Timber Wars from the Lower Decks

 

Photo by Jacob Colvin from Pexels

The Timber Wars podcast from NPR and OPB was, for me, like traveling in time. Although I was an insignificant cog in the grand wheel of the controversy, I was witness to some of the drama. It was a brief, important experience that has resonated through my life. Being a young outsider, I was perhaps ill-equipped to recognize the complexity and nuance of what was happening in and around those old growth forests, but I was a witness nonetheless.

It’s fair to say that I knew very little about the world I was entering in 1994. I remember sporadic national news reports about battles over logging controversies in the late 1980s and 1990s but that seemed very far away from central Texas, where I grew up. Expansive swaths of federal lands are unknown in the state and, while logging is economically important, less than 10% of Texas forests are located on public lands. The case was much different out west, due to complex interactions between federal land management policy, old-growth forest ecology, global economics, the regional logging culture of the Pacific Northwest, the idealistic fervor of the conservation movement, and a maturing understanding of ecological systems – and I was ripe for an education.

I skipped my college graduation ceremony in exchange for a paid internship with the Bureau of Land Management, a federal agency I’d never before heard about. I drove 2000 miles west to Oregon, with little more than some clothes, a few books and a pair of cheap hiking boots, in a two-door Mazda. My job, in a nutshell, was to drive around at night, playing recorded hoots into the night and listening for a response from actual Northern Spotted Owls. 

Within weeks, I had worn the soles of my boots off. I learned to quote Jerry Franklin’s research. I picked up the mantra of my co-workers, “It’s not about the owl.” I explained to skeptics that it was efficient technology and shipping logs overseas for processing – not owls or salamanders or hippies – that killed logging jobs. Then I learned to avoid skeptics.

People in our small community noticed a bunch of kids driving government trucks around in the forests, often at night. It was suggested, unofficially, that we tell our neighbors and grocery cashiers and gas station attendants that we were surveying for Fishers. At the time, I didn’t even know that Fishers were rare mustelids (Pekania pennanti), but I understood that no one would threaten me over weasels.

That summer, I barreled through the tangled complexity of the old growth landscape in pursuit of the much-maligned owls, my naïve and powerful youth relieving me of any concerns about broken ankles. I shivered in the cool Oregon summer, I nervously piloted agency 4x4 trucks down harrowingly narrow logging roads, and I tripped and fell over my laughing co-workers. I remember the impossible darkness of those eastern Cascade Range forests, and how we would blink in pain and grasp for sunglasses when we encountered a clearing.

I learned a lot that season in the Oregon old growth. I learned how to fight wildfires and imitate owls. I learned how to raft rivers and use a compass. I will always remember the ridiculously simple-minded and intoxicating freedom of the place. I was two thousand miles from anywhere I’d ever been and anyone I knew, further from home than my own designs had ever carried me before. I was truly on my own, with no one to rescue me and no one to blame for my life. Every day I woke up, got out of bed and made my own fate among those ancient, venerable trees.

As I said, ridiculous. While it’s not hyperbole to say that a summer in the cathedral-like forests of the Pacific Northwest determined the course of my life, I must consider the experience in light of my youth and excitement, which largely removed me from the academic, economic and societal upheaval roiling the region. These were serious issues and Timber Wars revealed that many still continue today.

Relocating Commotion-Causing Beavers

Many Utahns have experience with beavers. Unfortunately, much of that experience is less than desirable: beavers plugging up culverts, chewing down trees and flooding parking lots. The reality is that beavers can be a problem when they're stuck in the wrong places. The flipside is that beavers are very beneficial when they're in the right places.

There are several options available when beavers are causing conflicts.

• One: they can be legally trapped during Utah's beaver season or by a permitted nuisance trapper.
• Two: they can be left in place, using engineering alternatives that can alleviate some issues such as flooding.
• Three: they can be moved to a more welcoming locale.

Moving beavers is not as simple as it may sound. Despite the DWR's safeguards, animals can die during trapping, holding or transport. Transplanted beavers can make desperate attempts to return home or find a mate, invariably dying in the process. Beavers can be caught unaware by predators at their unfamiliar release site.

In the southern part of the state, the DWR is trying to help beavers get from areas where they're not wanted to areas where they are needed. But that's not all. Heather Talley, DWR Wildlife Recreation Programs Specialist and the region's head beaver wrangler, is trying to determine how successful those relocated beavers are.

DWR wildlife technicians trap beavers that are causing problems in local communities using Hancock or Koro traps: large, clamshell-shaped live traps that are strong enough to hold an angry beaver. The trappers keep working until there are no beavers left in the area. The goal is to capture the entire colony (an extended family unit) and then release them at the same site because research has shown doing so helps the beavers survive and prosper.

The beavers are then transported to the DWR's holding facility, where they undergo a period of decontamination — just like waders and boats, beavers can carry aquatic hitchhikers like whirling disease or exotic mussels. Yes, we wash and dry the beavers.

After their time in decon is over, wildlife veterinarian Annette Roug and DWR biologists like myself and Heather use a special drug combination to sedate the beavers for handling. They are allowed to fall asleep, then transferred to a table (carrying a totally relaxed beaver is a bit like holding a 30-pound sack of marbles) with several people hovering in wait. For a few minutes, the beaver disappears under the silhouettes of a half-dozen DWR staff, each of whom is working to get the animal processed quickly.

One person supplies the unconscious beaver with oxygen via a mask placed over its face. Another monitors the animal's vital signs such as heart rate and respiration, struggling to hear the quiet beat of a beaver's little heart over wind and cars and sometimes even aircraft. Body measurements are taken. The gums and paws are sampled for fungus, the fur is examined for ectoparasites (yes, we comb the beavers), and any pre-existing injuries are treated.

Then comes the messy process of determining the gender, which I'll simply say involves expressing anal glands and examining the secretions. A radio-transmitter is applied so that Heather's team can track the beaver. Medication to kill parasites and provide pain relief is given. Finally, the beaver is weighed and promptly returned to the holding pen, where they are given a 'reversal' drug: this counteracts the sedative effect of the initial injection and allows the beaver to slowly wake up.

After they have been processed, DWR staff and volunteers transport the beavers to their new homes. If things go well, once they adjust to their new surroundings, beavers get to work.

It turns out, without houses and businesses and schools in the mix, the things beavers do are powerfully transformative — and potentially healing — to the environments in which they live. Their activities result in what we like to call 'heterogeneous aquatic habitat.' That means they create places where the water is shallow, as well as places where it is deep, and everything in between. That makes for a wide range of water temperatures. Felled trees in the water create places to live and hide. The dam traps sediments and cleans water. In the multichannel, braided waterways, some water moves faster and some moves slower. The substrate becomes more variable. All of this results in a greater diversity of fish and aquatic invertebrate species, in addition to helping struggling amphibian species like the boreal toad.

More fish and clean water is just the start. Beaver activity restores environmental resiliency by storing water, which is directly beneficial to both the land and the people who live there. Flooding areas behind the dam recharges groundwater and raises the water table. This aids plants like willow, aspen and cottonwood, creates wet meadows that benefit species like sage-grouse, and even helps keep crops green. The wetter landscape functions as a firebreak during wildfires. By changing the hydrology of the stream, beavers decrease erosion of streambanks and widen deeply incised creeks. Their dams and the newly-modified stream extend the seasonal release of water and mitigate downstream flooding. Beavers also change the streamside vegetation, increasing the diversity of bird species and small mammals in addition to creating habitat preferred by moose.

Heather and her crew have translocated 136 animals since the program started. These beavers, with an unspoken promise of industriousness, have been escorted to post-fire sites in need of rehab, wetlands with toad declines and incised creeks. Transmitters have been placed on 57 animals so far. Heather's crew is conducting ongoing surveys to see how the transplanted beavers are doing.

As the benefits of beavers are being recognized around the arid west, people are increasingly referring to the furry little marvels as 'ecosystem engineers' and 'keystone species.' State wildlife agencies, ranchers, water managers and even businesses like the Logan, Utah, WalMart are realizing that, far from being an intractable nuisance, beavers can be a low-cost alternative to heavy equipment or expensive wetland and stream recovery projects. Indeed, beavers help not only streams, but the people who depend on them. If you like water, thank a beaver.

The Paths of Pelicans

In 2014, the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) began efforts to place transmitters on American white pelicans. This was the culmination of ongoing cooperative efforts between numerous partners, including U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground, the Utah Department of Natural Resource’s Endangered Species Mitigation Fund, the Salt Lake International Airport and the Tracy Aviary Conservation Science Fund.

Cutting-edge satellite transmitters were procured for the pelicans. Every ounce is vitally important when placing transmitters on birds. The solution is solar power, obviating the need for heavy batteries and allowing the transmitter to draw power from the time birds spend in the sun. To prevent interference with flying or grooming, the solar-powered transmitters sit on birds’ backs — in the case of pelicans, between their shoulders like a backpack. Properly fitting the transmitter to the pelican is also crucial, so Utah biologists were trained to attach the backpacks by experts from Mississippi Wildlife Services and The Nature Conservancy.

Image courtesy Sam Hall/Utah DWR

Pelican migration routes.

Transmitters in hand, the next step was to catch the pelicans. The DWR has a history of banding younger birds. Adults, however, required a bit of a learning curve. After discovering the best method to catching the wily adult pelicans, DWR biologists set about distributing transmitters at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, Ogden Bay Waterfowl Management Area, Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area and Strawberry Reservoir.

Catching birds and outfitting them with fancy new backpacks is only the first part of the story. The DWR wanted to see where the pelicans were going. In the past, this meant waiting for people to see the birds and report it. Using this method, Utah white pelican sightings have been reported from 10 states including some as far away as Iowa. Scientists used pushpins on topographic maps and spreadsheets to track these sightings.

Advanced equipment like that deployed on the pelicans, in contrast, communicates with satellites which in turn send their data to a website. The webpage then automatically translates those locations to a dynamic, colorful map.

The Pelitrack site offers unprecedented access to the lives of these majestic birds. The website and all its data is available not just to the people studying the birds but to anyone at any time. Users can see where birds currently reside or they can use a query tool to see where the pelicans have been in the past. They can look at locations from multiple years or the last week.

The Pelitrack site has shown us fascinating things about these birds. Collectively, we see that most of the pelicans head south in fall, seeking the warmer climes of Mexico. A pelican christened Loretta is a classic example of this path: she follows I-15 southward, then flies to southern California before heading down the western Mexican coast. The bulk of the birds pass through Arizona and southern California like this but a few, like Gregory, ‘wobble’ in their southward journey, passing through New Mexico. These wobblers largely parallel their compatriots for they too end up on Mexico’s west coast.

Individuals, however, reveal surprising variation in the Utah birds. Five backpacked pelicans (Bartholomew, Kirk, Hook, Lupita and Quentin) have proven outliers in terms of seasonal migration. In previous years, they left Utah on a strong eastward track, Bartholomew stopping in South Dakota before nearing the others’ paths through Kansas and Texas. Their tracks diverged again in Mexico: the other pelicans crossed the nation to winter on the west coast while Bartholomew spent his winter on the Gulf coast — the only backpacked bird to do so.

Chester was another iconoclast, holding the distinction of being the first bird to demonstrate that, despite previous thinking about state populations, the American white pelicans of Utah are part of a much more widespread, regional population. Summer locations from pelicans like Chester show a previously unknown degree of connectivity between the Great Salt Lake wetlands, the nesting colony at Gunnison Island, Utah Lake, Strawberry Reservoir, other bodies of water in Utah, the nesting colonies along the Snake River in Southern Idaho, as well as nesting colonies in Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, California and Oregon. Wing tag reports had exposed pelican movements between these locations in the past but they were assumed to be once-in-a-lifetime trips. The satellite data, however, revealed that it’s far more common for a pelican to travel among these sites than previously believed: some birds made multiple trips in a week!

During Chester’s wanderings, his backpack dutifully recorded points as he literally broke barriers, flying back and forth over California’s Sierra Range – long thought to have been a formidable obstacle for pelicans. Following Chester’s pioneering performance, Uma and Everett were seen to likewise traverse the mountain range.

Age and experience may contribute to some of the variation we see. Many pelicans follow each other with amazing fidelity but other birds like Gerald and Penelope made their own trails. It’s risky for a water-dependent bird to fly over unknown territory, but perhaps the cumulative experiences of these birds led them to safe routes. For instance, Barnabus followed his fellows through the Salton Sea in Southern California in 2015, but the next year he took a new path through New Mexico.

Photo courtesy Utah DWR

Pelicans in Utah.

The details of the Pelitrack maps show unequivocally that the paths of pelicans predict water. On their seasonal journeys north and south, and during other wanderings, pelicans fly from water body to water body where they rest and refuel by cooperatively foraging for fish. Zoom in on any Pelitrack path and you will find lakes, reservoirs and rivers. Certain places, like southeastern New Mexico and western Texas, are devoid of satellite points from Utah pelicans probably due to the fact that these areas have precious little water — evidently less than required to entice the water-loving birds to pass over.

As time passes, more stories appear. Pedro decided to spend his days in Mexico westward of his fellow Utah birds; he was the only backpacked bird to settle on the peninsula of Baja California. In 2016 Hector visited locations apparently unknown to other backpacked birds – he was the only Pelitrack bird to fly to Oregon. Ongoing analyses have revealed that pelicans like Iris and Sylvester have ridden thermals to 27,000 and 33,000 feet, respectively. At such dizzying heights, the temperature hovers at -30 degrees and the air is lethally thin, placing American white pelicans into a small fraternity of fantastically hardy birds capable of surviving those conditions. Only the future knows what other secrets the transmitters will whisper to us in the form of satellite data.

Sam Hall, a DWR Senior GIS Analyst, custom-built the Pelitrack website for Utah’s pelicans but it has proven so useful that the code is currently being used by five other research projects to study California condors (The Peregrine Fund), golden eagles (US Fish and Wildlife Service), long-billed curlews (Intermountain Bird Observatory), short-eared owls (Hawkwatch International) and burrowing owls (University of Idaho). The reception to Pelitrack has been positive and we believe that the satellite-to-website model will continue to bring enlightenment and entertainment to birders young and old.

See the pelicans’ fall migration below (image courtesy Sam Hall/Utah DWR).

The One that Got Away

It was May. I looked to the east, idly wondering whether I could see the tiny hamlet of Koosharem, Utah, from our position on Monroe Mountain. My vantage point was elevated that day, as I was not only on a mountain, but atop a mule on a mountain. It had been a long hard day and the animal’s mood was characterized by a desire to return to the trailer.

I was tired as well but I had enjoyed the day. We had left the truck and trailer that morning in search of a female mountain lion who needed her collar changed. This happens when animals grow, as is often the case when bear cubs are collared, or when a collar’s batteries are nearing the end of their expected lifetime. The goal was to catch her, remove the old collar and put on a new one.

Photo by Annette Roug, DWR

Dogs are key to this process. Given the age-old animosity between cats and dogs, lions generally flee and eventually climb a tree when pursued by canines. Properly trained hounds have the discipline and gravitas to keep the cat treed until the panting humans arrive. A sedative-filled dart is shot into the large muscle mass of the cat’s hindquarter. After it succumbs to the drug, one lucky crewmember gets to climb the tree and either carry the lion down or attach a rope in order to lower the cat down to the ground. Sufficient time is given for the cat to relax and slip into unconsciousness, for it would be jarring indeed to climb a tree and meet a half-asleep (and therefore half-awake) mountain lion.

The group that set out to accomplish this goal contained myself, then-Utah State University PhD student Peter Mahoney, the Utah Division of Wildlife's (DWR) veterinarian, Dr. Annette Roug, and one of the DWR’s predator specialists, Clint Mecham. The group was rounded out by several hounds and four mules whose names I’ve since forgotten.

We set off with high hopes. The female lion’s signal — the beeping on a specific frequency emitted by her collar — indicated that she was above us on the mountain. I spent the next two hours trying to conform myself to the shape of the saddle as we labored upwards.

We reached a ridgetop and again broke out the telemetry gear. Clint watched his hounds critically for their input as where this cat might be. We determined that she was on the next ridge over. It seemed tantalizingly close but was in reality separated from us by a deep, heavily wooded drainage.

Photo by Troy Davis, DWR

We headed towards the other ridge (and into the drainage) trying to find the least steep route. It was a good idea in theory but we soon encountered the first wave of what turned out to be an expansive sea of downfall. The steepness of the terrain, combined with the crisscrossed, piled-up tree trunks dictated that we dismount the mules and lead them through the maze.

I learned the value of mules that day. As we climbed over fallen trees, weaved between the creaking, leaning trunks known poetically as widowmakers, and ducked under logs, the mules followed without complaint. Their attitudes about the situation may not have joyous but I was impressed. I suspect that a horse dropped into that mess of fallen timber would have rolled up its eyes and died on the spot.

I myself felt a twinge of hopelessness when looking at the downfall surrounding us on all sides. But I knew from prior experience that following lions is rarely easy in mountainous terrain. And I had the utmost confidence in Clint. He was comfortable in the backcountry after decades of experience and led the way as his hounds snaked back and forth amid the legs of our mules.

Photo by Annette Roug, DWR

Our position in the drainage meant that our telemetry signals were bouncy at best and even the dogs weren’t having much luck. There was nothing to do but get to that next ridgetop. Once there, we could formulate a plan as to how best approach her position.

It took time, and more climbing through the ever-present downfall, but we eventually approached the top of the ridge. We were all ready to be done with fallen trees, as evidenced by the fact that my mule was using his head to push me out of the downfall zone.

We topped the ridge with a palpable sense of relief. Peter slowly rotated around, using the telemetry antenna to seek the strongest signal. I noted with some consternation that when he found the signal, it was coming from the wrong direction. Clint consulted his hounds. The dogs’ noses agreed with the beeping telemetry receiver: the cat was behind us, likely on the very ridge we had left a few hours ago. While we were toiling to reach her location, she was silently gliding past us, determined to keep at least one drainage between herself and this bothersome group of humans, mules and dogs. It was afternoon already and we knew it would take us too long to return to that ridge. Basically, she skunked us.

“Atta girl,” I said quietly into the cool mountain air. My mule’s ears swiveled around. The animal was likely confused by the strange mix of disappointment and respect emanating from his rider. After all, we’d come all this way, ridden and hiked for hours to catch this cat and we’d missed her.

To me, however, that is the essence of working with lions: it’s humbling at times. It’s not supposed to be easy when dealing with one of the most secretive large carnivores on the continent. Mountain lions are distributed from Canada to South America and one reason for that success is the ability to be invisible. When conditions are right, cats can cease to be flesh-and-blood animals and become an ethereal, ghosting presence on the land.

That was no small feat in this case: This female lion successfully bested a group with combined 75 years of wildlife experience in addition to dogs, mules and a telemetry receiver. She showed us that no matter how powerful the dogs’ sense of smell, no matter how experienced the tracker, no matter the technology, this was her home ground. With her quiet defiance, she demonstrated unequivocally that we were but temporary interlopers in her realm. We had all the advantages but she won the game that day, fair and square.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Addendum

This was the last time I got to work with Clint. He was a woodsman through and through, an unpretentious expert in the ways of Utah’s wildlife. Clint was one of the best houndsmen and cat handlers in the western US, guiding hunters and academic researchers for decades. The southern Utah landscape, the people of the state and the DWR lost a loyal and steadfast friend when Clint passed after a battle with cancer. He will be missed.

Grabbing Geese from Airboats

Our airboat pilot spied a goose and swerved, accelerating over the water towards the lone bird. As we approached, the goose honked in surprise – or possibly avian outrage – and slipped underwater in an attempt to escape. Leaning over the bow of the airboat, I was able to pluck the bird from the water. He joined his fellow geese in a wooden containment crate strapped to the boat.

Photo courtesy of Utah DWR

In mid-June, Canada geese in Utah are in the process of replacing their flight feathers, leaving them temporarily unable to fly. This makes them available to Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) waterfowl biologists and motivated volunteers. During this time, the DWR captures hundreds of adult and juvenile geese. The birds are fitted with leg bands which identify when, where and at what age they were caught.

Geese are caught in two general ways: in urban settings, such as Lagoon Amusement Park, the birds are herded into corrals of soft mesh netting, or sometimes hand-caught by nimble technicians and volunteers. It sounds like a bit of a rodeo and it can be.

Geese are often unwelcome in such urban locations, where they are free of natural sources of mortality. Canada geese have reached damaging or simply annoying densities in parks, greenbelts, airports and along waterways all over the country. To combat this, the DWR transports urban geese to undeveloped release sites. Juvenile birds are released with wild adults near the Great Salt Lake and adult geese are taken to more distant natural waterfowl habitat. Data from bands indicate most of the birds taken from urban locales and released in this fashion will return to the natural areas the following year, instead of coming back to befoul city lawns and parks.

Photo courtesy of Utah DWR

In less civilized locations, such as the numerous duck clubs north of Salt Lake City or Farmington Bay, geese are captured using airboats. Geese are among the many seasonal visitors to north-central Utah’s expansive wetlands, along with Wilson’s phalaropes, American avocets, green and blue-winged teals, white pelicans, redhead ducks, ruddy ducks, black-necked stilts, white-faced ibises and black-crowned night herons. Because these geese do not pose problems to Utah residents or businesses, they are released on-site after banding.

I could describe the process of catching geese utilizing airboats in technical terms: explaining the massive organizational effort to coordinate multiple government agencies, detailing the required piloting skill to simultaneously maneuver ten airboats through a maze of vegetation chasing agile geese without crashing into each other, describing the chaos of a dozen people sitting in a circle calling out band numbers to a harried scribe as another two dozen people stand waiting with an unbanded goose in each hand, or capture success relative to different models of airboat.

Instead, I’ll simply say that the procedure is a lot of fun – a lot. Much like birdwatching in the wetlands, you can detect a capture operation by attentive observation. A long train of DWR trucks with trailers in tow can be spotted slowly driving along dikes in the wetlands. A number of agency people in waders can be seen applying bug spray as each truck deftly deposits an airboat into the water, then pulls away to provide a few inches of room for another truck on the crowded levy. As some boats are crewed and loaded, a few take off at high speed to push the geese away from areas where they can hide in thick vegetation or otherwise confound capture efforts. Each time an airboat leaves, people can be witnessed trying, unsuccessfully, to avoid the blast from the prop.

Photo courtesy of Utah DWR

Once the operation is underway, crew members take turns laying down on the bow of the boat. The pilot searches from the elevated driver’s seat of the airboat, skimming over the water towards any detected geese. Upon seeing a pursuing airboat festooned with grabby humans, the geese dive under the shallow water to escape. Their underwater ‘flight’ leaves a trail of disturbed soil in their wake, allowing the pilot to follow them. Once close enough, the catcher leans out, plunges their hands into the water, and snatches a wet goose from among the streamers of green algae. Sometimes a goose is caught on the first try, sometimes a particularly wily bird requires more effort.

The captured goose is handed to another crew member who places the goose into a wooden or plastic crate designed to hold the birds until the boat returns to shore. At one point, I found that my crewmate, Heather, had caught three juvenile geese at once – eclipsing my one-adult-at-a-time ability. I was in charge of placing these small geese into the crate, but handling those three without injuring them or letting them wiggle free while not falling out of a swerving boat was quite literally a balancing act. I hugged the juveniles to my chest, putting the heads of two angry geese and the tail feathers of one presumably confused goose in my face. Unlike the more fatalistic adults, these juvenile geese took this opportunity to attack me about the head and shoulders, biting me ineffectually but with great gusto. I suffered their ire, awkwardly clinging to the geese and the boat’s frame, until I could introduce the angry teens to the inside of the containment crate.

When the boats have captured their maximum load of geese – our crates were full and Lynn, our pilot, had two geese in his lap when we finally stopped – the airboats head for a central location where skilled biologists apply the leg bands and record the data.

With all the local geese caught, banded and released, the airboats are loaded onto trailers. If you listen carefully over the roar of their engines, you can hear people comparing their catch numbers as the train of trucks prepares to leave.

Stay Low. Stay Still. Survive.

The mulie bounded across the road in front of us. Powerful leg muscles flexed under her summer coat, propelling her through effortless 20-foot arcs. Five heads swiveled to watch the deer, some of them lurching from reclined positions of slumber.

“I doubt she has a fawn,” I grumbled. I judged that the doe was moving far too fast to have a wobbly newborn in tow. A collective sigh filled the truck. Two people slumped back to sleep and a third resumed texting.

Then again, I thought, she did look a little panicked. Something gnawed at my subconscious, demanding attention. Though I couldn’t have quantified the intuition, I sensed there was something more to the situation than a deer crossing the road.

When the doe had appeared, I was busy working the gears of a Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) Ford F-150, easing us down a narrow, rock-strewn dirt road situated on a ridge of Mormon Peak. Given the risks of driving in steep mountainous terrain, I dismissed the doe and returned my attention to the truck. But there remained a persistent buzzing in the back of my skull.

A few seconds passed and the truck rolled another fifteen feet. Suddenly, I gasped and hit the brakes. We slid to a bumpy stop. I blinked my bleary eyes, forcing them to focus. “Fawn! I see a fawn!”
That was the announcement for which everyone had been waiting since roughly 5 a.m. Faces were pressed against every available window.

“Where?” Nate, the lead research assistant, asked.

“Right there,” I said, pointing over the dashboard.

“Where?” repeated the three volunteer hunters in the back seat.

“In front of us,” I explained.

Nate, an expert deer spotter and fawn wrangler, strained his neck. “Where?”

I turned put the truck in park and turned off the ignition, so I could concentrate on convincing a truck full of people that I was not losing my mind. “It’s right in front of us. On the road.”

Nate raised himself up in the seat, peered down at the road, and smiled. “Yeah!”

We grabbed the capture bag and stepped out slowly. It became readily apparent, though, that the fawn was too young to run away. It was less than two days old, still weak and completely reliant on motionlessness and natural camouflage for protection.

The five people exiting the truck at that moment — myself, Nate and three volunteer hunters — formed the vanguard of a much larger audience anxiously awaiting data from the local mule deer. The ongoing wildlife study on central Utah’s Monroe Mountain, involving not only deer but coyotes and mountain lions as well, involves Utah State University, Brigham Young University, the Utah DWR, and a cadre of professors and graduate students.

Yet while we were prowling the central Utah landscape that morning in search of a big game species, we were in fact most interested in the most diminutive representatives, the littlest players on the big game stage:  newborn fawns. One of the goals of the Monroe Mountain study is to follow the destinies of neonate fawns in order to determine what’s happening to these deer during their first few days and weeks of life.

Photo courtesy of the Utah DWR

In order to understand that short, dangerous period of a mule deer’s existence, we must catch and mark very young fawns — sometimes less than a day old. Fawns rely on cryptic coloration and immobility to protect them from all predators, including researchers, making finding and capturing them a difficult and time-intensive effort.

So, during fawning time, crews of technicians, students, and volunteers scour the sagebrush and oak brush for mulie fawns. They drive endless dusty miles in trucks and ATVs, hunched over spotting scopes in the sunrise chill and evening haze. Binoculars scrutinize every dark shadow or brushy plant capable of screening a dappled fawn from view. Everything is suspect when it comes to finding fawns: does acting vigilant, does standing in one spot too long, does’ gazes lingering in a certain direction, and so on. Normally, a doe on the run was not considered a likely candidate for a new mother, until now.

Nate and I approached the fawn, accompanied by the dedicated hunters. We donned gloves and began to process the little animal, taking its weight and measurements and allowing the hunters to take pictures and help when appropriate. The fawn emitted no distress call, as older fawns often do. The little male did no more than struggle feebly, trying to return his chin to the ground as I held him.
“What’s he doing?” asked the youngest hunter, a boy of 13.

I said that the fawn was trying to hide. That explanation didn’t seem to make much sense to the boy. His confusion was understandable. How could this little deer expect to hide from the five people surrounding him? But the fawn wasn’t thinking logically. He wasn’t formulating a plan of escape. The gangly deer was responding to a supreme evolutionary imperative shared among neonate ungulates across the globe:  Stay low. Stay still. Survive.

To avoid stressing him further, we quickly completed our work. Our last task was to slip on a custom telemetry collar specifically designed for the size and growth patterns of mule deer fawns. The collar featured numerous loops closed with fragile tread. As the fawn’s neck grows, threads break and loops add to the collar’s circumference. Thereby the collar expands, growing with the animal. A weak link in the collar would eventually rot away and drop the device from the adult deer.

I set the fawn down, safely clear of the road, and returned to the truck. I imagined the whole scene: Moments before we’d appeared, the doe had been moving her small, helpless fawn to a new resting site. She expected no disturbance so close to the windy peak of the mountain. She moved slowly, watching the little male struggle along behind her.

Then, suddenly, they heard our truck. The fawn dropped to the ground, blending into the brown background of the dirt road, and froze. The doe moved away so as to avoid altering the big, silver-painted predator to the fawn’s location. When we continued to bear down on the little fawn (completely unaware of his presence) the doe finally made a desperate, flashy attempt to distract our attention away from her offspring. She almost succeeded.

I climbed in and started the ignition, sighing with delayed relief. The fawn had been roughly three yards from the truck when we stopped. Another moment and I’d have driven right over him, crushing the fawn without even knowing it.

It may be hard for some to imagine why an animal wouldn’t move away from such a deadly situation. I, however, understood. For thousands of years, mule deer fawns have been successfully hiding from predators of all kinds. The success of staying low and staying still has resonated through time, protecting them from contemporary dangers, be it the Cave Lion, the North American cheetah, the stone spear point or the .30-06.

Such responses have served mule deer well for many generations. Today’s world, though, is a rapidly changing place. Humanity, for instance, raced from horse-drawn carriages to walking on the moon in fewer than 100 years and sometimes I find myself struggling to keep up. So I can certainly forgive a newborn mule deer buck for being a little confused as to how he should respond to the new-fangled mechanical beasts of Utah’s DWR.

In the end, the tiny fawn survived his encounter with the modern world, giving him the chance to employ those ancient, time-tested instincts as he grows and explores Utah’s wild landscapes.

Bring On the Bats

I looked up at the brilliant night sky of the desert arching over our heads, unpolluted by humanity’s fondness of bright light. I was able to see those stars clearly because I was among several Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) employees standing in the darkness at Nash Wash in southeastern Utah. We were not alone in the desert:  25 hardy members of the public stood under the Milky Way with us. 

Despite the fact that we were closer to Grand Junction, Colorado, than to Salt Lake City, some of the attendees had driven from the Wasatch for the occasion. Utah loves its wildlife, and had this event featured such charismatic species as mule deer, trout or eagles, I wouldn’t have been as surprised by the attendance. But the focus of this nighttime gathering was bats.

Photo by Brent Stettler, Utah DWR

Bats. To biologists, they are an incredibly diverse and fascinating group of mammals, ranging from the tiny Asian ‘bumblebee bat’ measuring only an inch in length, to three-pound tropical fruit bats sporting five-foot wingspans.

Of all the mammals, bats are the only group to fly, taking them into realms otherwise reserved for birds and dreamers. In contrast, many people fear bats. They unfairly characterize bats as ‘flying rats’:  disease carriers, which Hollywood assures us will become tangled in our hair at any opportunity. Remember the ‘giant vampire bats’ in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? They were actually fruit-eating bats; you have nothing to fear from them unless you’re a mango.

Many years ago, I worked for Bat Conservation International in Austin, Texas. I learned first-hand as a naïve college student how many people are frightened and misinformed when it comes to bats. It was my job to explain that bats aren’t dangerous, that they consume tons of insects annually (Texas could still use more mosquito-eating species) and that spraying harsh pesticides into bat colonies was unnecessary and illegal.

“Oh, and by the way,” I always tried to mention, “they pollinate sugarcane. Sugar is used by Bacardi. Bats make rum, dude.”

Photo by Brent Stattler, Utah DWR

My experiences with the bat-phobic didn’t prepare me for this DWR bat-viewing event. The number of spaces available to the public was completely filled:  there wasn’t, figuratively speaking, an empty seat in the place.

There were kids, young couples, older folks and one dog. Tony, the southeastern region’s Sensitive Species Biologist, greeted several people whom he recognized from previous bat events. There were a few Subarus with pro-Chiroperta bumper stickers and even one young woman with a bat tattoo. Everyone was eager to not only see these mysterious creatures up close, but to touch and even smell the furry little flyers. Seeing everyone in the dark was difficult, but characterizing the mood of this group was easy:  Bring on the bats!

Before walking down to the small pond, Tony gave the group an introduction to bat biology. He explained that only a small percentage of bats carry diseases dangerous to people. Rabies is in fact less common in bats than in raccoons and dogs. The perception of bats being disease-ridden comes from the fact that, as humans, we don’t interact much with healthy bats; they’re too busy fluttering silently through the dark skies above our heads. It’s the sick bats – those lying on the ground or weak flyers, easily caught by cats and kids – which we often meet, and some of these ill bats can transfer diseases to humans who handle them incorrectly.

People don’t seem to be drawn to ailing raccoons or deer, but they can be counted on to pick up and examine a sickly bat. Proper training, vaccinations and careful handling of sick bats minimize these health risks.

Photo by Brent Stattler, Utah DWR

Tony also described the incredible complexity of bats’ echolocation abilities. Imagine, he said, sending and receiving intricate acoustic signals at the same time, while moving rapidly (sometimes 23 feet per second) through the air, tracking a tiny insect, which is also moving. While they’re processing those signals, bats must make rapid flight adjustments accurately enough to snap a panicked mosquito or moth out of the air.
That doesn’t sound much like an animal likely to clumsily smack into someone’s head and get tangled in their hair.

Finally, even given recent rainy weather, Tony had seen very little standing water in the area. This might, he offered, help increase bat activity around our little water source. We adjourned to the pond, where several mist nets were already set up. It wasn’t long before the bats began to arrive.
The small Western pipistrelle was the first to careen into the nets. They were disentangled and brought to the table for identification and processing, where I suspect each bat must have imagined that they’d somehow become a pop culture celebrity.

Cameras large and small took countless pictures from every conceivable angle, accompanied by “oohs” and “aahs.” Photographers jostled for position and many slowly worked up the courage to reach out and stroke the soft fur of the little bats.

Photo by Brent Stattler, Utah DWR

After so many well-behaved, six-gram bats, the Pallid bats made for an impressive change of pace. The first one, an adult female, emerged from her sample bag reaching forward with her thin wings as if to grab the nearest headlamp. She gaped threateningly, displaying her sharp teeth to the entire group. She was backlit, with her translucent wings and ears creating a ghostly halo around her. The effect lent her a respectably intimidating look for something that weighed a scant 16 grams. The group, as bat loving as they were, collectively kept their distance while taking their photographs.

Photo by Brent Stattler, Utah DWR

We caught many other Pallids that night, some of which were more personable. None, though, were overly pleased with being handled, and they regularly latched on to the fingertips of gloves. Their teeth, Tony explained, serve them well when they catch and consume their preferred prey: hard-bodied scorpions and beetles.

A storm rolled over the mountains around midnight, forcing us to close the nets to prevent wind damage. The trapping thus ended early, but it was entirely worth the time: six species of bats, all in all. Not bad for one night sitting next to a tiny, muddy pond in the middle of nowhere.

The people who chatted under the desert sky that night value bats. Most people, however, don’t know very much about them. Many don’t even see bats often — perhaps only when they roost in a building, becoming an unwelcome inconvenience.

We are determined to prevent that unfamiliarity from breeding indifference. It’s up to those of us who appreciate bats to educate people about their importance as insect predators and pollinators. With continued effort, funding and popular nocturnal gatherings, the DWR can continue to study, understand and cultivate a love for the bats acrobatically working Utah’s night skies.

Did I mention that bats make rum?