, is when we have warm and mild winters, it is not to the benefit of moose in a whole suite of different ways, but certainly from a tick perspective. And Many may know, but tick loads can be as bad on animals to draw them to the level of being anemic, which comes at great cost to the animal themselves. And then it’s also going to manifest in nutritional outcomes down the road at the same time, even if they persist through it, because it can result in loss at the same.

00:54:29
Speaker 1: Time as well.

00:54:29
Speaker 3: So tick’s certainly a thing, variable with regards to what we see in the West compared with what you may see in the Northeast. The other thing with moose that we see, I mean, moose just like big picture, you may see as like stable or maybe somewhat declining. What we see, what we documented about a decade ago and what we kind of continue to see is there’s various places where moose have kind of expanded into at the same time. Or some of the more newer, newly established populations that seem to be more robust and potentially growing than we do in the other places that have long been established, you know, for for many decades which if you if you just kind of think about that from the perspective a lot of the other things that we’ve we’ve shared or talked about the newer places the newer habitats that animals are accessing those animals doing better what that also means is you have a lower density population new unexploited habitat and so it’s going to manifest from a nutritional perspective nutrition is good there for the animals and so That in and of itself should be a reflection of like why we’re seeing that. And it comes from that fundamental building block and whether or not animals have the resources to do what they need to do and to thrive. So all of that, but then also, you know, the variation, the struggling moose populations that we’ve seen with time and.

00:55:54
Speaker 1: You know, with some older work.

00:55:56
Speaker 3: Done by folks out of Canada where they measured heat sensitivity in moose. And there’s a bit of controversy around the paper, but in essence, moose are very heat sensitive. There are Northern adapted ungulates, you know, long legs, big body, dark pellage. And, um, They’re lower critical temperature, like lower thermal neutral zone, which I think this is fascinating in of itself. We’ve actually never measured it. Despite folks in Canada taking a moose in the middle of winter and very cold temperatures and just hosing it down with ice cold water. And it’s like, it’s as if they just don’t get cold, which is pretty fascinating. But they get hot at very low temperatures and they don’t sweat. So an elk can cover 90% of their body and sweat. Moose don’t sweat. And so if they’re just going to, you know, adjust to it sort of physiologically in that way, they’re going to pant, open mouth pant, which think of our dogs panting.

00:56:52
Speaker 1: Our dogs also are not carrying around the body mass that a moose is. And so that’s energetically costly.

00:57:01
Speaker 3: Also, if they’re hot, then appetite, you know, appetite is suppressed or they’re having to behaviorally adjust because of it. which all should then cascade into nutritional consequences, which we see nutrition limiting moose populations in a number of different ranges. And so that then led us down the pathway in thinking about what that could mean for moose. And I was sort of stuck on that heat sensitivity aspect. And we were working on moose here in Southeast Wyoming, had their GPS collars program for an eight hour mortality switch. If they’re not move, they don’t move for eight hours. They go into mortality. In the middle of summer, we started having mortalities. We’d hike into a female to quickly determine what the cause of death was, and it’d be a live moose wandering off. And sort of originally, it’s like, man, what the crap is going on with our collars? But then sort of digging in more and figuring out where these animals were, they were.

00:57:56
Speaker 1: In bed sites.

00:57:58
Speaker 3: And when we were getting these mortality alerts, it was on hot days, which then sort of like, okay, I’m already sort of thinking about the heat sensitivity aspect. So maybe they’re seeking thermal refuge by bedding down in spots during the day.

00:58:12
Speaker 1: So with some.

00:58:14
Speaker 3: Early work, Tana Verjoux to Rebecca Levine and other folks in our group, digging in to understand.

00:58:20
Speaker 1: What those bed sites look like.

00:58:22
Speaker 3: And what we learned is that moose were very choosy in where they bedded down, selecting for cool microclimate. So cooler spots than what was available and certainly spots in the shade. What’s critical about thinking about shade is that will reduce thermal radiation, right? That gets them in the shade. So they’re going to reduce the heat they gain. But for a big bodied animal, that’s really heat sensitive. What we’ve learned is that’s not enough. They actually need to get rid of heat. They need to dump heat. And again, open mouth panning, very inefficient. So what we saw during the really warm days is that moose were bedding down in wet ground or in standing water. So that conductive heat loss and losing heat to the moisture. And so we’ve demonstrated that in two different systems now. We continue and then we modeled it with regards to what it means for the moose. And I think where we’ve then come with that is a kind of a newfound appreciation for what these riparian systems are for moose. And, you know, we often consider though they can also live in, you know, other shrubby habitats as well. You know, if we consider them repairing obligates because of the willow being their primary diet, which is true, but also they may well be repairing obligates because they need that wet ground or that standing water to seek to have that thermal refuge through the course of the summer. And if they don’t, it’s going to lead to heat stress and then the scaling up of.

00:59:47
Speaker 1: Nutritional consequences through the course of the summer.

00:59:49
Speaker 3: And so if we think about the conditions that we’ve had across a lot of the West with warming and drying conditions, that is not going in a positive way for moose. And if anything, based on what we’ve learned, it sort of reinforces the importance that like maintaining these mesic wetter areas, repairing areas with good moisture is going to be very critical to keeping moose in the places that we have them if we stay on the sort of warming and drying trend, which has also then led us, we’re currently working on beavers as well and understanding how beavers alter the microclimate for moose to understand that kind of interface between those, between those two critters, which is pretty cool.

01:00:31
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:00:32
Speaker 1: So we can’t, we can’t change drought.

01:00:35
Speaker 2: We can’t change the heat, but we could help beavers, you know, establish more frequently. And then I also know you’re doing some work on, you know, habitat projects, you know, human, you know, human influenced habitat projects. Does that seem to be, I know you’re relatively early in that project, but does that seem to be making a difference? Is there, Are there some levers we can pull more manually to improve those riparian areas for moose to help them better cope with these warming summers and drought conditions?

01:01:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, more to come in that regard.

01:01:08
Speaker 3: We’re certainly seeing that beavers are altering things to some degree. The level with which it’ll occur remains to be seen yet, and we’ll measure that with time. The habitat treatment aspect, what’s interesting is as much focus as we’ve done on elk or mule deer, with regards to habitat treatment, setting back succession, those sorts of things. So little has been done with moose, which kind of led us down that path. And, you know, willows being in riparian systems, more consistent moisture. And if you cut down willow, sometimes they come back pretty vigorously. And we are seeing that in some of our treatment plots, but we’re also measuring how good that food is that’s recovering and coming back. And We’re very excited about that because if it works, it could be a very prescriptive way to improve moose habitat from a nutritional perspective, which again is another element. Like when they’re dealing with heat and everything else, it’s also affecting nutrition. And then that yields us the ability to kind of also pull a lever on the nutritional aspect in a way to potentially make things better for moose at the same time. So we’ll need a couple more years yet to get those answers firmly placed. And we’re optimistic and hopeful that there could be a really clear pathway to improving things for moose.

01:02:30
Speaker 2: What about the whole fragmentation and habitat loss side of things? We talked about that so much with pronghorn, elk, and mule deer. How do moose adjust to a new energy development or a new road or new housing?

01:02:45
Speaker 1: Similarly or different? Man, we know so much less in that regard.

01:02:51
Speaker 3: And I think it’s mainly because of just the places that moose typically live in. You know, if they’re focusing on these kind of stringers, these riparian systems and areas, and then oftentimes, you know, those riparian systems are coming off the mountainside, so coming off of public land and perhaps down into private land, you know, within these rangelands.

01:03:17
Speaker 1: And so we just see so much less or even have.

01:03:20
Speaker 3: The opportunity to determine what that actually means for them because it’s just so much less an issue for them than it is for these animals that live in these more open ranges and other habitats. But certainly to some degree, like, and we also.

01:03:37
Speaker 1: It’s the same thing, right?

01:03:38
Speaker 3: While we see moose living in these like rural developments, we see mule deer living in these rural developments and can lead us all to the temptation of, well, it doesn’t matter for them. But we certainly know it does matter for them. And just because we see a moose or a mule deer in our backyard doesn’t mean that our presence isn’t negatively affecting kind of the population as a whole as we alter habitat. But by and large, just so much less of an issue for moose in most places than it is for our other ungulate populations.

01:04:06
Speaker 1: All right.

01:04:07
Speaker 2: Here’s another one that I have, that I think you or at least some of your colleagues have done some interesting stuff on. related to human impact, like human presence impact. And this is one that I’m curious if you know anything about the other animals too, but what about bighorns? I know there’s been some interesting studies done in recent years about the impact of human recreation on bighorn habitat use. I’d love to hear any insight you have into that, but then also kind of high level, what’s the bighorn situation these days? I know they have a whole other set of challenges compared to some of these other animals that continue to knock them down in a lot of places. Yeah.

01:04:44
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:04:45
Speaker 3: So with regards to the recreation aspect, and this is, man, this is one of those, one of those difficult things, right? It’s certainly through the COVID era or even just like in years prior to now coming, you know, outdoor recreation is becoming a bigger and bigger thing and a bigger.

01:05:04
Speaker 1: Bigger industry. And that’s largely good. Right. But again, with, with everything that we’ve talked about in our presence on the landscape, while that may seem benign, doesn’t matter, not influential, what we’re beginning to see, especially at the levels of recreation that we’re seeing in a number of places now, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it doesn’t matter for the animal populations that live there. And some colleagues of mine, so Allie.

01:05:33
Speaker 3: Kortemansch with Wyoming Game and Fish, with some of her work through a master’s in assessing the role of skiing on sheep in the Tetons. And then one of my prior students, Jaron Kolick, working on sheep in the Sierra Nevadas, both with regards to rock climbing into birthing areas for big corn sheep in the Sierras and also skiing again there.

01:05:59
Speaker 1: And while there’s.

01:06:00
Speaker 3: Nuance with every one of those aspects, sheep can by all means be displaced by those recreational activities over winter. And so what that’s going to mean is displacement may be fine scale. They get bumped off temporarily and then come back. But then imagine that, you know, as you as you increase that recreation, if they’re bumped multiple times through the day over and over and over again, basically.

01:06:28
Speaker 2: Like the energetic costs or lack of feeding opportunity that that animal is contending with or to the degree where do they just end up shifting out and so-called like abandoning particular ranges because that disturbance is, is so prominent with, within that landscape.

01:06:45
Speaker 1: And so.

01:06:47
Speaker 3: What that is essentially done is it’s just kind of elevated our one, either appreciation or the perspective that we need to consider that it’s not just these activities that are out of, you know, that have been measured with time from energy development, habitat loss, or even other things that result in direct mortality of animals. These instances that result in significant behavioral alteration that are chronic through time can.

01:07:17
Speaker 1: Certainly have a measurable impact on populations.

01:07:20
Speaker 3: And so it’s a hard thing for us to wrestle with sometimes because we don’t want to keep people from being in the outdoors, but just like, I mean, Too much of a good thing isn’t necessarily a good thing anymore with time. And so that’s what we’re seeing play out with our bighorn populations in some instances. And that’s also going to play a role with our other ungulate populations as well. I mean, certainly my colleague and some of the folks in Colorado working on understanding what that looks like for elk in some of the places with really high levels of outdoor recreation.

01:07:53
Speaker 1: And so same thing.

01:07:56
Speaker 3: When it results in displacement of animals or continual displacement of animals, whether that’s because we completely cut out the habitat or we just affect an animal’s ability to use it with time is going to scale up to have population level consequences. So it all ties together in the same way, whether it’s energy loss from the displacement or it’s just it’s food loss on the landscape.

01:08:20
Speaker 1: Fundamentally, It comes from the same place.

01:08:23
Speaker 3: Just whatever is operating to create that consequence may be different.

01:08:28
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:08:28
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, with all these animals, right, it’s no one single thing. It’s this death by a thousand cuts. It’s just we’re slowly stacking. I don’t know. Think about like a Jenga tower just pulling out block after block after block, all these different little things.

01:08:42
Speaker 2: And you can just see how no– species no you know subpopulation can handle all of these things constantly stressing them constantly reducing their habitat constantly reducing the available nutrition and then not have some kind of repercussions from that. And another one of those major kind of jangle blocks being pulled out of the tower for bighorns.

01:09:03
Speaker 1: Is pneumonia, right?

01:09:05
Speaker 2: Yes, sir.

01:09:06
Speaker 1: And that seems.

01:09:09
Speaker 2: So unique compared to the other animals. But what’s, I know you guys have been doing some interesting work around pneumonia and then recovery from that related to like habitat quality, things like that, right? Um, what are you guys finding on that front and how that might be able to help us mitigate maybe some of those challenges?

01:09:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.

01:09:28
Speaker 3: So what kind of what we’ve seen West wide or typical pattern, like these, uh, pneumonia related pathogens, you know, originating from domestic in some form or another, once they get into a population of bighorn, typically we can see all age die off.

01:09:44
Speaker 1: It can clear house.

01:09:46
Speaker 3: Um, But then thereafter, we see a number of different patterns across populations where we’re dealing with the chronically infected population.

01:09:55
Speaker 1: And a lot of our bighorn populations, that’s what we’re managing. The pathogens are there. They’re chronically infected.

01:10:02
Speaker 3: But then why do we see so much variation from one population to the next? And for a long time, and perhaps for good reasons, because best we understood at that stage, the field was focused on sort of chasing bugs, trying to look at different strain types with regards to the pathogens to see if some were more virulent, more effective than others.

01:10:22
Speaker 1: From one range to the next.

01:10:26
Speaker 3: I guess being the new, I don’t know, the nutritional ecologist that I am and what we saw within, you know, kind of west wide with so many different populations where we’d see them grow, chronically infected population would grow, it hit some abundance and then it would crash and it would grow and then it would crash. Well, the other thing that’s happening within them, which again comes to the fundamental building block, as they grow, competition.

01:10:49
Speaker 1: For food is increasing. Nutrition of animals are declining.

01:10:53
Speaker 2: And then my thought was, well, why wouldn’t that then increase their vulnerability if their body fat levels are declining? Is that affecting their ability to contend with the pneumonia pathogens and or does contending with the pneumonia-related pathogens come at some energetic cost in general with just these animals contending with it? So through long-term collaborative work in Northwest Wyoming with so many different partners with time, we sort of dug in to try to address and look at that interface between nutrition and disease with this pneumonia complex. And just to shorten the whole story, basically the answer is, Yes, there is a very, very strong interface between nutrition and the pneumonia complex to the extent where animals that are infected with pathogens through the course of the summer, and we consider those primary pathogens, microplasma, ova, pneumonia, being the primary one in the suite of other pastorella-related pathogens. And if they’re carrying three pathogens through the course of the summer, Basically, what that can do is scale up to come at the cost of fat gain that’s equivalent to that of them rearing a lamb through the course of the summer. Lactation is the most energetically costly thing that female ungulates will endure.

01:12:21
Speaker 1: And what we’re seeing is that female is contending with three pathogens.

01:12:24
Speaker 3: This comes from Brittany Wagler, Rachel Smiley’s work. Three pathogens itself will carry more energetic burden through the course of the summer than then it will be for a female to successfully rear a lamb. And in addition to that, at the same time, so that’s the energetic burden that it carries. Then what we also see is that animals that are fatter, whether it’s going into the summer or going into the winter, are more likely to be able to clear the pathogens through that following season. So we see huge linkages between nutrition and pathogens. Pathogens come at a huge energetic burden.

01:12:59
Speaker 2: And if animals are fatter, they’re more likely to be able to shed and clear the pathogen so we can no longer detect it. So then when you think about population to population and you consider that dynamic of rising abundance and then subsequent crashes, part of that is when we have situations or ranges that are less nutritionally robust, when you add the cost of pathogens to the picture, Females are just no longer able to both deal with the cost of pathogens as well as deal with rearing lambs. So we often see it influence lamb recruitment to a severe degree.

01:13:38
Speaker 1: And then also rising density.

01:13:40
Speaker 3: So decreasing nutritional condition means more individuals within the population lack the nutritional buffer to contend with the pathogen or clear the pathogen, which can then contribute to increased prevalence and then a bigger effect on the population population.

01:13:56
Speaker 1: As a whole. So what that does is it kind of changes the tune a little bit from one place to the next in appreciation, again, this fundamental building block in nutrition, and we’re adding this huge nutritional burden.

01:14:09
Speaker 3: But then if we think about it from a management perspective, again, it can come back to can we provide a nutritional buffer to populations? What can we do with their habitat to improve it? And then facilitate their ability to contend with the pathogens? Or two, can we manage nutrition via population management by moderating out density, not getting to the maximum abundance that we can, moderating density. So we’re managing nutrition via population management to then just facilitate their ability to contend with the pathogens and try to get away from these like huge cycles and abundance that we see to just kind of moderate that out. So such similar principles to what we’ve talked about already. And how can we manage nutrition? How can we give these animals a buffer? It’s just a different perspective when it comes to bighorn sheep and dealing with a disease in this perspective that comes at an energetic cost.

01:15:01
Speaker 2: Well, and bighorns are so unique in that, and I guess correct me if I’m wrong here, but when I think of bighorn habitat, I’m thinking typically high up there, kind of rocky, more alpine, more rugged habitat, where the habitat work like you’re doing down in a riparian area where moose are, that seems like something that, you know, hands-on we can do something about. Or when I’m trying to improve, I don’t know, doing a burn or something that’s going to help elk habitat or mule deer habitat, that seems like, okay, I understand.

01:15:31
Speaker 1: How to do that.

01:15:33
Speaker 2: But then how do you improve habitat for bighorns way up high in that rugged stuff? Or I’m also thinking like we’re losing habitat for mule deer because of development or fragmentation, but I’m I’m not at least imagining bighorn being impacted by that kind of stuff as much because they’re typically, again, higher in these landscapes where people aren’t building houses. Of course, I know they sometimes come down. But talk to me about that. Yeah.

01:16:01
Speaker 1: So similar but different in that perspective as well. And you’re right.

01:16:05
Speaker 3: Some of the high alpine that these animals occupy, there’s not much we can do in the realm of habitat manipulation.

01:16:12
Speaker 2: Maybe.

01:16:13
Speaker 3: pray for rain, like in many of these other circumstances with drought conditions and that it’s kind of out of our control. But this at the same time, again, population management is habitat management.

01:16:26
Speaker 1: At least that’s how we should be thinking about it.

01:16:28
Speaker 3: So there is that opportunity and that can occur at the landscape scale. But the other thing that affects, um, sheep populations, and these are even, you know, populations that live in the more arid regions. then those that are like migrating to super high elevation or even staying at high elevation is conifer encroachment. And so again, it’s that element of habitat succession. And bighorn sheep don’t like trees. They’re pretty averse to them. And those trees and that conifer encroachment is also influencing the food availability on the landscape at the same time as well. And so ways in which we can basically unlock and open up that habitat so that they can continue to persist and take advantage of by way of either, you know, mechanical or prescribed fire being options in that degree. And I probably should have mentioned it before, you know, prescribed fire being one of the most effective habitat management tools that we have, but even from prescribed fire to the large mega fires that we’re seeing because of how we’ve managed habitat in the past, you know, and now we have invasive species that just like complicate that, that whole, um, sort of, uh, sequence that we used to be able to use and follow to improve habitat. And so that’s like a newfound problem that we end up having to deal with that writ large is not like cheatgrass in particular.

01:17:48
Speaker 1: It’s not good for any of our ungulates as a whole.

01:17:50
Speaker 3: It’s a functional reduction in the nutritional availability on the landscape or the capacity of that landscape. And so That’s the other complication too. You know, a number of sheep populations are dealing with sheep grass encroachment. And then when we’re seeking to unlock or open habitat in that way, adds that level of complication at the same time.

01:18:10
Speaker 1: And, you know, the other thing.

01:18:12
Speaker 3: The other thing with like, what can we do if we can’t manipulate alpine habitat? For example, these, these animals, part of their adaptation to the systems that they live in is this careful management of how they allocate resources across the season, and then gain fat or manage their fat levels accordingly. So one, their fat levels are influenced by the environment and habitat, but they also exhibit this program to the place that they live in. And so even when we can, maybe we can’t manipulate alpine habitat, but maybe we can do something to the lower ranges or to their winter range to improve their habitat. That way, those animals will integrate that for us by way of maintenance of fat through the course of the winter and maybe even gaining fat that they’ll then carry with them. It’s also fundamentally, again, why migration is so important. It’s access to resources, but Those animals are like building and integrating those resources and packing a bunch of groceries on their back and then taking it with them. So sometimes, you know, we may feel stuck, but maybe we can do what we can with regards to habitat management in one form or another in that way. And then the other thing with sheep populations, there’s a lot of work going on right now. for test and remove programs to see if, if we do have a good opportunity to be able to pull the pathogen level lever essentially by removing infected animals from a population with the effort to reduce prevalence, um, over time. So continued evaluation in that regard, um, within, within that system, but I think we’re pretty excited.

01:19:55
Speaker 1: No.

01:19:55
Speaker 3: And we’re pretty excited about the evidence associated with the nutrition element, because that certainly does point us in a pathway of something that we, in many instances, may well be able to help manage and do better on.

01:20:10
Speaker 1: Behalf of the population.

01:20:12
Speaker 2: So what if we zoom out? Let’s zoom back out then. Let’s back off, bighorns. Let’s look kind of west-wide across all these different ungulates we’ve talked about. I know that uh, biologists, scientists, researchers, you guys are loath to do this. So, uh, forgive me, um, but, uh, but imagine that 50 years have passed by and current trends that we are experiencing right now continue. If the current pathway or iron continues 50 years into the future, paint me a picture of what you think that future for these ungulate species would likely look like given the current trajectory.

01:21:03
Speaker 3: I mean, we may still have a lot of elk, um, but many, many of our other species are certainly not going to have, not going to have the foothold that they do now. Um, Yeah, that’s like nobody wants to speak negative in that way, but specifically aligning with like if we keep doing what we’re doing right now.

01:21:27
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:21:29
Speaker 3: And I think that’s the important part of what you just said.

01:21:33
Speaker 1: This isn’t to paint an outcome now like, well, we can’t do anything. We’re screwed. We talked about a lot of.

01:21:38
Speaker 2: Things that we can potentially do or minimally be mindful of. And in addition, like some work that needs to be done yet. And I think as.

01:21:50
Speaker 1: And it’s the right kind of work.

01:21:52
Speaker 3: I think one of our, you know, perhaps the greatest struggles is we consider, you know, our human population and our needs and how we use a landscape. That’s probably always going to take priority, right? But at the same time, if we can be mindful of what it means, either accept what it means for how we use the landscape, and then I hope at the same time, with the right kind of evidence and the things we learn over time, you know, it may not just be enough to say, well, this is bad for the animal, so don’t do it. Part of it is learning more about what makes these animals tick so that people connect with the animals in a different way. So perhaps the animals have more traction, you know, when it comes time to decision making at the table, because they’re not just some random mule deer that lives out on the landscape. Like you look at her, there’s a reason she is where she is. And perhaps the reason that is comes from many many generations that preceded her and she has a story to tell um same thing with pronghorn or elk or sheep like getting under the hood and really being able to uncover those aspects is it’s that apathy notion right the more we can do that the better off we are in that regard so folks appreciate them in that way and so i guess i sort of flipped your question.

01:23:11
Speaker 1: Around of like what can we do what what do we need to.

01:23:13
Speaker 3: Do going into the future but the truth is like just the way in which we live, the way in which we use landscapes. And for many reasons, we’re not going in a positive direction for many of these animals. Not to say in some places we’re not doing it well, because in some places we are.

01:23:31
Speaker 1: But big picture, as a.

01:23:33
Speaker 3: General rule, we’re not going in a super positive direction, which I think is important for us perhaps to carry, to not just be downtrodden and depressed and think, well, we’re screwed. No, it’s just let’s be mindful of where we’re at and what it’s going to mean.

01:23:47
Speaker 1: For us going forward. And let’s, let’s do the best we can to do things, do things in the right way. It’s right. It’s Teddy Roosevelt’s reference to, you know, it’s.

01:23:57
Speaker 3: Not just, you know, the generation we have now, but it’s those in the womb of time, like your kids, you know, my kids, our grandkids, their, their kids. That’s kind of where, where we need to like have our heart set at the same time, not just the here and now, but what it, what it means as we go forward. And also why are we, why do we have what we have right now? What did we do to mess it up? What are, what are the good things that we, that we did learn from that and apply it accordingly.

01:24:27
Speaker 2: Amen.

01:24:28
Speaker 1: So let’s end this with a little bit of that action kind of focus.

01:24:33
Speaker 2: Uh, and I’m going to, I’m going to make you do one more thing that I’m, that I’m sure most people in your position don’t like to do, but let’s talk politics a little bit or, or, uh, or management decisions let’s imagine um stay with me here let’s imagine you became um governor of wyoming and you had unlimited unlimited budget all right so somehow amazing fundraising amazing donations you guys have a massive new budget available to you and i’m going to use wyoming as a as kind of a template that maybe folks could apply to any other state in the West or the West in general. But if you were the governor of Wyoming and you had an unlimited budget and you could do two things that would help make sure that the future for ungulates in the West was much better than the current trend, what are the two levers you would pull?

01:25:31
Speaker 1: Like what are two.

01:25:32
Speaker 2: Specific things you would do if you had unlimited power and unlimited money to change this trajectory? What are those two things you would do? Is this where I say, Mark, my connection.

01:25:49
Speaker 1: Man. Dang. That’s, that’s a heck of a question.

01:25:53
Speaker 3: And like, if I get a bunch of like, I can refer any, like any like critical comments or anything, just to your email.

01:26:03
Speaker 2: Right.

01:26:03
Speaker 1: Absolutely. You get, you get no flag for this. This is my fault. Man.

01:26:10
Speaker 2: So I think, I.

01:26:14
Speaker 3: Think that the like knee jerk, the knee jerk is going to be right. Well, if I have all the money in the world, then let’s go in and like, let’s lock in habitat in these places. Let’s, you know, it doesn’t mean more national parks, but like, let’s, let’s protect it. It’s like conservation easements, essentially. Let’s protect all this land. Let’s do all these things to like, lock it in for generations to come. And maybe that would be like a part of it in sort of like thinking.

01:26:45
Speaker 1: About what we can do to.

01:26:48
Speaker 3: Protect what we have across generational time. Because that is one important element of it. But I think maybe, probably blindside everybody, but I think… I think one of the biggest things, or maybe like my number one in that instance, and this is really hard, right? Because we’re not just managing or conserving space or habitat.

01:27:15
Speaker 1: This all comes down to people, right? We make a mess of everything, but we also all have to have a livelihood. We have to be able to live.

01:27:22
Speaker 3: We ideally have opportunities to engage in nature, in the outdoors.

01:27:29
Speaker 1: And so I think like ground zero….

01:27:32
Speaker 3: Ground zero would be getting everybody in the same room and just having these difficult conversations. And also just like getting over some of like the misnomers that are out there of like, well, if we have this regulation here, then the world’s going to come to an end because then we’re never going to be able to do this ever again. And just, it’s almost like come up with a, with more of more of like a unified strategy and write this, like what are the odds of that ever happening? But, I so believe we’re all just like, we’re all speaking our own things, right? Like hunters, we need to have animals to go hunt. And those in the energy industry, like don’t, you know, don’t lock up all the land. Cause we need, you know, we need to be able to go in there and do this or name, name, whatever activity.

01:28:21
Speaker 1: Right. But I think in acknowledging all of those things, I think we can integrate all of those things in such a better way. And so if I had all the money in the world to be able to get everybody at the table, and if, you know, to make sure that that was possible and one from like an educational perspective, but also then like, you know, a form of like, what are we going to do? And that’s not like a one day thing, which is almost impossible to pull off, right? It’d be days of this sort of thing while simultaneously sort of integrating somewhere in here. the right kind of enlightenment of like, what do we need to know about these animals that’s going to help folks think about them in a different way and in a way where we just own.

01:29:05
Speaker 3: We take this for granted. This is where we’re going to end up down the road. No more pretending. No more, it’s going to be fine. No, let’s just own it. Let’s own things across the board. Let’s have the difficult conversations. And then let’s see where that can get us going forward. Because even in the realm of like, locking up habitat or doing whatever, like we’re still dealing with the people element, you know, when it comes, when it comes to it at the end of the day. And man, it’s a, it’s a hard thing. And so if there was any way to do better in that regard, both with the way of everybody owning where we’re all at and come to the picture of the appreciation of all of those different sort of interests across the board. and then what it means for us in going forward and what it means for the animals and thinking about how we appreciate respect and steward them. I think is, I think that, that would be, that would be where my focus would be.

01:30:03
Speaker 2: Well, I would say unlimited budget or not. Those kinds of things are, are there steps we can take in that direction even right now, right? We can all, we can all, come to terms with some of the things you just said there, we can all own the fact that we all make an impact, that all of our communities make an impact, that all of our pursuits make an impact, that all of our purchases or, or, or decisions in some way do. Right.

01:30:28
Speaker 1: So how do you, how do you own that?

01:30:29
Speaker 2: How do you become a part of the solution yourself? How do you ask your elected officials or your, you know, managing agencies or whoever it is to, to help, you know, make the right decisions to, to give them the ability to make the right decisions. Um, all of those things are, are, are within our power little by little, right? Kind of how do you eat an elephant?

01:30:52
Speaker 1: You do it one bite at a time.

01:30:56
Speaker 2: I guess that’s kind of a hopeful way to look at it. None of that seems impossible, not easy, but not impossible. So, so I appreciate that, Kevin, I appreciate this chat and, and something you mentioned there, the fact that, you know, we need this, this level of enlightenment, this, this level of insight and understanding in order to do any of those things, right? If we don’t have that knowledge, if we don’t understand not only the macro trends, but also like the individual stories, it’s really hard to get people to connect with this stuff. And you and your colleagues and so many others in your field, especially there in Wyoming, you guys are just doing tremendous work in helping, you know, illuminate this stuff and then connect people to the stories of what these populations and what these individuals are going through. and what they need to exist in the future for our kids and grandkids and for this wider world. So I want to thank you for this chat, but then I really want to thank you for that work that you and so many of your colleagues have been doing.

01:32:00
Speaker 1: No, I appreciate that, man. Thank you for the opportunity to talk. It was great. And man, we’re blessed to do what we do.

01:32:09
Speaker 3: We get the opportunity to experience something very intimate and you know, that, that few actually get to experience at that level, whether it be with the animals, whether it be with what we get to see within them. And man, that’s our, it’s like our blessing, our, our privilege, but at the same time, man, it’s, we carry a duty to be able to take that in the right way to others and share that with others.

01:32:35
Speaker 1: And so we’re, can always do better, but goodness, we’re sure, we’re sure.

01:32:39
Speaker 3: Trying to do that and trying to make a difference in that way. So, and this, Thanks for the opportunity to help share and spread the word in that regard.

01:32:47
Speaker 2: And hey, let’s circle back in 50 years and compare notes and see how we did on your prediction.

01:32:52
Speaker 1: Sounds excellent, man. I look forward to that.

01:32:56
Speaker 3: Hopefully we talk before 50 years go by.

01:32:58
Speaker 1: I hope so too. All right, Kevin. Thank you. Thank you again. Thanks, Mark. Appreciate it.