The roadless Fish Creek watershed in western Montana is home to bull trout. The federal government is moving forward with a plan to expand habitat protections on streams and rivers in the West to help recover bull trout, including here on the West Fork of Fish Creek.

By Jason D.B. Kauffman, Idaho Mountain Express, Feb. 10, 2010

A proposal to significantly expand habitat protections for bull trout could lead to changes in how irrigation diversions, dams, logging and other potentially harmful activities are managed on federal land in the upper Salmon River watershed and other regional waterways.

It could also lead to expanded habitat restoration efforts in rivers, streams and other waterways in the lower 48 states where the federally protected fish lives.

But this and other actions meant to save the iconic species inhabiting clear, cold streams of northwestern North America may not be enough to save it from disappearing in many lower reaches of rivers due to the impacts of climate change. Many fisheries scientists predict bull trout and other cold-water-dependent fish species will find portions of these waterways uninhabitable if water temperatures climb and river flows drop as predicted.

In Idaho, bull trout occupy segments of the Salmon, Boise, Clearwater, Coeur d’Alene, Clark Fork and Kootenai river systems. The fish is also present in river systems in western Idaho and in one outlying basin spanning the Idaho-Nevada state line, the Jarbidge River system.

Bull trout are not present in the Big Wood, Little Wood or Big Lost river systems of south central Idaho. However, an isolated, remnant population is present in the Little Lost River north of Howe.

Officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delighted fish advocates when they announced Jan. 13 their intent to expand by up to five times a 2005 critical habitat designation for bull trout occupying the lower 48 states. The fish was listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act in 1999.

The proposed critical habitat expansion, developed by a team of federal scientists, is intended to provide sufficient habitat to allow for genetic and life-history diversity, ensure bull trout are well distributed across representative habitats, ensure sufficient connectivity among populations and allow for the ability to address threats facing the species.

“We intend to prioritize conservation actions in those habitats most important to the bull trout’s protection and recovery,” said Robyn Thorson, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Pacific Region.

The Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that changes in forest management brought about by expanded bull trout protection efforts, such as the removal of culverts to aid in habitat connection and efforts to reduce in-stream sediment, could cost anywhere from $400,000 to $1.65 million a year. Additional changes could also be required for fish passage improvements on some 70 federal and nonfederal dams in the region.

In all, the Fish and Wildlife Service predicts management changes brought about by the critical habitat expansion could cost an additional $5 million to $7 million per year over the next 20 years.

In early 2006, Montana-based Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Friends of the Wild Swan sued the Fish and Wildlife Service over the 2005 critical habitat designation. They alleged, among other things, that the federal government failed to designate enough habitat and unlawfully excluded areas from the final designation.

Last March, the Fish and Wildlife Service notified the U.S. District Court of Oregon that the agency would seek a remand of the 2005 critical habitat rule based on the findings of an investigative report by the U.S. Department of the Interior inspector general. The report found that Julie MacDonald, a Department of the Interior appointee under the Bush administration, had extensively interfered with the final 2005 designation. She was accused of directing that large habitat areas be excluded from what had been proposed and by not allowing the inclusion of any area unless there was absolute certainty that bull trout were present.

The 1999 ESA listing covers the species’ full range in the coterminous United States in Idaho, Montana, Washington, Oregon and Nevada. Bull trout are grouped with the char, within the salmonid family of fishes. Once plentiful, bull trout are now found in less than half their historic range, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Bull trout have declined due to habitat degradation and fragmentation, blockage of migratory corridors, poor water quality, past fisheries management and the introduction of non-native species such as brown, lake and brook trout. While bull trout occur over a large area, their distribution and abundance continue to decline, and extirpation, where the species has become locally extinct, has been documented in a number of locations, state Fish and Wildlife Service biologists.

Many of the remaining populations of bull trout are small and isolated from each other, making them more susceptible to extirpation.

Most bull trout populations are migratory, spending portions of their life cycle in larger rivers or lakes before returning to smaller streams to spawn. Some populations complete their entire life cycle in the same stream. The fish can grow to more than 20 pounds in lake environments and live up to 12 years. Under exceptional circumstances, they can live more than 20 years.

West Fork of Fish Creek

If finalized, the proposal would increase the amount of stream miles designated as bull trout critical habitat in the five states by 18,851 miles and the amount of lakes and reservoirs designated as critical habitat by 390,208 acres. That includes about 166 miles of critical habitat proposed in the Jarbidge River basin, where no critical habitat was designated in 2005. In Idaho, 9,671 stream miles and 197,915 acres of lakes or reservoirs are proposed as critical habitat for bull trout.

A 2007 report from Trout Unlimited titled “Healing Troubled Waters” that discusses the impacts of climate change on fish species like bull trout states that trout and salmon are especially vulnerable to global warming because of their dependence on clear, cold water. The study states that as cold-water habitats warm, the rising temperatures will have negative impacts on the entire life history of these iconic fish—from eggs to juveniles to adults.

“Climate change is not some uncertain future problem. It is happening right now, and we see evidence in terms of reduced snowpack and earlier spring runoff,” said Jack Williams, Trout Unlimited’s senior scientist and one of the report’s authors.

The study’s authors estimate that migratory bull trout could decline by as much as 90 percent in the face of climate change. They project that annual temperatures will increase by between 2 and 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 100 years.

The Trout Unlimited report recommends implementing projects that place more woody debris and variable rock structure within streams and rivers. Such work helps slow fast-moving waters, provides shelter for fish and contributes to the scouring out of deeper downstream pools, where cooler waters would provide fish safe havens when summer temperatures make shallower waters too warm for their survival. The report also recommends reconnecting stream sections separated by man-made irrigation structures.

In the past few years, Trout Unlimited took part in one such project on the Little Lost River that constructed fish passage structures to bypass irrigation diversion dams and reconnect isolated bull trout populations.

Under the ESA, critical habitat identifies geographic areas that contain features essential for the conservation of a listed species and other areas that the Fish and Wildlife Service considers essential for the conservation of the species. Critical habitat designations provide extra regulatory protection to areas that may require special management, and the habitats are then prioritized for recovery actions.

The designation of critical habitat does not affect land ownership or establish a refuge, wilderness, reserve, preserve or other conservation area. It does not allow government or public access to private lands. A critical habitat designation does not impose restrictions on nonfederal lands unless federal funds, permits or activities are involved.

Fish and Wildlife officials will discuss the critical habitat proposal during a public meeting in Boise on Thursday, Feb. 25, from 4-6 p.m. The meeting will be held at the Boise Center on the Grove at 850 W. Front St. in downtown Boise. Officials will accept comments during a public hearing from 7-9 p.m.

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Explore a supersized wilderness that’s home to Idaho’s densest population of gray wolves.

by Jason D.B. Kauffman, Backpacker Magazine, Sept. 2009

Do It

This 19.2-mile out-and-back climbs to the headwaters of Loon Creek, a cascading tributary of the Middle Fork of the Salmon. You’ll pass trout-choked waters and a lonely creekside hotspring as you cut through the largest wilderness in the Lower 48 (2.4 million acres!). The start is tricky: Walk west past the Loon Creek Guard Station (1) (about 50 miles northwest of Sun Valley Ski Resort) to a horse pasture out back. At the fence line, angle southwest to a gate at the far end of the field. Leave the gate as you find it (open or closed), and hike .6 mile through meadows and mixed pines and firs to the Trail Creek Trail (2). Bear left to go 1.8 miles through streamside willow thickets and the remains of a decades-old burn before arriving at another junction (3) at mile 2.4. Bear right and drop steeply to a ford of brush- and boulder-lined Pioneer Creek (4), a rager through late June that you can wade or cross on downed logs come late summer.
From here, hike a half-mile to a knee-deep ford of Loon Creek before stopping for a break at a rock-lined hotspring (5) (big enough for three or four) on the opposite shore at mile 3.7. Continue upstream, and in .8 mile you’ll arrive at the spot (6) where the author came face-to-face with a gray wolf, whose haunting howls bounced off the granite canyon walls. Press on through lodgepole pine- and aspen-filled avalanche chutes to another ford (7) at mile 5.3 and a final ford (8) in another 1.9 miles. In .8 mile begin the final push (9), gaining 840 feet in 1.6 miles. The trail levels out at ponderosa-lined Horseshoe Lake (10); several campsites come into view at mile 9.6. The best is midway along the west shore, directly across from a forested peninsula that creates the lake’s namesake horseshoe shape. Return the way you came.

Trip Planner
Driving From Stanley, head east on ID 75 for 13.2 miles to Yankee Fork Rd. Go north on pavement and good gravel 8.8 miles to Jordan Creek Rd. Turn left (northwest) and drive nine miles past the Sunbeam Mine to Loon Creek Summit. From here it’s 11 rocky miles to the Loon Creek Guard Station. Park in the pullout.

Contact
Call Challis-Yankee Fork Ranger District for the latest conditions: (208) 879-4100.

Gear Up
Riverwear Sports; ID 21, Stanley, Idaho; (208) 774-3592; riverwear.com

Key Gear: Trekking Poles
Unless you surprise a grizzly, you’ll only face one significant hazard on your ascent to Horseshoe Lake. Well, make that three: the trio of stream crossings along upper Loon Creek. Its banks often have large logs or logjams spanning the stream to make crossings easier. But if traversing logs or rockhopping isn’t an option (whether the water’s too deep or you don’t trust your balance), scout for the widest sections of the creek and cross facing upstream, using your trekking poles for balance. We like Black Diamond’s Spire Elliptic ($135, 18 oz., blackdiamondequipment.com). Testers say its oval-shaped shaft is stronger than traditional round-shafted poles–we’ve never bent or snapped one. No poles? Scavenge the banks for shoulder-height, arm-width sticks. With poles or sticks, brace yourself against the current and angle across heading slightly upstream.

See This
Gray wolves
Fourteen years ago, federal biologists introduced 36 gray wolves to central Idaho. Today, the estimated population is 846 members in 88 packs, and wolves occupy every major drainage within the Frank Church, including the Loon Creek basin. The Landmark and Yankee Fork packs use Loon Creek as a “natural travel path” to get from dens to hunting grounds (they prey on elk and deer); wolves are most active at dawn and dusk.

Locals Know
Despite its great distance from the Pacific Ocean, the Frank Church contains some of the best spawning habitat in the Lower 48 for the endangered Chinook salmon. These fish swim upstream more than 800 miles from the Pacific to spawn in the chilly waters of the Middle Fork of the Salmon River–and in tributaries like Loon Creek. Chinook create redds, or spawning nests, by sweeping their tails to scour holes in the gravel riverbottom, where females deposit thousands of eggs. To spot oval-shaped redds in upper Loon Creek, look for the characteristic pillow shape of disturbed rocks at the downstream end of the nest. Another “really obvious” clue: rocks that appear brighter than others (Chinooks brush them free of algae), says Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s anadromous fish manager Pete Hassemer. Look for redds at the downstream end of slow pools. Each year, between 600 and 1,000 wild Chinook return to Loon Creek’s pristine spawning grounds from late July to August, says Hassemer.

On the Menu

Breakfast 1
On the road
Lunch 1
Bagel with Italian dry salami and Swiss cheese
Dinner 1
Backcountry Fish Tacos
Breakfast 2
Peanut Butter-Chocolate Chip Oatmeal
Lunch 2
Bagel with peanut butter
Snacks Jerky, roasted almonds

Peanut Butter- Chocolate Chip Oatmeal
Like a cookie in a bowl

2 packages (plain or cinnamon) instant oatmeal
1 handful chocolate chips
2 tablespoons peanut butter

Heat water and add to instant oatmeal. Add chocolate chips and peanut butter. Stir.

Backcountry Fish Tacos
A refreshingly easy twist on a summer favorite

1 small green cabbage, shredded
1 avocado
4 tablespoons salsa
1 teaspoon garlic powder
2 4-ounce pouches albacore
6-8 small tortillas

Peel and mash the avocado, adding salsa to make guacamole. Shred the precooked albacore and warm in pan with olive oil. Place fish in a folded tortilla, top with diced cabbage and guacamole.

The Grocery List (Aisle #) in nearest store below
Jerky (2)
5-oz. jar salsa (2)
1 package small flour tortillas (3)
2 4-oz. packages alba- core tuna steak (4)
1 small pack chocolate chips (4)
8 oz. roasted almonds (4)
2 plain bagels (4)
Instant oatmeal (4)
1 jar peanut butter (5)
Italian dry salami (6)
1 pack sliced Swiss cheese (6)
1 small green cabbage (produce)
1 avocado (produce)
Pack olive oil, garlic powder, salt, and pepper

Nearest Grocery Store
Mountain Village Mercantile
ID 21 (at the intersection with ID 75) Stanley, Idaho; (208) 774-3500

Pit Stop
Gorge on a calzone or hand-tossed pizza and wash it down with a cold Sun Valley Ale at Papa Brunee’s (on Ace of Diamonds St. in Stanley). Get there early–this is a popular dinner spot for locals coming off the trail. (208) 774-2536.

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Top Ultralight

Six Moon Designs Lunar Duo

Tent geeks will love this hybrid shelter, which delivers incredible space for the weight. Setup requires some futzing, but the payoff is a lavish floorplan that sleeps three in a pinch. Pitching the twin-door, twin-vestibule single-wall tent requires two trekking poles and a minimum of six stakes. Pre-bent spacer poles on either side create the tent’s arched peak. Despite this minimalist skeleton, the tent stood up to hail, rain, and strong gusts. But beware of severe, sustained wind: On our most recent test trip–at 11,000 feet in the Colorado Rockies–howling gales ripped the lightweight fabric and fasteners. During good weather, roll the fabric back on the roomy vestibules for increased pass-through ventilation. Our testers reported minimal condensation, even in the worst conditions. Seams are not taped; plan on spending an afternoon hand-sealing them. $275; 2 lbs. 8 oz.

Best All-Around

Big Agnes Copper Spur UL 2 *FP

No housing crunch here. This sub-4-pound tent is luxuriously spacious, full of upgrades, and, yes, expensive. A hubbed pole system and a short, crossing “eyebrow” pole give this freestanding dome steep walls and an airy 42-inch peak height. Two 11-square-foot vestibules accept a boatload of gear, while extra-wide doors let you climb in and out without pulling a muscle. Ventilation and weather protection are equally high-end. The taut pitch easily shed heavy, wet snow in Idaho’s Pioneer Mountains. In the face of the fast-approaching tempest, our tester had the tent up and fully battened down in minutes. $400; 3 lbs. 13 oz.

Best Buy

Sierra Designs Anu 2 *FP

Get a lot of tent for a little money with this freestanding, single-door model. The Anu’s quick-pitching hubbed poles, combined with a short brow pole over the doorway, create near vertical walls and plenty of floor space for two. “I could even do yoga stretches without bumping into my partner,” said one tester. Other notable features include an ample 43.5-inch peak height, loads of mesh for good ventilation and stargazing, and an 11-square-foot vestibule large enough for two loaded packs. Weatherproofing is impeccable, reported a tester after a soggy trip in Idaho’s Smoky Mountains. If you’re willing to forgo the luxury of two doors and vestibules, this tent is a steal. $199; 5 lbs. 4 oz.

Big Agnes Seedhouse SL2 *FP

A combination of low weight and solid performance makes this tent a perennial favorite among our testers with minimalist tendencies. Exhibit A: When a massive thunderstorm pounded the Seedhouse with pea-sized hail and steady rain in Colorado’s Collegiate Peaks Wilderness, the shelter remained stable and condensation-free. Exhibit B: The next night, with clear skies, our testers removed the fly and enjoyed stellar Milky Way views through the all-mesh canopy. Caveat: Big guys won’t be happy with the compact living space. There’s only one door, the floor is narrow, and the tent’s tallest point (38 inches) is at the front end, so partners have to sit shoulder to shoulder. Two packs fit inside the single vestibule as long as they’re stacked. $320; 2 lbs. 14 oz.

Black Diamond Mirage FP

Big blow coming? Point this aerodynamic tent’s knife-blade profile into the wind, and let the gale pass over–and around–you. The dual-hub pole system is both stable and fast to pitch. The freestanding Mirage 2 also got a perfect score for ventilation, thanks to an all-mesh canopy and a fly vent at the foot of the tent. Interior space is merely adequate; sleeping pads overlap slightly at the narrow end and the height of the tent peaks out at just 37 inches. Likewise, the single vestibule–with a unique wraparound design that’s big enough for a pack and boots–is sufficient, but not generous. $280; 3 lbs. 15 oz.

Bargain!

EMS Eclipse 2

This freestanding single-wall weighs less than 5 pounds and costs less than $200, yet its lavish elbowroom and taut, weather-shedding pitch make it suitable for light winter use (it easily withstood a late-autumn storm in Idaho). Burly clips are easy to operate even with bulky gloves. The ceiling peaks out at a generous 47 inches, which makes tent-bound days more bearable, and the 28-square-foot vestibule easily swallows piles of cold-weather gear. Condensation is a minor issue, which is common with single-walls, and a tester broke the small plastic hub holding the two poles together when he opened them in the wrong direction. Both are minor complaints given the overall great value. $189; 4 lbs. 14 oz

GoLite Utopia 2+

Is it a tarp? A tent? Who cares–this floorless hybrid works. For less than 3 pounds, its 45-inch ceiling and spacious floor plan accommodate two people and lots of gear, or even a couple and a child. Equally impressive: Its taut pitch and rounded profile shed wind and rain with ease. After using the Utopia for four nights on the Continental Divide Trail, our tester was amazed by its quick and easy setup, which requires two poles and eight stakes. The perimeter hugs the ground tightly enough to protect against rain spatter and most bugs; you can add a bathtub-style floor ($45, 1 lb.) for extra protection. Despite two wall vents, we experienced some condensation on humid nights. $275; 2 lbs. 10 oz.

Kelty Corrie 2 *

One tester raved about this freestanding double-wall’s monsoon-worthiness after prolonged, dumping rains in Wyoming’s Wind Rivers. Credit goes to a taut pitch created by its hubbed two-pole system. Thanks to an abundance of mesh, condensation was nil even on the rainiest of nights. Testers also praised how quickly the single-door, tunnel-shaped tent set up in the face of the approaching storm. Another plus: Steep walls maximize space in the smallish 11-square-foot vestibule, which provides room for two packs stacked on top of each other. While its low weight is appealing, big guys will find the tent’s 27 square feet of floor space and 40-inch peak a bit confining. $280; 3 lbs. 10 oz.

Marmot Aura 2P *FP

“Very efficient use of space.” That’s how our tester described this freestanding, double-wall dome. While other two-person tents have more floor space by the numbers, the Aura 2P proves that stats can be deceiving. The unique, asymmetrical pole structure creates almost vertical walls and a 40-inch peak height, providing more living space than we expected. An all-night rainstorm in Idaho’s Smoky Mountains left no doubt as to the tent’s supreme weather-worthiness. Our tester’s only complaint was minor condensation during extremely humid conditions with highs in the upper 30s. Two roomy vestibules house piles of gear, and the large tandem doors are easy to slip in and out of. $299; 4 lbs. 1 oz.

MontBell Crescent 2

There aren’t many two-person tents in this rarified weight class, and few compare with the Crescent 2 for its price-to-performance. It’s a non-freestanding hybrid that combines single- and double-wall construction, with a single pole that creates a steep-walled profile. The design easily shed heavy rainfall in Idaho’s Smoky Mountains, and the full-length vent along the single-wall side kept condensation to a minimum. Thirty-four square feet of floor space is sufficient for average-size campers, but the narrow profile reduces headroom. Biggest compromise: The tiny vestibule is hard to access because of a small door, and it accommodates little more than a couple pairs of boots. $279; 2 lbs. 12 oz.

Mountain Hardwear Skyledge 2.1 *FP

Here’s a change that’s easy to like: The Skyledge 2.1, which had 41 inches of ceiling height and plenty of elbow room last year, now has 3 more inches of floor length and weighs 3 ounces less. And the changes didn’t alter this freestanding tent’s ability to withstand fierce weather. In Idaho’s Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, our tester rode out a rainstorm of near-biblical proportions and awoke the next morning as dry as a good sauvignon blanc. Floor-to-ceiling mesh makes condensation a non-issue. The twin vestibules are each large enough to store a pack and boots. Crossing poles clip to the canopy and a short eyebrow pole crosses the top, making setup a breeze. $325; 3 lbs. 15 oz.

Best Tarp

MSR Twing

It weighs less than a full water bottle and packs down nearly as small, yet the Twing’s massive (68 square feet) coverage offers sleeping space for up to four, in a pinch. Our testers found a number of ways to pitch this versatile, sil-nylon tarp. Use two trekking poles and the six pre-rigged guylines and it’s an open-ended floorless tent (be sure to pitch its low end into the weather). Or attach the two center guy points to an overhead branch and stake it out for a spacious rainy-day kitchen. The twin-peak tunnel shape of the Twing makes it easy to tension a tight pitch; it held strong during a night of 30-plus-mph gusts in Idaho’s Pioneer Mountains. Only drawback: For a tarp, the price is hefty. $230; 1 lbs. 14 oz.

NEMO Losi *FP

In the ever-shrinking world of lighter and smaller, this tent bucks the trend with luxurious space. Our tester, his wife, and their chocolate lab slept inside without feeling pinched. The combination of crisscrossing hubbed poles and a pair of shorter brow poles makes for steep walls and a lofty 46-inch peak. Two 13-square-foot vestibules accommodate a week’s worth of gear for two. Vast panels of mesh and scalloped vents on both ends of the fly keep air circulating, while the taut pitch easily sheds blowing rain. Bonus: The ingenious corner anchor system locks poles in place with a secure ball-and-socket system. Smart accessories include a machine-washable Pawprint liner ($49) that joins two sleeping pads together and carbon-fiber poles ($40), which save 2 ounces should you want to go lighter, not smaller. $325; 4 lbs. 14 oz.

EMO Morpho AR

You’ll never break a pole in this tent because there aren’t any. Instead, it has inflatable air beams, which, when guyed out correctly, are incredibly strong. The sleek profile easily shrugged off gusting winds that topped 50 mph on an 8,000-foot pass in Idaho’s Hells Canyon country. After more than a year of off-and-on testing, we still haven’t popped a tube. This year’s redesigned Morpho sports a proprietary fabric that’s significantly more breathable than its predecessor’s, and three vents provide good cross-ventilation in breezy conditions, eliminating the condensation problems we experienced with last year’s version (though droplets did collect on the ceiling during a September snowstorm in Idaho’s Boulder Mountains). The headroom on this single-wall, non-freestanding tent peaks at 42 inches, and the length is a luxurious 112 inches. Two doors are a bonus, but the vestibule is tiny; only boots fit. Bummer: The Morpho is bulky when packed. $385; 4 lbs. 13 oz.

REI Quarter Dome 2 TT *FP

Welcome to Extreme Makeover: Tent Edition. This year’s Quarter Dome has a new pole configuration that creates more elbowroom and a higher ceiling than last year’s version. Lots of mesh and two adjustable fly vents minimize condensation, dual vestibules each hold a week’s worth of gear, and weather resistance is as good as ever. Setup is simple the first time out: “I was able to assemble it alone, with a fading headlamp, in about six minutes,” one tester said. Length is best for sub-six-footers. Bummer: The teardrop-shaped doors hang in the middle when open and can’t be tied out of the way. $259; 3 lbs. 12 oz.

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by Jason D.B. Kauffman, Idaho Mountain Express, Feb. 2009

The undulating high-desert steppe that stretches on for miles north of Idaho Falls isn’t typical wolverine habitat. Rather, it’s where you’d expect to see pronghorn antelope speeding off into the distance.

But that apparently didn’t matter to a young male wolverine that recently found itself on the wrong side of a bobcat trap set by a trapper from the nearby town of Menan.

When the trapper arrived at the trap set among tall sagebrush he found the animal waiting unharmed. Contacted by the trapper, a wildlife biologist with the Caribou-Targhee National Forest was able to sedate and remove the wolverine.

Biologist Bryan Aber whisked the animal, whose Latin name Gulo gulo means “glutton,” to the Driggs veterinary clinic. The clinic’s vets have helped with wolverine research in the past.

The wolverine’s capture comes at a time when the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, Forest Service and nonprofit Wildlife Conservation Society have come together to jointly fund a wildlife biologist position headed up by Aber. As part of the job, Aber manages wolves, grizzly bears and wolverines that occupy lands next to Yellowstone National Park in the upper Snake River region.

After a thorough checkup, the vets implanted an internal radio transmitter in the wolverine to allow its movements to be tracked. According to Fish and Game, internal transmitters have proven successful in the past.

Though the tapered bodies of wolverines make the use of traditional radio collars difficult, the Fish and Game also decided to fit the animal with a GPS tracking collar that will provide its exact time and location data for as long as it remains on, typically about 15 weeks.

After a brief holding period, the animal was released in the high-elevation Centennial Mountains to the north on the Idaho-Montana border, considered better habitat for wolverines. Aber and other biologists will track the wolverine, hoping to learn what attracted him down into the Menan area. They’ll be specifically watching what landscapes the wolverine uses to cross from mountain range to mountain range, Aber said.

“We can start to figure out what areas might be more important for crossing points,” he said.

This information may help conservationists identify lower corridors—which are often privately owned—that could be protected through conservation easements.

Because so little is known about these shy animals, it’s even possible that the young wolverine knew where he was going, said Gregg Losinski, Fish and Game’s Upper Snake Regional conservation educator. The animal may have been using nearby riparian lands to travel between mountain ranges.

“It could be perfectly within its range,” Losinski said. “We just don’t know.”

With its release in the rugged Centennials, which are just a short distance away from other remote backcountry areas, predicting where the young wolverine will end up next is anybody’s guess.

One thing biologists do know about wolverines is that they really like to travel.

Several years ago, Wildlife Conservation Society scientists equipped a wolverine captured in Wyoming’s Teton Range with a GPS collar to better understand the habitat needs of this largest member of the weasel family, which can weigh up to 55 pounds.

The wolverine immediately traveled from the Tetons to the Portneuf Range in Idaho and then back again, covering 256 miles in only 19 days. It then trekked to Mount Washburn in central Yellowstone and back to the Tetons in a week, a distance of 140 miles. In all, the wolverine covered 543 miles in 42 days before its collar fell off.

According to Robert Inman of the Wildlife Conservation Society, the tracking data suggests that wolverine populations may function over a “huge geographic scale.”

Many conservationists consider wolverines, which also inhabit the scenic mountain ranges surrounding the Wood River Valley, a threatened species, and have petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the animal under the Endangered Species Act. They claim that as few as 550 of the secretive animals survive in the lower 48 states.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has yet to announce whether it will grant the request.

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by Jason D.B. Kauffman, Idaho Mountain Express, July 2008

photos by Jason D.B. Kauffman

A more dramatic opening to a film about the conflicts between Western sheep ranchers and wild gray wolves could not have been scripted.

Staged on the lush green benches below the rugged Boulder Mountain front, a potential disaster that would have placed grazing sheep in the vicinity of a wolf pack is narrowly avoided through a combination of quick thinking, a series of well-timed telephone calls and a rancher willing to change plans at the last minute. Scene 2 unfolds on the large band of sheep bedding down safely for the night, while just several miles away, the all-black wolf pack continues hunting to feed their four several-month-old pups.

But this drama isn’t splashed across any silver screen. It unfolded in real life just last week.

“We kind of avoided a train wreck,” said Suzanne Stone of Defenders of Wildlife, a national conservation organization that’s devoting about $25,000 to fund a groundbreaking project this summer to keep wolves and sheep separate in the Boulder and Smoky mountains northwest of Ketchum.

The scenario occurred just hours before two northbound semi trucks were set to arrive on state Highway 75 to drop off their cargo of 2,500 ewes and lambs on the Sawtooth National Forest’s Owl Creek grazing allotment. Operating near the south end of the remote grazing area on the upper end of the 350,000-acre Ketchum Ranger District, a trio of field assistants hired by Defenders of Wildlife as the on-the-ground face for the summer’s innovative project made what turned out to be a very good call.

Putting two and two together, locals Cindi Hillemeyer, Justin Stevenson and Roger Olson quickly realized the spot where the sheep were going to be released was less than a mile from the Phantom Hill wolf pack’s new rendezvous site. Only in the previous few days had they discovered where the pack, the first confirmed to be denning in the Wood River Valley since reintroduction, had established the rendezvous site.

These hidden meeting spots are resting places where young wolf pups are left while the adult members of a pack go off to hunt.

Standing in a sun-drenched meadow early Monday—the same meadow where the sheep were to have been dropped off last week on Tuesday—Stevenson directed Stone’s attention to a patch of dead evergreen trees set against the vertical face of the Boulder Mountains less than a mile away. Using radio telemetry equipment supplied by Defenders of Wildlife, the field assistants have confirmed the hidden spot is the pack’s rendezvous site, Stevenson told Stone, Boise-based Northern Rockies representative for Defenders of Wildlife.

“I bet he’s right there,” said Stevenson, pointing to where they last detected a signal from the Phantom Hill pack’s radio collared alpha male.

An experienced observer of wolf behavior, Stone gazed in the direction of the rendezvous site and nodded.

“That’s a good spot for him,” she said.

The rancher who owns the sheep that were bound for the sloping meadow next to the Phantom Hill pack’s rendezvous site early last week leases grazing land on the Ketchum Ranger District in the Warm Springs Creek drainage. But because much of that area burned during last summer’s Castle Rock Fire, forest officials are allowing him to graze the Owl Creek allotment this summer.

As darkness fell last Tuesday, most of the redirected band’s 2,500 ewes and lambs entered a several-acre night pen Hillemeyer and Olson were about finished setting up. Lagging behind the band, a straggler raced to enter the pen. The sheep’s hasty pace immediately put Hillemeyer and Olson on full alert.

“I said, ‘Wow, what’s going on?’” Hillemeyer recalled.

They quickly discovered the source of the sheep’s panic. Looking away from the safety of the single-wire electrified enclosure to the hills beyond, the field assistants spotted a single black wolf loping away in the opposite direction.

“That’s as close as it gets without a depredation,” Stone commented.

Hillemeyer, Stevenson and Olson believe that at the end of the day, the band’s safety came down to their presence and successful communication with Sawtooth National Forest officials. Those officials in turn immediately contacted the rancher and told him where he could safely drop off his sheep.

“Which was great,” Hillemeyer said. “They were already in trucks.”

She also credits the rancher for being open to adapting to the presence of the pack.

“They were more than willing to change their route.”

Having Sawtooth officials open to redirecting the band to the Owl Creek allotment—which was rested last summer—also contributed to the day’s peaceful outcome, Stone said.

“It gave us an opportunity to work things out,” she said.

Kurt Nelson, Ketchum District Ranger for the Sawtooth National Forest, also praised the collaboration.

“I think the level of cooperation is unprecedented,” he said.

Participants in the project hope to react positively and quickly to any challenges that come their way, Nelson said.

“It’s adaptive management,” he said.

For the remainder of the summer, at least one of the Defenders of Wildlife field assistants will be out in the field at night, the time when sheep are most vulnerable to depredation by wolves. And except in a few instances, the most they’ll have to keep an eye on inside the upper Wood River Valley project area will be two sheep bands.

In addition to setting up night pens each evening and monitoring for the whereabouts of the Phantom Hill pack—the project’s primary focus—the field assistants will also deploy loud air horns or 22-caliber starter pistols to scare off wolves that venture too close to wandering sheep bands.

For their part, herders working for Carey-based Lava Lake Land & Livestock, John Faulkner of Gooding and John Peavey of the Flat Top Sheep Ranch will also keep in close contact with the field assistants. And keeping watch over the sheep bands will be Great Pyrenees guard dogs.

It was only a few weeks ago when Stevenson, Hillemeyer and Olson, a retired Idaho Department of Fish and Game conservation officer from Hailey, were trained on how to use radio telemetry to keep tabs on radio-collared wolves. In the eight-member Phantom Hill pack, the alpha male and a 2-year-old female are the only wolves with radio collars.

Since the spotters began training, they’ve learned quickly, Stevenson said. But he said it may take time before he’s really accomplished in the use of radio telemetry equipment, which experienced users can use to triangulate where a wolf is, to a very close degree.

“I still don’t have a grasp on how far they are, but at least I know what direction,” he said.

Olson said they’ve also become much quicker at setting up the electrified night pens for the sheep. He said it now only takes them about 1.5 hours to set up the three- to five-acre enclosures.

The ongoing project to save both the Phantom Hill wolves and grazing sheep in the upper Big Wood River drainage is the brainchild of a diverse group of people—including ranchers, U.S. Forest Service officials and conservationists—who aren’t normally seen working together so closely.

Like Stevenson and Olson, Hillemeyer realizes they may not always be so lucky. She said that while they’re excited by the success they’ve found so far, the fact that everyone is communicating so well is in itself remarkable.

“If that’s all we do, that’s great,” she said.

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For 20 days in August the Castle Rock Fire burned across the Smoky Mountains. As the blaze swept through a beloved backcountry recreation area, threatening Bald Mountain and Ketchum, thousands of residents were forced to leave their homes.

by Jason D.B. Kauffman, Sun Valley Guide, Winter 2008

When Bill Murphy, the fire management officer for the Sawtooth National Forest, arrived at a one-tenth-acre wildfire north of Galena Summit in early June, he sensed he was in the presence of something extraordinary.

It wasn’t that the forest floor had ignited so early in the season—he’d witnessed wildfires as early as mid-May. It wasn’t that the small blaze was surrounded by lush growth, that was still a common sight this early in the summer. Rather, Murphy was startled to see the fire spotting 150 feet ahead of itself into dead and downed woody material. “I was thinking, our dead stuff is really dry.” A bad sign so early in the year.

Nineteen days later, on the warm and gusty afternoon of June 22, a small, human-caused blaze ignited south of Trail Creek Cabin. Within an hour it had transformed into a meadow- and forest-consuming inferno, racing across the north-facing slopes of Morgan Ridge. By the time the Trail Creek Fire was contained, 288 acres had burned.

Once again, Murphy was struck by the severity of the blaze and how rapidly it had moved so early in the fire season. He recalled an interagency meeting with the National Weather Service the previous month. A member of the group had pointed to a red-colored anomaly on a map of Idaho and asked what it was. On the detailed map of statewide water conditions, the color red signified extremely dry conditions. “It was the Wood River drainages,” Murphy said.

The Wood River Valley, home to the communities of Sun Valley, Ketchum, Hailey and Bellevue, whose vast outdoor recreation offerings attract thousands of visitors each season, was officially the driest region in the state.

Spring snowpacks in the Big Wood River basin had been only about 30 percent of normal. The months of April and May were among the driest since record-taking began and the 2007 summer was shaping up as one of the hottest on record. The situation provided the perfect recipe for a major wildfire, and the week of August 12 brought with it the perfect storm.

On Tuesday, August 14, a large weather system trailing dry thunderstorms passed over the high desert south of the Wood River Valley. By Thursday, August 16, it had made its way here. The day combined dry thunderstorms with warm temperatures, gusting winds and critically dry fuels. Around noon, fire crews were sent scrambling to six lightning starts in the Stanley area, another out Muldoon Canyon east of the south valley city of Bellevue and, finally, to a small blaze in the Warm Springs Creek drainage, 10 miles southwest of Ketchum.

With so many starts, Murphy and other fire managers were left prioritizing where to send firefighters. Crews were able to go after and douse seven of the fires, said Murphy. But apparently Mother Nature had other ideas for that small blaze in Warm Springs Creek canyon.

The Battle Begins

Its nose pointed parallel to the smooth ribbon of concrete ahead, the Twin Otter turbo-prop airplane leapt to life and raced down the runway at the Magic Valley Regional Airport in southern Idaho. Reaching critical velocity, the front end of the plane lifted. Moments later, the dual-engine aircraft took to the air over Twin Falls and the surrounding farmland. The pilot banked hard and headed north.

It was 2:54 p.m., Thursday, August 16.

In the belly of the fixed-wing aircraft, four Bureau of Land Management smokejumpers sat patiently. Perhaps they fidgeted with their firefighting gear, making last-minute preparations for their upcoming jump.

Jarring turbulence marked the less-than-one-hour flight north, over 75 miles of rolling sagebrush and lava rock-dotted plains and then over the foothills that quickly become South Central Idaho’s vast Smoky Mountains.

Ahead of the mid-sized Twin Otter, thunderclouds covered large portions of the bright blue sky. The turbulent conditions spawned by the violent weather system rocked the aircraft and the men inside it.

Circling over the Warm Springs Creek drainage, the men spotted what they had come to find, a small column of smoke, rising into the air just south of Warm Springs Creek.

Within hours, the blaze beneath them would come to be called the Castle Rock Fire, a name Wood River Valley residents will remember for years to come.

With gear on and parachutes prepared, three of the jumpers leapt from the safety of the plane and floated 3,000 feet down to the partially forested valley floor. Remaining behind was the fourth member of their team, who had succumbed to motion sickness after the turbulent flight.

It was 3:39 p.m.

On most other days, more jumpers would have accompanied the trio. The standard number for a call is eight. But this was the record-setting wildfire season of 2007, and the hot and dry month of August at that. The other 83 members of Boise Smokejumpers were jumping on dozens of wildfires that had exploded in the region during several days of lightning storms.

The trio directed their chutes to a landing site near Castle Rock, a locally known landmark, and Incident Commander-in-training Dale Springer quickly led his team toward the haze of smoke coming from the small wildfire now spreading out from near Rough Canyon, a drainage south of Warm Springs Road. There, they found the fire’s origin, a lightning-struck tree. Things looked promising when they first arrived. “I thought we could get it,” Springer said.

His optimism turned to concern as high winds fanned the flames, pushing them into north-facing timber. “It was a half-acre fire and it ran away,” he said. “It got in the timber and there was not much we could do.”

From less than five acres on that first day, the blaze increased to 150 by the following evening, spreading over an area packed with campers, hikers and bikers during this peak recreation season. And while local U.S. Forest Service officials threw every available resource at the fire, fierce winds whipped it into a fury over the weekend, sending it north over Warm Springs Road. From there, the blaze made a startling run up the length of Rooks Creek, eight miles west of Ketchum.

The fire’s astonishing jump over Warm Springs Road and up the length of Rooks Creek sounded the alarm for local government officials, who watched with increasing trepidation as the fire bore down on residential areas of the county and the western edge of Ketchum.

What began as a voluntary evacuation order for some on Saturday, August 18, became, by 4 p.m. on Sunday, a mandatory evacuation order for all homes west of the Ketchum city limits in the Warm Springs Creek area, including those living in the Frenchman’s Bend and Board Ranch neighborhoods, an area comprised of numerous homes ranging from mobile to multi-million-dollar structures.

At daybreak on Monday, August 20, a Type 1 incident management team from California took over running the stubborn, now 10,726-acre blaze. Firmly entrenched in upper Adams Gulch and Eve Gulch, as well as in Fox Creek, the fire was now encroaching on three more neighborhoods north of Ketchum.

Fearing the worst, the fast-growing ranks of firefighters began fighting fire with fire, using the technique of back-burning to clear burnable materials from forest areas around Adams Gulch residences, the Hulen Meadows development and Griffin Butte.

Despite the fire’s increasingly close proximity to the renowned Sun Valley ski area, Incident Commander Jeanne Pincha-Tulley insisted that constructing fire line between Ketchum and the fire remained her top priority.

Wood River Valley residents responded to the threat to their neighbors with offers of shelter, food and much-needed encouragement for the displaced, as well as for the firefighters struggling to save their cherished mountain valley. Out of the fire, the community’s grace under pressure and unwavering sense of generosity became a story in itself.

However, the weekend of August 25 was a dark time, as residents watched the fire steadily advance over the Smoky Mountains. What had been a lesser concern during the previous week, several small spot fires in the Red Warrior Creek drainage west of Ketchum, quickly became alarming. With flames cresting the ridge separating the Warm Springs Creek and Greenhorn Gulch drainages to the south, numerous residents from Hailey, 12 miles south of Ketchum, reported seeing a glowing wall of red advancing on them from the north. At an estimated 18,015 acres on Friday, August 24, the blaze had exploded to 41,100 acres by day’s end Sunday. Fueled by fierce winds that blew a wall of flames down Greenhorn Gulch and up to the fence lines of several homes, the rapid growth represented a remarkable 56 percent expansion in two days. The grim situation led county officials to place 1,000 homes between Hailey and Ketchum under mandatory evacuation orders.

The fire’s extreme run also sent it racing north up the southwest side of Bald Mountain to within 50 yards of Sun Valley Resort’s Seattle Ridge Lodge. There, more than 40 firefighters fought a successful battle to stop the advancing flames from consuming the lodge.

Then, what many had referred to as the worst-case scenario came true on Tuesday, August 28. Buffeted by gusting winds, a small boiling cauldron of fire near the bottom of Bassett Gulch, 1.5 miles west of Bald Mountain, proceeded to race east to the top of the 9,151-foot summit. “What we hoped would not happen did happen,” fire information officer David Olson said.

A column of black smoke sent embers showering down on Bald Mountain’s north- and east-facing slopes, which hold the majority of developed runs, chairlifts and base accesses. It appeared that Sun Valley’s ski area might go up in flames.

But a fast response from firefighters and from helicopters dropping retardant and water quickly doused the spot fires that had been ignited by the falling embers.

Considering the immediate threat if the fire continued over the summit and towards the city of Ketchum, officials again issued mandatory evacuation orders, this time for 1,400 homes in Ketchum’s Warm Springs neighborhood.

In the six days following, fire crews working night and day ignited backburns, beginning along the northwest boundary of the ski area next to International and Cozy ski runs. The crews raced to complete the burnouts in preparation for another anticipated wind event. From one sub-ridge below Guyer Ridge to the next, crews worked west toward their objective; burning the north-facing slopes behind Board Ranch to Frenchman’s Bend, which once completed would fully contain the Castle Rock Fire.

Misting rain fell over the Ketchum area early on September 4 as firefighters achieved what they and the entire community had waited for with bated breath for two and a half long weeks. Around 6 a.m., crews put the final touches on the last stretch of fire line, and in doing so brought the large blaze to 100 percent containment.

At last count, lands falling within the Castle Rock Fire perimeter stood at 48,520 acres. Amazingly, no homes, no ski lodges or ski lifts were lost.

North to south, the fire’s containment came as a great relief to the community. While most residents were able to go about their daily lives during the fire, the nearly three weeks of choking smoke, road closures, lost business and evacuations left them in a weary state. But throughout the ordeal, they had never been more as one.

Perhaps the most positive feedback about the community’s response to the Castle Rock Fire came from the firefighters. Considering the almost endless lines of volunteers, offers of food and shelter, constant waves of encouragement and the homemade thank you signs scattered throughout the valley, the fire crews expressed amazement. Not all communities in the West welcome firefighters with such open arms, fire information officer Dick Birger said in the days after containment. “We really do appreciate working with this community.”

In the weeks after the fire, Bill Murphy began considering the significance of the Castle Rock Fire. On the more than one million acres he oversees as fire management officer, Murphy has seen a significant increase in large fires during the past three summers.

In 2005, it was the White Cloud Mountains’ 40,483-acre Valley Road Fire. Next came the 4,252-acre Trailhead Fire in the Sawtooth Mountains. And then, Castle Rock. Altogether 94,983 acres have burned in three years, compared to 5,343 acres in the preceding nine years. That should be a wakeup call for the region, Murphy said. The Wood River and Sawtooth Valleys have not seen their last large fires. “I never say never. I would expect big fires to continue,” said Murphy.

Continued dry conditions could further exacerbate an already perilous situation. However, above average snowfalls are forecasted for this winter and that could put the Wood River Valley region on the path to recovery.

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by Jason D.B. Kauffman, Sun Valley Guide, Summer 2008

Twelve years after the gray wolf was reintroduced to the American West, a small pack settled the northern Wood River Valley. Jason D.B. Kauffman scouts the Phantom Hill wolf pack and investigates one of the most controversial issues in the West.

Biologists aren’t sure from what direction the pack of three black wolves arrived.

They could have crossed near Galena Summit, a low saddle along a major ridge dividing the upper Big Wood River from the headwaters of the Salmon. Or they may have descended from out of the Smoky Mountains, a wildlife-rich expanse of remote summits and narrow timbered valleys west of Ketchum. It’s also possible they came from the east, cresting the rugged Boulder Mountains before dropping from 11,000-foot peaks into the aspen- and evergreen-dotted foothills.

It’s all likely looking wolf country.

Here’s what is known: In the first days of June 2007, biologists confirmed the presence of three adult wolves near Phantom Hill northwest of Ketchum. The ragtag trio consisted of an aging male with a graying muzzle, a female with a limp to her right front leg and a yearling female.

For the first time since the federal government’s controversial gray wolf reintroduction began in the Northern Rockies in 1995, and perhaps the first time in close to a century, a pair of adult wolves was confirmed to be denning inside the Wood River Valley. And within the pack’s den site were three tiny wolf pups.

Biologists named the newly discovered band of wolves the Phantom Hill wolf pack.

****

During the summer, the rolling foothills of the Boulder and Smoky mountains are grazed by thousands of sheep owned by several different ranchers. No matter where they migrated, the Phantom Hill wolves were never far from herds of the lightly guarded livestock, an enticing target for a small pack with three hungry mouths to feed.

It was no surprise when the pack gave in to temptation and, according to federal Wildlife Services, killed at least nine sheep in the summer of 2007. Following these incidents, federal authorities were prepared to destroy the Phantom Hill pack, but lacked the authority granted to the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, which opted for non-lethal tactics to keep the pack at bay. The situation was calmed for a time, but the fate of the local pack remains uncertain. State officials may yet choose a lethal course of action should sheep kills resume.

The politically powerful ranching industry is at the center of the Northern Rockies’ wolf debate. Its outcries prior to the return of the gray wolf are legendary. But to paint all ranchers with the same broad brush is to overlook a growing minority that is learning to live with wolves. After losing 41 sheep to the predators over a span of several years, Carey-based Lava Lake Land & Livestock realized it would have to modify its grazing practices. With up to 6,000 sheep running on 730,000 acres of federal grazing allotments each summer, ignoring the region’s growing wolf population was no longer an option.

Working with wildlife officials and Defenders of Wildlife, a nonprofit organization that aims to prevent conflicts between wolves and livestock, Lava Lake sought ways to keep its sheep safe. Sheepherders now carry radio telemetry equipment, basic hand-held receivers that pick up signals from individual radio-collared wolves. Last summer, herders detected wolves less than a quarter mile from sheep bands. Lava Lake has brought on additional Great Pyrenees guard dogs and has begun arming herders with single-barrel shotguns loaded with non-lethal “cracker shells” or rubber bullets to drive wolves away. At dusk, they herd their sheep into electrified night pens. The half-acre corrals borrow from a successful centuries-old Mongolian and Tibetan practice. And last summer, Lava Lake President Mike Stevens redirected a band bound toward Phantom Hill to less problematic areas. Economic realities limit Stevens’ ability to keep his herds constantly on the move, but so far, the efforts have worked. Lava Lake has not lost a single animal to wolves since 2005.

****

Ranchers Katie Breckenridge and Rob Struthers own the 1,800-acre B-Bar-B Ranch, whose irrigated pastures, crops and dry grazing lands lie south of U.S. Highway 20 next to the small agricultural town of Picabo. The couple has bred and trained American Quarter Horses for more than 30 years.

But when unknown groups of wolves crossed into their property twice last winter, the couple felt helpless to protect the 100 head of horses, organically raised Angus beef cattle and lambs that are their livelihood.

Although they declined to be interviewed for this story for fear of further polarizing the wolf issue, Katie and Rob were sufficiently stirred up by the incident to express their anxiety in regional newspapers. In letters to the editor, they said their trials began in February when three wolves were spotted 30 yards from their stallion pasture and gelding and mare pens. Seemingly more curious than deliberate, the wolves left without harassing their horses. Things didn’t turn out so smoothly a week later. In a hay field across from their outdoor horse arena, two wolves boldly ran a small herd of horses through deep snow in broad daylight. “The wolves show no fear of anything,” they wrote. After running the horses into nearby fences, the wolves headed north.

Unlike many Western ranchers who graze public lands, Katie and Rob are strictly private-land ranchers. While Idaho law allows ranchers to kill aggressive wolves in defense of their livestock, they are concerned with the unknown toll these encounters have on their prized animals. Horses harassed by wolves may develop long-term psychological damage that future riders must deal with. The couple, whose animals may lose value with each incident, complain that wolf advocates don’t comprehend the impact on their livelihood.

Based on the report from B-Bar-B, Fish and Game officer Rob Morris was certain the couple was dealing with an unknown group of wolves. While no den has been confirmed in the area, wolves have been spotted in the Bellevue Triangle in recent years. In 2007, a Picabo rancher killed a 90-pound female wolf after it attacked his livestock.

Morris believes the wolves that harassed the B-Bar-B horses may have been drawn to the Picabo area by a herd of 100 elk that wintered near Queen’s Crown, a prominent grass-covered knoll east of town. “That is the first time I’ve seen elk there.” Morris said the wolves would be better off if they followed their natural prey back into the high country as winter turned to spring. “I’m hoping those wolves are following the elk.”

****

Suzanne Stone, Northern Rockies representative of Defenders of Wildlife, works with Lava Lake and other ranchers throughout the Intermountain West and has witnessed the challenges they face. In private meetings with her, local ranchers have shown a willingness to explore new ways of living with wolves. Their words and actions reflect a realization that wolves are here to stay. “They’re becoming more tolerant of wolves,” she said.

When gray wolves were reintroduced by the federal government in 1995, wolf alarmists were a dominant voice in the region. Stone thinks ranchers’ changing attitudes reflect the realization that wolves are not having as devastating an impact on their livelihoods as early warnings predicted. Like modern wolf biologists, today’s ranchers are learning as they go. None of the current generation has actually lived in a landscape heavily populated with wolves. Fears expressed were largely founded on folklore. “It’s the wolf teaching them more than anything that they can live with wolves,” Stone said.

Wolves are restructuring centuries-old ways of doing business in the West. Simple animal husbandry practices, such as removing sheep carcasses from the range, help ensure wolves don’t get a taste for mutton. During the spring, when wolves are protecting their pups, they’re highly territorial, Stone said. Ranchers have learned that at this time of year, guard dogs can actually draw wolves out if they encroach too closely on a den site.

The tireless wolf advocate is optimistic that time is on the wolves’ side. One only has to look to Minnesota, which never lost its wolves and today has more than 3,000. There, wolves are treated like any other predator in the woods. She believes that as long as wolves are allowed to survive, it’s only a matter of time before people in the Northern Rockies view them in a similar way. The first generation is the most hostile, the most afraid. “The next generation has actually experienced living with wolves,” she said.

Since last summer, talk of retiring high-conflict grazing allotments north of Ketchum has increased. While nothing has been committed to publicly, local wolf advocates claim at least one sheep rancher has expressed interest in receiving payment to retire his north valley grazing rights. The idea is not without merit. Similar buyouts have occurred in other high-conflict areas around the West. Since 2002, the National Wildlife Federation has worked with federal land managers and ranchers to permanently retire 23 active grazing allotments surrounding Yellowstone National Park.

****

While bowhunting elk west of Ketchum near Castle Rock several autumns ago, local resident Gary Tickner and a friend had a dramatic wolf encounter. An experienced elk caller, Tickner was hunkered down cow-calling when a herd of elk began pouring through a saddle on a nearby ridge. The duo soon discovered they weren’t the only hunters eyeing the elk. A chorus of wolf howls echoed from the nearby hills. “Pretty soon the wolves were howling all around us.” Nostrils to the wind and ears perked, the herd sensed danger. Seconds later, they scattered. The hunters watched in awe as the herd ran away in unison. Tickner suspects the wolves were from an unknown pack.

Tickner doesn’t believe wolves are decimating Idaho’s elk herds, as many hunters claim. One possible explanation for Idaho’s so-called missing elk is that they’ve simply become more challenging to pursue. Statewide, Idaho’s elk numbered 107,600 in 2007, about 95 percent of Fish and Game’s objective. The agency’s own wolf management plan says that conflicts between wolves and elk and other ungulates in the region covering the Wood River Valley and the Lemhi and Lost River mountains are low.

In the past decade, Tickner has witnessed a profound change in the behavior of local elk. Not only do the large ungulates occupy different habitats, they’ve also become less vocal. He believes elk have wised up, realizing their calls attract wolves. More than once, a curious elk has snuck up on Tickner’s hiding spot while he’s calling. In the past, a bull elk responding to a hunter’s call would come crashing through the brush like a runaway freight train, all the while releasing a volley of high-pitched bugles. “Now you might hear a little twig snap. They want to see what they’re coming to.”

Tickner welcomes these changes. He feels today’s elk are a wilder and more challenging quarry, and that’s good. He refuses to blame wolves for unsuccessful hunts, even though he spends more than 20 days afield with a traditional bow and arrow each year. “I always remember that it’s the journey, not the destination.” The dyed-in-the-wool hunter born to a northern California logging family feels a responsibility to defend wolves and the wild places they occupy. “In a world of chaos and disconnection, I can only hope that I will still hear the howl of a pack of wolves when I go hunting.”

Most hunters do not share Tickner’s passionate feelings toward wolves. Theirs is a passion of an entirely different sort. If the wolf delisting stands, hunters in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming will head to the hills this fall with wolf tags in hand. Little more than a decade after wolves’ reintroduction, hunters will pursue them in our own backyard. How Idahoans respond remains to be seen.

****

Something curious happened after Wood River Valley residents learned wolves were living in their midst: Suddenly, it seemed everyone had a wolf story to tell. Many told of single black wolves roaming the hills north of Ketchum. Others told of a black wolf with a limp or a trio of wolves crossing the highway in the early morning hours. Some tales turned out to be false; some eyewitnesses had actually spotted the wolf’s smaller cousins the coyote or, even, the fox.

Local Fish and Game officer Lee Garwood was suspicious of alleged sightings in the past, but not anymore. The veteran conservation officer’s job has changed since the Phantom Hill wolves were discovered. “I doubt a week or 10 days goes by when I don’t get a wolf report.” This summer, Garwood will investigate reports that suggest an unknown pack resides in the mountains southwest of Ketchum. Mostly roadless, the area’s extensive stands of timber, open sagebrush hillsides and clear streams are prime habitat for predators and prey alike.

At the far western end of Croy Canyon near Hailey, Jennifer and Kevin Swigert believe they live with the reality of this unknown pack. For several years now, the couple claims wolves have been a constant presence in their lives. Each night, Jennifer brings all 19 Swigert dogs indoors. According to Kevin, the only thing that’s stopped wolves from harming their dogs has been Jennifer’s vigilance and Happy, a habituated female coyote that hangs around the couple’s home. While their dogs go silent when wolves are near, Happy’s yipping alerts everyone. “Nothing goes on around here without her knowing about it,” Kevin said.

Are the Swigerts’ concerns just the isolated fears of a solitary couple living in an area densely occupied by wolves? Bumper stickers on local roads that proclaim “Save 100 elk, kill a wolf” and “Wolves: government sponsored terrorists,” suggest we haven’t come to terms with the creature’s presence. In a dog-eat-dog world, wolves consider their domesticated cousins a threat, whether it’s the neighbors’ Chihuahua or their Great Dane. And in a community that loves its pooches as much as the Wood River Valley does, Kevin believes the near certainty of dog-wolf conflicts in Idaho’s backcountry is a concern that cannot be discounted.

****

It may take years before valley residents know if they’ve learned to live side-by-side with wolves. A similar prospect faces state wildlife managers who are embarking on an experiment for which no amount of studying or speculation can fully prepare them. How will so hierarchical a species as the wolf react to the removal of its dominant alpha pair by hunters? Many wolf experts believe the loss of a dominant pair may send the remaining members of a splintered pack off to the four winds and into trouble. Idaho wildlife managers can look to Canada or Alaska for guidance, but in the end they will learn as they go.

Should authorities decide to eliminate the Phantom Hill pack, wolf advocates would undoubtedly protest. However, new wolves would almost certainly arrive to fill the void. In fact, other wolves may already be stealing about unseen through our woods. Being opportunists, these intelligent animals have a tendency to fill unused habitat soon after it becomes available. Shown the tolerance needed to make their homes and rear their pups, the gray wolves’ lonesome howl will remain a part of the valley’s landscape for years to come.

A Brief Wolf History

Pre-Columbian
As many as 380,000 gray wolves inhabit North America from the Canadian Arctic to central Mexico.

Early 20th Century
Government-sponsored predator control programs combined with declines in bison, elk and other natural prey bring gray wolves to near extinction in the lower 48 states.

1944
Last documented wild gray wolf killed in Wyoming south of Yellowstone National Park.

Mid-20th Century
Numerous unverified sightings suggest individual gray wolves still roam the remote central Idaho wilderness.

1973
Federal Endangered Species Act signed into law by President Richard M. Nixon. A few hundred confirmed wolves remain in the lower 48 states in extreme northeastern Minnesota and on Isle Royale in northern Lake Superior.

1974
Gray wolves living outside of Minnesota are listed as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act. Minnesota wolves listed as threatened.

1980
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) approves Northern Rocky Mountain Wolf Recovery Plan, which envisions the recovery of at least two healthy Northern Rockies wolf populations.

Early 1980s
Gray wolves from Canada, including the famed “Magic Pack,” begin naturally recolonizing Glacier National Park in northern Montana.

1987
Revised Northern Rocky Mountain Wolf Recovery Plan approved by FWS. Plan aims to remove the Northern Rocky Mountain wolf from the Endangered Species List by maintaining a minimum of 10 breeding wolf pairs in each of three recovery areas—central Idaho, Yellowstone National Park and northern Montana—for a minimum of three successive years.

1994
Federal government releases final environmental impact statement authorizing gray wolf reintroduction into Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho.

January 1995
After an absence of more than 50 years, the first of 66 gray wolves trapped in Canada between 1995 and 1996 are transported to Central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park for release.

1996
After an absence of more than 50 years, the first of 66 gray wolves trapped in Canada between 1995 and 1996 are transported to Central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park for release.

December 1998
Idaho’s wolf population estimated at 115.

September 2001
The FWS documents 30 pairs of wolves in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, triggering a three-year countdown to delisting.

December 2003
Idaho’s wolf population estimated at 345.

June 2007
For the first time since reintroduction, biologists confirm a denning pair of adult wolves in the Wood River Valley.

Summer 2007
Phantom Hill wolf pack suspected in the deaths of 12 sheep on federal lands northwest of Ketchum.

December 2007
Idaho’s wolf population estimated at 732.

February-March 2008
Wolves spotted harassing horses on the B-Bar-B Ranch in the Bellevue Triangle near Picabo.

March 28, 2008
Gray wolves in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, eastern Washington, eastern Oregon and northern Utah removed from the federal Endangered Species List. Management of wolves handed over to the six state wildlife agencies. More than 1,500 wolves are estimated to be living in the Northern Rockies region. Under 80,000 gray wolves are estimated to be in all of North America.

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by Jason D.B. Kauffman, Idaho Mountain Express, Aug. 2008

At the uppermost limits of the Sawtooth National Forest on narrow ridges and in remote alpine cirques, a complex, high-elevation ecosystem is unraveling.

Largely unseen by the outside world, the accelerating mortality of the lynchpin of this ecosystem—the whitebark pine tree—threatens to harm the many wild species that depend on it. The loss of these trees also has the potential to disrupt the snowpack-dependent water supplies our region relies on for irrigation and other uses.

Folks like Wood River Valley resident Charlie Webster aren’t about to let that happen, at least not without putting up a fight.

“My thought is, it’s better than nothing,” he said.

Webster is on the frontlines of a local grassroots effort to save these magnificent whitebark pines—some which may be 1,000 years old or more—one tree at a time. During 10 days he spent in the field in the northern Sawtooth National Forest in July, the local ski instructor, computer consultant and videographer stapled nearly 400 “verbenone pouches” to healthy whitebark pine trees. He motorbiked, hiked and scrambled his way to reach the impacted stands.

Webster is doing this under a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that he and a nonprofit group he helped found—the Sawtooth Whitebark Pine Restoration Project—entered into with the Forest Service. This summer, Webster was aided in the effort by two locals who helped tack additional pouches to trees in the area.

In all, the trio placed 450 pouches, with two per tree.

The verbenone pouches are intended to fool the tree’s natural enemy—the mountain pine beetle—and convince them to stay away from these healthy trees. Verbenone is a synthetic pheromone that copies a particular scent the mountain pine beetle emits when a tree is full of beetles. The idea is to make them think there is no more room in a tree. Verbenone must be reapplied each summer before mountain pine beetles begin their large summer flights from mid to late summer.

Recent studies—including one on U.S. Bureau of Land Management lands in the Poverty Flats area north of the Salmon River near Clayton—have shown positive results when verbenone pouches are used. The Poverty Flats study, led by BLM Challis Field Office ecologist Dana Perkins, has compared the survival rates of cone-bearing whitebark pine trees that have been treated with verbenone and those that have not.

The intent of Perkins’ Poverty Flats suppression effort is to see how effective verbenone is in repelling mountain pine beetle attacks. During the past three years, her verbenone-treated trees have seen a 75 percent survival rate, while those not treated have only seen a 50 percent survival rate, she said.

“It’s helping so far,” she said. “It’s working better than nothing.”

The primary intent of these initial whitebark pine rescue efforts—including the local attempt led by the Sawtooth Whitebark Pine Restoration Project—is to preserve as many cone-bearing whitebark as possible. Whitebark pine trees don’t begin producing cones until they’re at least 40 years old.

Perkins said mountain pine beetle epidemics, which are also impacting regional lodgepole pine forests and are responsible for the “red tree” epidemic in the Sawtooth Valley, require large trees in order to continue. It is hoped that by tricking the beetles into bypassing some fully grown trees, some cone-bearing whitebark will be saved until the infestation runs its course.

“It will continue until it runs out of food,” she said.

But the beetle epidemic isn’t the only looming threat to whitebarks. An introduced threat—white pine blister rust—has devastated whitebark forests in British Columbia, Montana and northern Idaho.

Forest ecologists are hard at work trying to identify blister rust-resistant strains of whitebark pine that could be the basis for future replanting efforts. But first, they need to save as many cone-bearing whitebark as possible from the threat of mountain pine beetle.

Perkins, who lives in the Stanley area, helped Webster staple some of the verbenone pouches on local whitebark pine this summer. She is also providing technical oversight for the program, which Sawtooth officials required as a condition of granting the MOU. She believes the value of the high-elevation trees makes the arduous effort worthwhile.

The whitebark pine is a slow-growing, long-lived stone pine of high-elevation forests and timberlines of the northwestern United States and southwestern Canada. The whitebark pine is one of five stone pines worldwide and the only one in North America. It occupies harsh, cold sites characterized by rocky, poorly-developed soils and snowy, wind-swept exposures.

Whitebark pine seeds are a high-fat, high-energy food source for many animal species. Red squirrels harvest cones and store them in “middens” on the forest floor. Black bears and grizzly bears raid these middens for the energy-rich food that the seeds provide. The Clark’s nutcracker, a species of bird often seen in upper-elevation forests, also depends on the seeds and is largely responsible for their dispersal, as the seeds are wingless and require outside help to scatter.

The whitebark pine is also valued for watershed protection, Perkins said. In the cold, semi-arid mountain ranges of the northern Rockies, most annual precipitation falls as snow and the greatest amounts occur at high elevations. The physical position of trees on the landscape and the upswept branches of the crown provide shade to delay snowmelt and to retain snowdrifts until early to mid summer.

In many upper-elevation areas, whitebarks are the only species of tree capable of growing, Perkins said. Lower down it may be joined by subalpine fir, but that species’ conical shape doesn’t provide the same level of snowpack shade protection.

Webster, a 30-year resident of Blaine County, believes the whitebark pine is the region’s equivalent of the California redwoods. For many years, the active outdoorsperson didn’t know what kind of tree these broad-branched evergreens were. Only recently, when he began seeing them turn red and begin to die off did he come to learn of their importance.

Webster believes many locals are unaware they share their home region with such a magnificent tree species.

“It’s as if we lived in the redwoods park and nobody told us about the redwoods,” he said.

Webster hopes to expand his group’s efforts starting next summer. He said donations and help from experienced outdoorspeople willing to hike into remote, rugged areas to staple verbenone pouches on trees would help the cause.

So far, Webster, Perkins and the group’s treasurer, Jon Gilmour, have placed pouches in three locations near Galena Summit, from Dollarhide Summit to Prairie Lakes in the Smoky Mountains and around Smoky Dome in the Soldier Mountains north of Fairfield.

Webster said there’s no reason they can’t expand the effort to the Boulder and Pioneer mountains with a little more help and funding.

“There’s no reason we couldn’t protect 4,500 (trees),” he said.

For more information on the Sawtooth Whitebark Pine Restoration Project, go to its Web site at http://whitebark.org.

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by Jason D.B. Kauffman, Idaho Mountain Express, June 2008

Working collaboratively in the upper Wood River Valley, a group of local residents with diverse views on the Western wolf issue are proving that people can sometimes set aside their differences for a bigger cause.

Set to begin just days from now is an innovative project that seeks to promote harmony between wild gray wolves and the domestic sheep bands that graze thousands of acres across the remote upper valley.

Out of the eyesight of most local residents, the first of many sheep bands will be let onto federal lands managed by the Sawtooth National Forest on Friday, June 20. Their release, less than 10 miles northwest of Ketchum near the mouth of Oregon Gulch, will put in motion a plan that has taken numerous private meetings and a whole lot of goodwill to develop.

The project will require herders working for three local sheep producers to work closely with a trio of field assistants hired by Defenders of Wildlife, a national, non-profit conservation group that works with ranchers operating in the West’s wolf-occupied areas. The field assistants are Cindi Hillemeyer and Justin Stevenson—both locals—and retired Fish and Game officer Roger Olson, of Hailey. Through radio telemetry tracking and just plain hard work, they’ll attempt to keep tabs on the location of the valley’s well-known Phantom Hill wolf pack throughout the summer and into the fall.

Sometimes under the cover of darkness, they’ll use a variety of innovative scare tactics, some tested and some new, to convince prowling wolves to retreat back up into the higher mountains.

The all-black Phantom Hill pack, which officials say were involved in a dozen sheep-killing incidents just months after they were discovered last summer and the primary target of this summer’s non-lethal tactics, occupy the remote Boulder and Smoky mountain ranges. Out of three pups born to the pack last year, just one survives.

Biologists recently confirmed the pack’s alpha female gave birth to four more pups in April, bringing the pack to eight wolves in all.

The groundbreaking project is the brainchild of a diverse group of people not normally seen collaborating so closely. It includes weathered central Idaho sheep ranchers, vocal pro-wolf conservationists and state and federal wildlife officials with decades of fieldwork with northern Rockies wolves under their belts.

But there they were last Thursday below the roadless 11,000-foot highcountry that surrounds the North Fork of the Big Wood River—more than a dozen Idahoans who have agreed to come to the table. For most of the day, the group discussed how they will detect and then repel wolves that venture too close to grazing sheep with loud air horns, 22-caliber starter pistols and radio-activated guard (RAG) boxes, devices that set off loud noises and strobe lights when triggered by radio-collared wolves.

Also helping to discourage wolves will be Great Pyrenees guard dogs that tend rancher’s wandering sheep bands.

That Defenders of Wildlife is working to make the project happen is perhaps even more surprising, given that they are among 12 conservation groups that filed suit to overturn the March delisting of the northern Rockies wolf population by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Missoula-based U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy is expected to make a decision on the controversial federal lawsuit sometime soon.

So, it’s perhaps equally extraordinary that local ranchers and wildlife officials have put aside whatever differences they may have with the group to move forward on the project.

“The idea that we’re sitting here talking is pretty groundbreaking,” Sawtooth National Forest Ketchum District Ranger Kurt Nelson said while standing next to the North Fork during a training session for the field assistants last Thursday.

“A lot of it is as much the effort as the outcome.”

Keeping peace in the woods

Arco resident Rick Williamson, wolf management specialist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services in Idaho, has been central to getting the project off the ground. His mustached face shaded by the wide brim of a white, broken-in cowboy hat, Williamson discussed final preparations with the group in a lush green meadow next to the clear-flowing North Fork.

“Sheep are more vulnerable in the nighttime hours,” he told the group.

Watching Williamson speak to the crowded participants it became clear that making the project work will, in part at least, come down to the day-to-day things any rancher knows.

Like how to erect temporary electric fencing. After dusk, herders will trail their sheep bands into several-acre, electrified “night pens” set up by the Defenders of Wildlife assistants wherever the constantly roving sheep bands end up at nightfall. The purpose of the single strand, electrified wire corrals is to keep wolves from coming into contact with the vulnerable sheep. Hanging off the wire in regular intervals is bright-red ribbon called fladry, which shimmer in the darkness when blown by a slight breeze.

While the combination of waving ribbon and electrified wire may not sound menacing, its track record keeping wolves from attacking sheep elsewhere around the West is well documented. On the east side of the Boulder Mountains in the upper North Fork of the Big Lost River, Lava Lake Land & Livestock, one of the ranching outfits involved in the project, has used the night pens with success in an area heavily occupied by wolves.

A unique aspect of the fledgling project is that the three rancher outfits who have permits to graze sheep on grazing allotments on this portion of the Sawtooth are taking part. Although Lava Lake is well known for its environmentally sensitive grazing practices, the other two sheep producers involved in the project—Gooding rancher John Faulkner and John Peavey of the Flat Top Sheep Ranch—have only recently agreed to come on board.

“They’re multi-generational, very large operations and they’re coming to the table,” Lava Lake president Mike Stevens said during the training session.

And this all comes at a time when the three ranching outfits all lost sheep to wolves in recent weeks in other nearby grazing areas. They’ve each lost upwards of a dozen-and-a-half sheep on rural lands north of Carey in the southern Pioneer Mountains or west of the Wood River Valley in rolling sagebrush-covered hills near Hill City.

But despite these losses, the ranchers say they still feel it’s worthwhile to implement the proactive deterrents on lands roamed by the Phantom Hill wolves.

Each ranching outfit also recognizes that success is not a guaranteed thing. They admit the success of the project may need to be measured in a reduction of sheep losses and wolf control actions rather than all-out peace. Another measure of success will be how much weight sheep put on this summer.

Sheep constantly harassed by wolves have a harder time adding the weight, a loss that directly translates into ranchers’ pocket books, Williamson said.

People will have a harder time condemning the killing of individual wolves involved in livestock depredations if the ranchers are working hard to keep wolves and sheep separate, he said.

“If we try everything we can and we have to resort to lethal approach we’re beyond reproach,” he said.

Williamson and others involved in the project also say that finding success will require the trust and patience of the general public.

And while their actions may be well intentioned, they said having too many people traipsing about in the Phantom Hill home range in an effort to keep the pack away from sheep may habituate the wolves to human presence and actually harm the effort. According to Olson, an experienced hand at interacting with the public, a simple explanation by the field assistants about what they’re doing and why they need to work alone should suffice.

“I need to do this by myself. I need total concentration.”

Many challenges remain

One significant question mark that could undermine the project is the suspected wolves biologists believe are living unseen in the valley. Lacking radio collars on the wolves, neither the field assistants nor the herders will know if wolves are approaching sheep, said project participant Carter Niemeyer.

“That’s the wildcard out there,” said Niemeyer, the former head of the Idaho wolf recovery program for the Fish and Wildlife Service and now a part-time employee for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.

In the end, how successful the program becomes will also come down to stopping the first wolf from attacking sheep.

“You can’t let them get in the sheep,” Niemeyer said.

According to Williamson, once a wolf gets a taste for mutton, it’s a lot harder to stop it from attacking sheep a second and third time. And that’s where radio telemetry tracking will let the field assistants know how seriously they should take an approaching wolf, at least those with radio collars, he said.

“We can teach you to say they’re two miles out or a mile,” he said.

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by Jason D.B. Kauffman, Idaho Mountain Express, Oct. 2006

The long drive to John Peavey and Diane Josephy Peavey’s Flat Top Sheep Ranch northeast of Carey takes visitors past rural—really rural—and then on to really remote.

Heading north from Carey, visitors pass increasingly spaced farm and ranch operations and then the Little Wood Reservoir before finally breaking out into the lovely mountain-ringed basin known simply as Muldoon.

Here in this massive sage-covered expanse of mountain, range and sky, the Peaveys make their home far removed from nearby neighbors.

It’s a wonderful life, Diane Peavey said Wednesday.

“It’s so satisfying,” she said. “Being this connected to the land is like nothing I ever dreamed of.”

Altogether, the Peaveys’ ranch stretches across some 28,000 deeded acres, the majority of which is found in the Muldoon area. A smaller portion of the land they own—where they overwinter their cattle herd—is located down south in the sagebrush deserts near a place called Kimama, which is north of the towns of Burley and Buhl.

During the warmer months, the Peaveys graze their sheep and cattle across a large expanse of U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management grazing allotments in the Pioneer Mountains and foothills surrounding the main ranch.

In the winter, the Peaveys’ sheep are trucked out of state to warmer grazing areas in California.

The center of the Peaveys’ Flat Top Sheep Ranch is a collection of rustic outbuildings, pole barns and a variety of deciduous and evergreen trees all surrounding the main ranch house.

On Wednesday, animals both wild and tame could be seen.

Close in, a pure white Great Pyrenees guard dog rested in the tall grass with two young puppies. Farther out, a small herd of pronghorn antelope grazed on the grassy flats near a large band of sheep.

The couple’s sheep herd is a mix of a large number of ewes of mixed breed and a much smaller number of Suffolk males. For now, the 75-odd Suffolk males, with their characteristic white bodies and black faces, are being kept quite busy courting the herd’s ewes.

“It doesn’t leave much time for a meaningful relationship,” John Peavey quipped.

When he is on the ranch, a wiry black and white border collie called Agie trails behind him at all times. Agie is a working ranch dog pure and simple, as was evident Wednesday as the ranch’s cowboys helped a local veterinarian conduct pregnancy tests on Angus heifers.

As one cow after another was passed through a squeeze chute, Agie watched through the corral gate with a stationary intensity only seen in purebred herd dogs.

The difficulty came when John tried to pry Agie away from the corral. Despite repeated calls, it took Agie several minutes to make it back to John’s pickup truck.

Several times, Agie looked back to the corral with a look that could only be described as canine wistfulness.

The Peaveys’ home is an interesting story in itself.

The house is actually a blending of three seasoned cabins the ranch’s late founder, James Laidlaw, brought down from the Muldoon Mine site five miles north in the Pioneer Mountains. He pieced them together on site. The metal-roofed log home has a cozy, lived-in feeling to it.

“We’ve probably got one of the smallest houses in the county,” John Peavey said.

Today, Laidlaw’s gravesite sits on a prominent knoll overlooking the Peaveys’ home and the ranch he started.

The rural nature of the Peaveys’ remote Blaine County home has its share of challenges. The Peaveys receive their mail from down south in Carey, telephone service from over the hill in Hailey, and power from even farther in Mackay.

The work on the ranch isn’t easy, either.

The Peaveys run upwards of 10,000 sheep and 3,000 Angus cows. The ranch’s Angus herd is the oldest in the state. The animals are descendents of a herd Laidlaw brought in sometime around 1900.

Once a visitor arrives at the Peaveys’ sheep and cattle operation, it’s easy to see they’re not on some hobby rancher’s spread.

Clearly, the Peaveys’ ranch is the real thing.

Nearby, sheep dogs, purebred Angus cows and cowboys—the real kind wrapping up season-ending work—rubber stamp this operation’s authenticity.

“This operation is not a Town & Country operation,” Diane Peavey said with a laugh.

The Peaveys are a charming couple. They have one of those nice, joking back-and-forth banters that comes from 25 married years together.

The couple is also a striking match to the surrounding landscape. They move about their many-thousands-acre ranch with an ease borne from spending much of their time close to the land they love.

The couple met in Hailey in 1980 and were married not long after. Diane, a true fan of the gourmet qualities of mutton, was excited by the prospect of an unlimited supply of sheep, she said.

“A lifetime of lamb chops,” Diane said.

The Peaveys are a multi-talented couple with interests that have stretched far beyond their rural surroundings to the radio airwaves and the halls of the Idaho state Capitol building.

In addition to being the author of “Bitterbrush Country,” Diane Peavey’s voice can also be heard weekly on Idaho Public Radio as she regales listeners about the joys of their rural life. She grew up in the state of New York, far from the Western landscape she now loves.

Her father, Albin Josephy, was a writer who focused on the American West and American Indians. He passed away last year. A book he wrote called “Lewis and Clark through Indian Eyes” was just recently published. The book is a collection of essays by native Americans about the impact of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

A third-generation rancher, John Peavey had a stint in the Marine Corps until 1960 and spent 21 years as an Idaho state Senator in what is now District 25. He has three children from a previous marriage and his mother, Mary Brooks, was also involved in politics and directed the U.S. Mint under the Nixon and Ford presidential administrations.

His grandfather, John Thomas, who was responsible for starting the western portion of the Peavey’s ranch, was a U.S. senator for Idaho.

The multi-generational aspect of the Flat Top Sheep Ranch is deeper than just the Peaveys.

Since operations at the ranch began, the position of ranch manager has passed from Sam Burks to Dennis Burks and, now, Denny Burks.

“That’s pretty terrific,” Diane Peavey said.

Parked near the Peavey’s house is John’s Cessna 182 airplane. “The best model Cessna ever built,” he said.

He uses the plane for a variety of ranch chores during the summer. This includes searching for lost sheep that have wandered too far from the herd.

Sheep will often end up on the tops of ridges near where the rest of the herd is being grazed, he said. “Sheep love to climb. Their ancestors were bighorn.”

When a report of a lost sheep comes in, he takes off in his plane. “You fly the ridgetops,” he said. “You can find them pretty easy.”

The Peaveys were instrumental in the starting of the Wood River Valley’s popular Trailing of the Sheep Festival. For this year’s 10th annual festival, set to take place next week from Friday, Oct. 13, through Sunday, Oct. 15, the area’s Basque culture and its impact on the local sheep trade will be highlighted.

“They have great stories,” Diane Peavey said.

The highlight of the festival is arguably the trailing of sheep down Ketchum’s Main Street. The event isn’t just for show, she is quick to point out.

“This is not a re-enactment. We do this already,” she said.

The festival’s importance has much to do with the awareness it raises for both the history of Blaine County’s sheep industry and the sheep ranching lifestyle itself.

Sheep people are not accustomed to having their ranching lifestyles noticed, Diane said. “It’s a really quiet kind of private life,” she said. “I think it’s pretty romantic.”

Many sheep ranchers who come to the festival are surprised to discover people are so interested in their lifestyle.

“They’re just so moved by that,” she said. “It makes them proud.”

Back at the ranch, John Peavey was nearly beside himself with anticipation Wednesday as he looked to the west at the black clouds of an approaching rainstorm. Rain is something of a rarity in the fall, he said, and provides obvious benefits.

In less than an hour, the clouds would sweep over the Peavey ranch, showering intense rain and hail.

“Green grass in the fall is like a month of Christmas,” he said. “The animals just love the green grass.”

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by Jason D.B. Kauffman, Sun Valley Magazine, Winter 2006

Sometime around 1960, U.S. Senator Frank Church and his wife, Bethine, crested Galena Summit and descended into the Stanley Basin. Noticing new housing subdivisions that were beginning to disrupt the breathtaking views of the surrounding Stanley Basin, Senator Church is said to have declared that “there ought to be something we could do to save this place.”

It took several attempts and a number of years before Senator Church’s desire reached fruition. At first, the efforts of the Senator and other Idaho conservationists like Ernest Day centered on creating a Sawtooth National Park, an idea that was met with disapproval by Idaho politicians who wished to see traditional uses of the area continue.

In the end, Senator Church sponsored an inspired bill to create the Sawtooth National Recreation Area (SNRA), a place where traditional uses like hunting and ranching could coexist with conservation. This approach—combined with public outcry over a late-1960s proposal to create a large, open-pit mine that would have reduced the White Cloud’s 11,815-foot Caste Peak to rubble—ignited enough political momentum to lead to the August 22, 1972 passage of a bill creating the 756,000-acre SNRA. Altogether, the SNRA includes lands in the Sawtooth, Boulder and White Cloud mountain ranges, as well as the Stanley Basin.

While congressional passage of the bill led to the simultaneous passage of the 217,088-acre Sawtooth Wilderness Area, it left the decision to protect the adjoining Boulder-White Clouds for another day. Left in limbo were more than 500,000 acres of roadless land spread across two mountain ranges.

The question of how to manage the Boulder-White Clouds has been hotly debated over the past several decades. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Idaho citizens and politicians brought several proposals to the table that would have created wilderness in the Boulder-White Clouds; but, one after another, the proposals failed to gain the necessary support and died without passage. (Congress last approved new wilderness legislation for Idaho over 25 years ago, on July 23, 1980. The Central Idaho Wilderness Act carved out the 2,366,698-acre Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness Area from a larger 3.3 million-acre roadless area, creating what is still the single largest contiguous wilderness area in the Lower 48 states).

Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson has now taken on the thorny question of fostering Boulder-White Clouds country. One May 19, 2004, Simpson unveiled his answer: the Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act (CIEDRA).

Among other things, CIEDRA would designate the White Clouds, Ernest Hemingway, and Jerry Peak areas as three separate wilderness areas totaling 300,011 acres, and separated by motorized corridors. But, as the name suggests, CIEDRA is far more than just a wilderness bill—a move Simpson has calculated will give the bill enough added leverage to allow it to sail through a somewhat wilderness-hostile Congress. To gain both local and political support for the wilderness designation, Simpson’s bill dangles the proverbial carrot on a stick in the form of land transfers to local and city governments, guaranteed motorized access to adjacent Boulder-White Clouds lands, and a system that allows ranchers on the East Fork of the Salmon River to have their grazing rights bought out. CIEDRA would also create a new Boulder-White Clouds Management Area on lands both inside and outside the SNRA.

While most Idaho residents love their wild backyard to the extreme, wilderness bills like CIEDRA area carefully scrutinized and meticulously debated amongst us. A number of small rural communities with their own distinct Western flavor surround the perimeter of the Boulder-White Clouds country, and each seems to have a different take on how best to manage this resource. Spend time in any one of these communities, though, and you’ll soon discover that all of these residents have at least a couple things in common. They recognize how fortunate they area to live in the shadow of such magnificent country, and they bring that passion to their arguments for how these lands should be managed and protected.

CIEDRA’s primary environmental advocates in this state are the Boise-based Idaho Conservation League and Idaho chapter of the Wilderness Society. Many environmental groups have come out in opposition to the bill, though, including the Hailey-based NREPA Network, a grassroots environmental group that advocates for a single, far-reaching piece of legislation. The legislation was originally called the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA) when it was first conceived 15 years ago. Just this year, the bill was reintroduced in Congress under the new name of Rockies Prosperity Act. In the Boulder-White Clouds area, the Rockies Prosperity Act would protect some 508,618 acres, in comparison to CIEDRA’s 300, 011 acres.

Hailey biologist and NREPA Network staffer Kaz Thea describes the Rockies Prosperity Act as a science-based ecosystem approach to protecting and restoring the Northern Rockies bioregion. If enacted, the bill would protect almost 20 million acres of wilderness in portions of Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Montana and Wyoming. Its primary objective is to protect the Northern Rockies as one integral healthy ecosystem, where megafauna like grizzly bears and wolves would be able to actively disperse throughout the entire area by means of biological connecting corridors between larger core wilderness areas.

Advocates for the Rockies Prosperity Act stress that private lands and already developed public lands would not be affected by the bill. “The Rockies Prosperity Act is based on science, not politics, like CIEDRA,” Thea said. “It would be our legacy.”

Longtime Stanley resident Kirk Bachman moved to the area in 1978 and, as a climbing and ski guide, founded Stanley-based Sawtooth Mountain Guides in 1985. Despite his own personal love of wilderness and the fact that his business operates in such out-of-the-way settings, Bachman questions the “rush” to designate new wilderness in the Boulder-White Clouds.

Voicing a common complaint of the CIEDRA process, Bachman believes there hasn’t been a true roundtable discussion, with all affected parties invited to attend. “I want to see people who are really engaged with the community considered,” he says.

Bachman fears that failing to invite everyone to the table may lead to bitter feelings. During Stanley’s long, cold winters, maintaining good relations with your neighbors is important, he points out. “That ‘redneck’ is going to help you plow your driveway in the winter,” Bachman says wryly. “Let’s make sure it [CIEDRA] us truly a benefit to the [whole] community.”

To the south of Stanley, Hailey native Wayne Clayton also questions the immediate need for the bill, but for slightly different reasons. As the co-owner of High Desert Sports, a Hailey archery and hunting shop, Clayton feels that many people who are pushing for new wilderness wish to exclude those who recreate by mountain bike or off-road vehicle. His many years spent recreating in the Boulder-White Clouds have led him to believe that the mountains are actually in much better condition now than at any time during his life. Still, he agrees that places like the Boulder-White Clouds do need some level of protection.

An all-terrain vehicle rider who says he never goes off road, Clayton feels there’s plenty of riding available on the hundreds of miles of old mining roads in the area. He says that, to properly protect the Boulder-White Clouds, there needs to be a well-thought out plan for use. “We can love the land to death,” he says.

In a half-serious, half-joking way, Clayton adds that a Boulder-White Clouds wilderness would benefit him personally: “If they want to turn it into a hunting paradise, that’s fine with me.”

The amount of wilderness that would be protected if the Rockies Prosperity Act were to pass hasn’t kept it from achieving a significant level of support in Congress. In fact, in 2004 NREPA achieved its highest level of support to date, with 182 House co-sponsors. So far in 2005 with another year to go, the bill has attracted 182 House co-sponsors. This year, conservationists also hope to introduce the bill in the Senate for the first time.

One of Thea’s primary concerns with CIEDRA is that she believes it supersedes the original intent of the bill that created the SNRA, since it would emphasize and expand off-road vehicle use in portions of the SNRA not set aside as Boulder-White Clouds wilderness. “That,” she says, “is a real difficult thing for us to say yes to.”

Another concern she has with CIEDRA is its lack of language reserving federal water rights for the three Boulder-White Clouds wilderness areas. Instead, the bill expressly prohibits federally reserved water rights for the three wilderness area, keeping that control at the state level and, some believe, opening a whole new can of worms. “It’s potentially a real problem,” Thea says.

Thea admits that it is strange, being in a position where she finds herself rejecting new wilderness for Idaho. But CIEDRA’s tradeoffs just give away too much, she says: “It’s too high a cost.”

Another concern shared by Thea and Custer County NREPA advocate Carol King are CIEDRA’s proposed transfers of lands, or “giveaways,” as they prefer to call them. King says, “These are completely unacceptable.”

Anything less than full protection for the Boulder-White Clouds backcountry makes it unlikely that King could support such a bill. Still, she said she might be able to support a bill giving partial interim protection for the area without including provisions like CIEDRA’s. She said she is not trying to stop all off-road vehicle use: “I just don’t think off-road vehicles should be everywhere.”

Areas of the Boulder-White Clouds such as wide-open Railroad Ridge and the westernmost White Clouds would receive full wilderness protection under the Rockies Prosperity Act, but wouldn’t under CIEDRA. This bothers King greatly.

To illustrate her point, King explains, “If I have four children, and someone kidnaps all four of my children and then offers to give me back one, but only if I let them keep the other three, I’m not going to take that deal. I’m going to fight with everything I have for all four of my children. Wilderness advocates need to stand up to those who would tear up the SNRA, Idaho’s Hope Diamond, and say with one powerful voice: “This will not happen.”

Bachman is concerned with the way CIEDRA has been packaged to help move it through Congress, but he is not necessarily opposed to the bill’s transfer of two parcels of federal land directly to the city of Stanley for economic purposes. Bachman prefers other options, like small business loans for area entrepreneurs that focus more directly on economic stimulus.

As an example of good economic development such government support might encourage, Bachman cites Stanley residents Tim and Becky Cron, new owners of a successful local bakery. “That youthful investment, to me, is real economic development,” Bachman says. He says the question to consider is, “How do we want this town to look and how do we want this landscape to look? I happen to believe we can marry the two.”

Stanley businessman and city councilman Charlie Thompson believes that CIEDRA’s transfers to the city (two separate parcels of forest service land contiguous with the city’s area of impact) can benefit the community. Elsewhere, communities like Clayton, Challis and Mackay, as well as Custer and Blaine counties, would also be given lands. Once such parcel, on a hill overlooking Stanley, would be transferred to Custer County to sell for private residential development. For years, Thompson says, Stanley residents have used the rough vehicle route that passes through the parcel for recreational purposes.

The two parcels designated for transfer to Stanley, and which the city negotiated to have included in CIEDRA, aren’t in locations with as much potential impact, according to Thompson. “We knew what we were seeking for our future needs,” he says.

Thompson says that potential uses of the larger of the two parcels, located between Stanley and Lower Stanley, include affordable housing, hot water development, RV and tent sites, and a possible fire station. But, he says, I’m not suggesting this will be a huge RV park.” The parcel, Thompson says. Was once the site of sewer ponds and is now overgrown with weeds.

He goes on to say that because Stanley has only 308 acres within its boundaries, the city has trouble providing for its basic infrastructure needs—and the two parcels of land would help alleviate that. “The community will use it as it needs,” he says.

If deciding how to manage and protect the incredible tapestry of lands that are the Boulder-White Clouds can and does create spirited debate and opinionated division, it’s because those of us who live here love this place. Residents are highly protective of this area’s future and their presence in it. What better way to celebrate that commonality than to combine the knowledge we have amassed over the pass 25 years, and find a definitive way to protect it?

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by Jason D.B. Kauffman, Women Out West Magazine, Summer 2008

There’s no better moment to be out fly-fishing on a Western free-flowing river than during that last sacred hour before sunset. It’s a magical time made all the more bittersweet by the ephemeral nature of the day’s last light ricocheting across riffles and silent back eddies.

Just like the brilliance of autumns past, the steady cast across a clear mountain stream at the end of the day is not to be forgotten, but tucked away as a benchmark against cabin fever during the cold winter months ahead.

Perhaps it’s along the open riverbanks of the Madison River, the sun’s fading rays casting brilliant reds and pinks against the high snow-capped peaks of Montana’s Lee Metcalf Wilderness to the east. Or maybe it occurs down south on either fork of the Snake River, the beginnings of these fabled fisheries pouring out of Henry’s Lake beneath eastern Idaho’s Henry’s Lake Mountains, the other arising from out of Yellowstone National Park before flowing southward through Wyoming’s astonishing Jackson Hole and on to Idaho’s matchless Swan Valley.

These are just the start. Western fly-fishers have a lifetime of last-hour experiences out on the Blackfoot, Middle Fork of the Salmon, Selway, Silver Creek, Gallatin, Yellowstone, Green and other magnificent rivers and streams.

Western fly-fishing destinations

In just about every destination mountain town in the West—whether it’s Jackson, Wyo., Bozeman, Mont., or Sun Valley, Idaho—licensed outfitters stand ready and able to provide fly-fishing adventures out on their own favorite home waters. And it doesn’t matter if you’re the most experienced fly-fisher or have never experienced the wonderful sport before—female fly-fishers have the pick of the lot when it comes to choosing a fly-fishing guide in the region.

Most Western fly-fishing outfitting companies have female guides on staff who are as equally capable of taking an experienced guest out for an exhausting dawn-to-dusk pursuit of that wily trout, or simply instructing a first-timer on how to tie a fly on and make that first cast. Although supremely challenging, this is a sport whose incremental successes are both confidence builders and an enticement to learn more at the same time.  There’s really nothing else like casting towards a boil on the surface of a calm stretch of water, seeing the fly land just where it’s intended and feeling that sharp tug on the end of the line for the very first time. There’s a reason the word “addiction” is part of the vocabulary of every fly-fishing enthusiast.

It’s a sensation female fly-fishing guides like Gayle Whittenberg of Billings, Mont., understand well. A co-owner with her husband of Montana Troutfitters, a combination fly-fishing gear shop and outfitting service situated on Main Street in downtown Bozeman, Whittenberg takes women out to fish on many of Montana’s fabled trout streams and rivers. She also understands the many reasons behind the sport’s pull. “Fly-fishing will take you to some of the most beautiful spots in the world,” she said.

Fly-fishing is a total body sport that demands the utmost of attention, Whittenberg added. “You use your eyesight to see a rising fish. You have to use your ears, your nose.” Lastly, you have to use your brain for this thinking person’s activity, she said. “Put it all together, and it’s poetry in motion for me.”

Whittenberg is the person behind one of Montana Troutfitters’ specialized guide services, Lady Troutfitters. She said the service caters to both experienced women fly fishers and beginners who want to learn the great sport. Lady Troutfitter’s female guide staff can take guests out fly-fishing either in a drift boat or by walking and wading. They also provide fly-fishing instruction for women interested in the sport, whether in groups or as individuals. Lady Troutfitters can also pair guests up with their staff of female guides.

Fly-fishing is more than just the catch, Whittenberg said. Wading along the banks of a Western river as the sun is low in the sky near dawn or dusk has a way of renewing a person’s spirit, she said. “I get all this energy back when I’m out in an environment like that.”

It’s that healing aspect of fly-fishing that’s behind a nationwide women’s organization devoted to taking women who have survived or are currently battling breast cancer out to fly-fish on rivers throughout the country. Called Casting for Recovery, the nonprofit organization is based in Manchester, VT. Founded in 1996, Casting for Recovery is a support and educational program for breast cancer survivors. Through two-and-a-half-day retreats, the sport of fly-fishing is used to promote physical, emotional and spiritual healing.

In 2008, the organization is offering 37 fly-fishing retreats in 27 different states. This summer, Whittenberg helped organize a new retreat in June at the 320 Ranch near Big Sky, Mont. The lead casting instructor for the retreat, she said the experience was absolutely fantastic. As someone who is also involved in advancing research in medicine—her other passion beyond fly-fishing—she said taking part in the retreat was “a natural for me.”

The Casting for Recovery concept is unique. First, the sport of fly-fishing and the gentle casting techniques acquired during a retreat provide a motion for joint and soft tissue stretching in areas where women may have had radiation or surgery. Secondly, the rhythm of casting the line and being in a natural setting relieves everyday stress and provides a sense of calm. “Just getting them away from their disease for a few days,” Whittenberg explained.

Today, more than 800 volunteers help support Casting for Recovery retreats in their communities. These volunteers help the organization achieve another of its primary goals, to provide the retreats to participants for free. Donations from private individuals and businesses also make this possible, Casting for Recovery’s communications director Kate Fox explained. “We do fundraising to do that.”

The objective of many women’s fly-fishing clinics isn’t just to bring someone into the sport so they’ll keep coming back for guided services. At Sturtevants Mountain Outfitters located mid-way up the valley of the Big Wood River in Ketchum, Idaho, lead female guide Debbie Boyd teaches beginning fly-fishers the skills they need to eventually take part in the sport on their own. Participants in Sturtevants’ FlyGirls Women’s fly-fishing clinics are instructed in everything they’ll need to know to catch that feisty trout. “From setting up the rods to casting. Just all the aspects necessary to go on your own and catch fish,” Boyd said.

Of course, for those women who simply want to hire a guide to take them out for a day on the river, guides like Boyd at there for them as well. More and more women are becoming attracted to the sport, and that is in turn creating a greater need for female guides, the 23-year veteran fly-fisher said. “Women guides are becoming more and more popular.”

Boyd believes it’s the simplicity of fly-fishing that draws women to the beautiful sport. “It’s attractive to women because it’s such a graceful and meditative sport. You don’t think of anything while you’re on the river.”

Find a place to wet your line

Just about every Western mountain town destination will list at least one fly-fishing outfitter, club or organization in the local yellow pages.  Here are just a few to get you started:

National

Casting for Recovery, Manchester, VT.

This organization offers two-and-a-half-day fly-fishing retreats for women who have survived or are currently battling breast cancer. Throughout the West, Casting for Recovery offers free retreats in states stretching from Alaska to Colorado. Although the deadlines to apply for one of the 37 retreats the organization is offering in 2008 have mostly passed, Casting for Recovery is already working on its list of retreats for 2009. All experience levels are welcome. For more information about Casting for Recovery, including a retreat schedule, go to their Web site at www.castingforrecovery.org or call them at (802) 362-9181.

Montana

Montana Troutfitters, Bozeman, Mont.

This combination fly-fishing gear shop and outfitting service offers a service called Lady Troutfitters, which caters to experienced women fly fishers and beginners who want to learn the great sport. Ask for Montana Troutfitters co-owner Gayle Whittenberg for more information about Lady Troutfitters. All experience levels are welcome. For more information, go to the company’s Web site at www.troutfitters.com or call them at (406) 587-4707 or toll free at 1 (800) 646-7847.

Reel Women Fly Fishing Adventures, Willow Creek, Mont.

This fly-fishing outfitter company has been offering women’s only adventures in the West since in 1992. They now offer fly-fishing trips and schools on rivers in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, as well as in Alberta. All experience levels are welcome. This summer, they’ll be offering weeklong “camp trips” for women at Chico Hot Springs from September 21-28 and on the Bow River near Calgary, Alberta, from August 23-29. They also offer two- and three-day fly-fishing schools. Reel Women is also offering a three-day fly-fishing camp at the Amangani Hotel in Jackson Hole from October 4-8. For more information on the many services Reel Women Fly Fishing Adventures offers, go to their Web site at www.reel-women.com or call them at (406) 285-5218.

Idaho

Sturtevants Mountain Outfitters, Ketchum, Idaho

As part of their popular FlyGirls Women’s fly-fishing clinics, Sturtevants offers weekend fly-fishing instruction for women in Idaho’s scenic Sun Valley area. For 2008, the women’s only fly-fishing clinics will take place on July 11-13, August 1-3, August 22-24 and September 5-7. Led by lead guide Debbie Boyd, the clinics are perfect for all skill levels. Sturtevants also offers guide services with female guides on the area’s wonderful streams and rivers, including renowned Silver Creek and the lovely Big Wood River. For more information on the fly-fishing activities provided by Sturtevants, go to their Web site at www.sturtos.com or call them at (208) 726-4512.

Silver Creek Outfitters, Ketchum, Idaho

A famous name in the outfitting world, Silver Creek Outfitters offers a variety of guided fly-fishing packages throughout the year. Whether it’s summer-time rainbows, fall browns, wintertime nymph or midge fishing, or spring steelhead, Silver Creek is licensed to guide on all local waters in south central Idaho. They also provide Introduction to Fly-Fishing for Women courses each summer. For more information, go to their Web site at www.silver-creek.com or call them at (208) 726-5282 or toll free at 1 (800) 732-5687.

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by Jason D.B. Kauffman, Idaho Mountain Express, July 2008

photos by Jason D.B. Kauffman

Anecdotal discoveries like weathered ram skulls and the presence of steep, suitable habitat indicate Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep historically scaled the highest reaches of the Pioneer Mountains.

It’s an idea that isn’t likely to surprise anyone who has traveled in this bit of Idaho high country and imagined the graceful animals jumping confidently from rock to rock.

Now, a joint project between state and federal wildlife biologists is seeking information from hunters, hikers and other outdoorspeople who may have spotted the agile species clambering about in the range’s vertical landscapes.

The impetus for the project are the sporadic reports that have trickled in during recent decades suggesting that remote areas of the rugged mountain range east of the Wood River Valley may still harbor bighorn. As recently as 2005 and 2006, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s Magic Valley Regional office received reports of the wild sheep as close as the hills east of the Hailey airport and another from the Triumph area in the East Fork of the Big Wood River drainage.

“There have been occasional sightings of bighorn sheep in the Pioneers,” said Regan Berkley, Fish and Game’s regional wildlife biologist.

One of the biologists involved in the project to determine if wild sheep inhabit the scenic range, Berkley said that while the reports suggest bighorn may occur in the Pioneers, they don’t indicate which established populations in Idaho the dispersers are originating from.

“They’re very sporadic,” she said. “Single sheep show up and then disappear.”

More recently, a policy developed by Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter and Fish and Game requiring a determination of where bighorn exist in the state and if they’re coming into contact with domestic sheep bands has led wildlife officials to ask if the animals occupy the rugged Pioneers. Adopted in February, the “Interim strategy for managing separation between bighorn sheep and domestic sheep in Idaho” establishes a policy requiring the species be kept separate, to avoid the risk of disease transmission, by establishing domestic- and wild sheep-free “buffer zones.”

The policy is highly controversial among conservationists and some hunting groups. Critics say it could lead to bighorn being moved or killed where the two species overlap. They say the burden of separation is placed solely on bighorn and not on domestic sheep.

The policy further states that bighorn will be managed to minimize expansion into active grazing allotments, and it prohibits reintroduction efforts in areas where separation from domestic sheep isn’t possible.

The strategy is tied to lawsuits filed by Jon Marvel of Western Watersheds Project in Hailey, that sought to evict domestic sheep from allotments on the Payette and Nez Perce national forests in western Idaho. Last summer, forest officials agreed to eliminate sheep grazing on the bighorn-occupied allotments Western Watersheds Project was contesting.

Wild sheep expert Mike Foster, a Mackay-based wildlife biologist with the Salmon-Challis National Forest, the agency responsible for overseeing the eastern half of the Pioneer Mountains, is the key person behind the Pioneer Mountains bighorn project. Last fall, he began placing signs throughout the Pioneers asking the public to report bighorn sightings.

Over the years, Foster has fielded calls from people who say they’ve spotted bighorn sheep in the Pioneers. He said the dozens of sightings—many considered credible—stretch as far back as the 1970s.

“We’re trying to get a little more clarity,” Foster said. “What we’re trying to do is be proactive.”

For his part, Foster believes the bighorn reported are likely young rams out on “exploratory trips” in search of new home ranges.

But Tom Keegan, Fish and Game’s Salmon Regional Wildlife Manager, said reports of bighorn ewes and lambs indicate a low-level population of wild sheep may actually have existed in the Pioneers since nearby populations in the East Fork of the Salmon River and Lost River Range reached their highest levels in modern times between the 1960s and 1980s.

Keegan is most familiar with the East Fork herd, one of the nearest populations of bighorn sheep to the Pioneer Mountains. The herd winters in the lower half of the East Fork drainage near Clayton. He said the most recent helicopter survey of the East Fork herd counted 68 animals.

Keegan believes the herd’s winter range in the vicinity of where Big Boulder Creek pours into the East Fork and its summer range on both sides of the north-south White Cloud Mountains divide makes it the most likely source of the Pioneer Mountains sightings. The East Fork herd is a rarity in that it was never extirpated, meaning today’s sheep have the same genetics as those that existed in the drainage before settlement.

Keegan said another possible source for the Pioneer Mountains sightings could be the population of bighorn that occurs in the Lost River Range east of Mackay. This herd is thought to have been extirpated, but has since been brought back through a program of transplanting sheep captured from healthy herds in other states and from Canada.

Of course, if the Lost River sheep were the source of the Pioneer Mountain sightings, that would have required them to make visible forays across the arid Big Lost River Valley. From there, the wandering bighorn would have had to cross the White Knob Mountains before finally setting foot in the Pioneers. No evidence exists for such wanderings, Keegan said.

“It’s hard to know where they’re coming from,” he said.

This is especially true, given that bighorn are not considered a good “pioneering species” that is willing to travel long distances to establish new home ranges, Keegan said. Like Foster, he said young rams are more likely to travel great distances to occupy new range.

The bigger conundrum is trying to explain the source of the alleged ewe and lamb sightings in the Pioneers. Keegan believes these sightings may be explained in one of two ways: either they arrived when the East Fork and Lost River Range populations reached their greatest levels or perhaps there has always been a relic population in the Pioneers.

He said the first explanation is more plausible because when sheep herds are at all-time highs they can actually begin dispersing to new ranges. After 1990, herds in the East Fork and the Lost Rivers crashed due to disease.

While he believes bighorn were likely eliminated in the Pioneers at some point, Keegan isn’t ready to close the book on the idea of a relic population. He points out that while people use the range, the Pioneers are still remote and may have hidden sheep for decades.

“It’s big country,” he said.

Keegan listed five more sightings from recent decades where ewes and lambs were reported in the Pioneers, some as recently as 2005. These sightings, which took place in the eastern half of the range in places like Starhope Lake, upper Muldoon Canyon and Big Black Dome, leads Keegan to believe at least some sheep are using the range year-round.

“These sheep are not going back in there each year,” he said.

One of the main objectives of the Pioneer Mountain project is to capture a bighorn and fit it with a radio collar. This would allow wildlife biologists to track the movements of the bighorn to determine if it’s only passing through or residing there year-round.

From local sheep ranchers’ perspective, the project is also about better communication with state and federal officials. The controversial side of the domestic-and-wild-sheep equation is that the mixing of the two species has been tied to episodic die-offs of bighorn due to pneumonia.

Over at the Lava Lake Land & Livestock in Carey, President Mike Stevens has been heavily involved in the recent Pioneer Mountains project. Known for their willingness to employ proactive measures to keep wolves and sheep separate, the large sheep producer is also interested in keeping in close communication with officials so if bighorn sheep are sighted near their extensive grazing leases in the Pioneers they’re ready.

Alerted to the presence of a bighorn sheep near one of their bands, they could give herders timely instructions by satellite phone, Stevens said.

“It really is focused on communication from our perspective,” he said.

So, how would officials react if bighorn were discovered in the Pioneers?

“We’re going to have to take each sighting on a case-by-case basis,” said Randy Smith, Fish and Game’s Magic Valley Regional Wildlife Manager. “It wouldn’t necessarily mean they’d be moved.”

Marvel doesn’t trust these assurances. He’s concerned that the state’s new policy doesn’t include any clear guidelines for what would happen if bighorn come into contact with domestic sheep.

“A case-by-case basis is kind of meaningless,” he said.

Asked what would happen if Fish and Game discovered a bighorn near domestics in the Pioneers, Smith said they “would probably opt for getting it out of there.”

Meet Ovis canadensis: the bighorn sheep

Various subspecies of bighorn sheep can be found in the Rocky Mountains from southern Canada to New Mexico, parts of Nevada and Oregon, western Texas, eastern California, Arizona and northern Mexico. The mountain goat, all white with short black horns, and the bighorn sheep, brown to grayish with white rumps and large spiraling horns, share similar habitat. In Idaho, about 1,600 Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep live in the rugged central mountains, while 1,100 California bighorn sheep are found in the southern canyonlands and deserts. Compact and muscular-bodied, bighorn graze on grasses, sedges and forbs.

Report bighorn in the Pioneers

To report bighorn sheep sightings in the Pioneer Mountains, call Mike Foster at the Salmon-Challis National Forest at 588-2224. Provide the date, time and location of the sighting—including GPS coordinates—if possible.

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Days spent on remote wilderness rivers like the celebrated Middle Fork of the Salmon have a way of whetting one’s appetite for feasts worthy of the magnificent surroundings. The quintessential day on a wild river is an uninterrupted procession of magnificent views and deep azure pools interspersed with hold-on-as-tight-as-you-can rapids. As joyous as those protracted days can be, that first sight of day’s end—on a sandy beach beneath a perpendicular cliff face or on a pine-needle-carpeted gravel bar under a forested hillside—is a welcome one.

Once rafts are beached, the carefully strapped-in coolers are released and up goes the open-air kitchen. Then, in a perfectly orchestrated mélange of activity, river guides become gourmet chefs, preparing the evening meal as guests soak up the last fading rays of daylight. Once the fleeting sun has fallen behind nearby high timbered ridges and the coolness of the night air settles in, waves of tempting aromas float in every direction.

In river terms, meals are the icing on the cake or the sprig of rosemary that completes the lemon-buttered grilled salmon. A perfectly prepared meal completes a perfect day on the river. Perhaps no one knows this principle better than the professional wilderness river outfitters that ply rivers like the Middle Fork, heralding riverine environments to their guests.

The Wood River Valley is no stranger to top-notch wilderness river outfitters. Three locally based river companies—Middle Fork Wilderness Outfitters, Far and Away Adventures and Middle Fork River Tours—call the Middle Fork of the Salmon their home waters. These outfitters have taken fine dining on weeklong-or-more river tours to new heights. Gone is the standard chuckwagon fare; in is five-star cuisine worthy of the finest of restaurants.

“Food should match the grandeur of the river landscape,” said Anne Marie Gardner of Middle Fork Wilderness Outfitters in Ketchum. “We want our trip to be as spectacular as the scenery.” That includes the food prepared for clients, from breakfast to dinner. “I always joke that it’s a floating five-star resort vacation.”

Of course, not everyone’s idea of fine cuisine is the same. River trips draw all kinds, from the guy who likes his meat and potatoes to his wife who only desires a salad. “It’s a blend. It makes everybody happy,” said Gardner.

Proper packing is key to pulling out that fresh piece of fruit five days into the trip. Being able to do so requires knowledge of how much ice to pack in which coolers. Place too little ice in one cooler and the frozen dessert melts; add too much in another cooler and the last night’s filet mignon is as hard as a river boulder. “We have fresh fruit and vegetables the whole way. That’s something that flabbergasts people,” Gardner added.

Still, being so far from civilization and weathering frequently unpredictable conditions means things don’t always go as planned. A case in point: For a brief period the guides with Middle Fork Wilderness Outfitters experimented with bringing portabella mushrooms on river trips. In the end, the constant bruising and other difficulties caused them to abandon that effort altogether. Experimenting with recipes and menus is key to providing consistent knock-your-wool-socks-off fare for a clientele that is often 60 percent repeat or word-of-mouth business. “I’m constantly amazed; we’re constantly improving,” Gardner said.

In the case of Far and Away Adventures in Ketchum, always looking for improvements means taking the fine cuisine they produce on the river to a whole new level. For the 2005 rafting season, the company did something few if any other rafting companies can claim: They switched to an entirely organic menu. From the hoisin barbecue pork loin with pan-fried noodles and baby bok choy on day two, to the braised free-range chicken with fennel puree and blackberry compote on day four, everything is organic down to the barest ingredient. Keep in mind that for Far and Away these examples are just the third course of a night’s standard three-course meal.

Introducing guests to the benefits of going organic has a way of changing their lives, said Steve Lentz, co-owner of Far and Away Adventures with his wife, Annie Lentz. “By the end of the week, people are going, ‘Wow, I feel great.’ They recognize a higher energy level.” The Lentzes design their day-to-day menus around particular regions throughout the world. “Right down to the pairing of the wines,” he said. The driving force behind Far and Away’s organic transformation has been Kenny Rudolf, who owns Organic Catering in Hailey and has been recognized by the prestigious James Beard Foundation of New York City. Employing Rudolf’s expertise has opened numerous culinary opportunities, said Lentz. “We put no boundaries on the food. You complement that with the sound of the river going by and it’s fantastic.”

Going organic does have its challenges, however. Most importantly, fresh food often has to be flown in from distant locations. Wild salmon—an important staple in Far and Away’s river pantry—is flown in fresh from Seattle’s Pike Place Market near the docks on Puget Sound the day before each trip. “We have it flown over fresh. It makes a huge difference.”

Guests of Middle Fork River Tours in Hailey often write owners Kurt and Gayle Selisch afterwards to thank them for their wonderful trip. “And they all mention the food,” Kurt Selisch said. “They’re pretty much astounded.” Selisch’s 24 years of river guiding experience have allowed him to perfect the art of Dutch-oven cooking. However, the fine dining experience their guests are treated to is due to his wife’s culinary expertise. “Gayle is an excellent cook. She’s really creative. She experiments with the company’s menu from year to year to keep up with the food trends,” said Selisch.

Because the last place to begin experimenting with menus is on the river where expectant guests are waiting, the Selischs always test new meals at home. One inspired culinary creation the couple experimented with was seafood lasagna. Delicious as it was, the length of time it took to cook in the Dutch ovens meant it was a no-go for the company’s riverside menu. “We just couldn’t get it to cook out there!” One recipe that did work out well, much to the delight of guests, is a specialty deep-dish Dutch-oven pizza. “Once guests realize what’s cooking, they’ll exclaim, ‘We’re having pizza? You’ve got to be kidding.’”

In addition to setting a high culinary standard, the guides also understand the importance of presentation. For these companies, the perfect juxtaposition of white linen, fine china and silverware complements the adjacent pristine river scenery.

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by Jason D.B. Kauffman, Idaho Mountain Express, July 2008

Keeping a safe distance so as not to spook the herd in the wrong direction, several Native American hunters rise out of their hiding spots and show themselves in an effort to begin driving the bison downhill.

It’s a warm autumn day, centuries before any European settler arrives in what will become east central Idaho.

Spying the men advancing toward them through sagebrush and golden bunchgrass waving in the lazy autumn breeze, the dark bovines and their young reddish calves begin a slow retreat away from the danger.

Suddenly, more hunters—called runners—appear on both sides of the bison, now effectively flanking the herd on three sides. As recognition of this new threat enters their bovine brains, the increasingly nervous herd begins a steady trot down the sloping tableland, their only escape visible in the distance ahead.

Jostling for position—the whites of their eyes betraying their alarm—the massive beasts, some weighing as much as 2,000 pounds, hit their stride as more runners materialize even closer on each side. Long, narrowing piles of sagebrush and rocks help keep the corralled herd thundering toward the river valley beyond.

Suddenly, bison at the front of the herd find themselves bunched up on the edge of a shear 60-foot cliff face that only moments ago was invisible to them. But it’s too late. Powerful bison at the rear of the herd—unaware of the danger ahead—keep pushing out of fear of the pursuing hunters. One by one and then perhaps in pairs, the bison fall off the cliff face to the rocks below.

Studying an Idaho anomaly

Standing above the same cliff face last Wednesday, National Park Service archeologist Ken Cannon of the Midwest Archeological Center in Lincoln, Neb., described the scene some archeologists believe may have taken place for centuries near the present-day community of Challis along the banks of the Salmon River.

With long thrusting spears or bow and arrow in hand, hunters staged at the bottom of the cliff would have finished off the surviving members of the herd as the tribe’s women prepared for the day’s most physically demanding chore—butchering the bison. Heavy bison hides would be set aside for teepees, while the thousands of pounds of protein-rich meat would have been cut up for drying—all in preparation for the cold winter months ahead.

“They would dispatch them and butcher them up,” he said. “It would have been a tremendous event to witness.”

Along with his wife Molly Boeka Cannon, a Ph.D. archeology student at the University of Nebraska, Ken spent much of June working on an archeological excavation at the base of the Challis-area cliff face. The couple was assisted by eight high school students from around the country selected to take part in the Earthwatch Institute’s Student Challenge Awards Program, which is funded by The Durfee Foundation of Santa Monica, Calif.

Students selected for the program work with scientists in disciplines like astrophysics, microbiology and archeology.

The Cannons’ work near Challis seeks to corroborate or dispel the early 1970s work of another archeologist—Robert Butler of Pocatello—who theorized that horseback-mounted Shoshone Bannock used the tall cliff as a bison jump site. Based on the artifacts he unearthed during his own dig there—including bison bones and obsidian projectile points—Butler estimated that up to 20-30 bison were dispatched at the site in a single event. But, lacking any of the sophisticated equipment to date the bones and other artifacts, Butler could only guess at the site’s age, Ken said.

In the end, Butler concluded that the jump site was used more recently, during the 1800s.

But based on new excavation at the site during the past two summers—as well as complex carbon dating of old bison remains—the Cannons now believe the Challis bison kill site is more ancient, perhaps as much as 850 to 900 years old.

One of the primary problems Ken has with Butler’s theories is the idea that Shoshone Bannock were hunting bison at the site well into the 1800s. He said that conflicts with the region’s accepted date of bison extinction, estimated at around 1840. Another problem Ken has with the more recent theory of the site is that the “bison lifestyle” of the Shoshone Bannock tribe was essentially lost by that time.

“They were on the reservation,” he said.

Ken did note that there is evidence that large herds of bison still roamed across the region into the early 1800s.

Although it may be hard to believe today, massive herds of the shaggy beast once grazed freely across much of southern Idaho on the wide-open Snake River Plain and up many of the northwest-trending valleys we today call the Birch Creek, Little Lost River, Pahsimeroi and Big Lost River valleys. As late as 1828, renowned Western fur trader and explorer Alexander Ross, passing through the vicinity of the Big Lost River Valley near present-day Challis, reported seeing a herd of bison he estimated at 10,000 animals, Ken said.

The herds are now gone, their closest remnants living in Yellowstone National Park in northwest Wyoming.

Part of the Cannons’ research is attempting to determine how common these herds of bison were in present-day Idaho. They’re also seeking to explain how population size may have ebbed and flowed and how this may have impacted the Shoshone Bannock who relied on them for sustenance.

“How the bison populations have waxed and waned in response to (natural) climate change,” he said.

Ken’s primary interest as an archeologist has been focused on the bison culture of Northern Great Plains tribes. He said the Challis site stood out to him because of its vast distance from other known bison jumps, which are thought to only exist on the Northern Great Plains, far from the Butler’s site.

“It’s the furthest west traditional bison jump site,” he said. “It’s an outlier.”

Part of the problem the Cannons and their high school helpers have had to face is a general lack of records from Butler indicating where he dug and what convinced him that “drive features” existed on the sloping tableland above the cliff.

Using advanced surveying equipment, Molly Cannon has been working to establish a digital record detailing objects like boulders or rock piles on the hillside above the cliff that may have been used by the ancient hunters to keep bison heading towards the cliff face. She said the equipment shoots a laser to a prism set next to the likely-looking object which then bounces back to her, measuring the distance.

Once back in their laboratory, the Cannons will analyze the information to determine if any discernable patterns show up that would indicate the ancient bison driveway did exist.

Clues to an ancient trade network

Based on the early results of their work, the Cannons question how extensively the Challis cliff may have been used by hunters as a bison jump. But that’s more of a gut instinct than confirmation, Ken said.

“We can say bison were killed here. How they were killed is our problem.”

Perhaps just as interesting is what the archeological evidence at the site does clearly indicate. Artifacts taken from a nearby campsite Butler began excavating in the 1970s suggest hunter-gather peoples used the site not in a factor of hundreds of years ago, but thousands. What drew them to the site—robust runs of salmon in the nearby river, the area’s more moderate weather patterns, or something else—just isn’t clear, Ken said.

“Something was causing people to come back year after year,” he said. “For 6,000 years or so.”

Artifacts collected at the site, like obsidian projectile points—which had as their source obsidian mined in known quarries outside of present-day Idaho, analysis indicates—point to a sophisticated trade network among various tribes that stretched back hundreds of years or more, Ken said. The traders would have also been exchanging food items back and forth, he said.

“Bison was going to the West Coast and salmon was going to the plains,” he said.

How the inhabitants of today’s Challis region fit into that network is just another question the Cannons would like to answer.

Ken said modern people tend to consider ancient hunter-gatherers unsophisticated, a belief that isn’t borne out by archeological evidence.

“The amount of knowledge they were carrying around in their heads was amazing. Hunter gatherers are us just without all the stuff.”

While very little archeological research has been done in east central Idaho—a landscape of remote mountain ranges like the Lost Rivers, Lemhis and Beaverheads—the aridity of the region has likely preserved clues to the area’s human past quite well, Ken believes. It’s an idea that excites archeologists like the Cannons, who have also conducted archeological surveys in places like the Jerry Peak area in the eastern Boulder Mountains.

“This part of Idaho is just a big black hole in terms of research,” he said.

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The next time you take a drive down a road in Blaine County you may want to remember that you’re sharing the blacktop with travelers of a different sort.

No, not just your fellow motorists. Rather, these are the furry vagabonds that—if you’re lucky—you’ll notice poised along the roadside in a patch of brush or behind a dense conifer tree. It doesn’t help that their sudden sprints across roadways seem to happen most when it’s hardest to see, between dusk and daybreak.

These collisions of racing steel and scampering fur happen far more often than you might expect.

According to a nationwide State Farm Insurance report released last week, an Idaho motorist has a 1-in-273 chance during the next year of colliding with a deer or other species of big game. The report also notes that that the number of collisions with wildlife in Idaho has increased by 31.2 percent in the past five years.

That compares to a nationwide average increase of just 14.9 percent during the same five-year period.

For states surrounding Idaho, the rate of wildlife-vehicle has risen steeply over the past five years. In Wyoming and Montana, the number of collisions has increased by 36.1 percent and 32.2 percent, respectively. In Washington, they have climbed by 15.1 percent. But in Oregon, where the interstate highway speed limit is among the lowest in the nation, at 65 miles per hour, the rate of critter-car collisions has risen only 1.8 percent in the last five years.

State Farm used its wildlife claims data from the latter half of 2007 and the first half of 2008, as well as Federal Highway Administration motor vehicle registration counts, to estimate the chances of a vehicle colliding with species like deer, elk or moose during the next 12 months.

According to the information, the state of West Virginia, home to a huge population of whitetail deer, had the highest probability of a deer-vehicle collision in the nation for the second year in a row. The state where deer-vehicle collisions are least likely continues to be Hawaii, home to introduced populations of deer and other ungulates.

Nationwide, average cost of vehicle damage from these incidents was just over $2,950, up 2.5 percent from a year ago.

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, there are approximately 1.5 million vehicle collisions with large wildlife annually in the United States. Each year, these violent encounters cause more than 150 human fatalities and about $1.1 billion in property damage.

“The combination of growing deer populations and the displacement of deer habitat caused by urban sprawl are producing increasingly hazardous conditions for motorists and deer,” the State Farm report states.

Autumn is the worst season for the incidents. That’s when deer, elk and other ungulates are in the midst of their mating season and are migrating from their upper-elevation summer ranges to lower winter ranges.

“That brings them down across the highways,” said Randy Smith, wildlife manager for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s Magic Valley Region.

In many areas with large populations of wildlife across the nation, including in the Wood River Valley, highway planners are beginning to consider the needs of wildlife.

The fixes range from highly expensive to fairly cost-efficient. In some areas, planners have recommended costly wildlife underpasses and overpasses. These kinds of structures have been successfully installed in places like U.S. Highway 93 northwest of Missoula, Mont., and Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada.

At the more cost-efficient side of things, highway officials have begun to experiment with high-tech wildlife detection systems to warn travelers that a deer or elk may be crossing ahead of them. Such a system has been recommended for a stretch of state Highway 75 north of Hailey.

The recommendation is the result of a study conducted by the Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University in Bozeman between 2007 and 2008 that looked at ways of reducing wildlife-vehicle collisions in Blaine County.

Based on local roadkill data gathered by the study’s authors, a minimum of 134 collisions with deer and elk occurred in the 26-mile study area between Timmerman Junction and Ketchum in 2007.

The study found that most collisions occurred during the early morning and evening hours, which are also the busiest traffic hours along Highway 75. It found that most live and dead deer and elk were seen along the stretch of road from the north end of Hailey to just north of Elkhorn Road. The highest concentration of wildlife-vehicle collisions involving deer and elk was in an approximately one-mile stretch just south of Deer Creek Road.

Elk are commonly viewed by passing motorists in this area during the winter as they cross the highway from west to east to access open grazing in the Peregrine Ranch area.

The wildlife detection systems considered for Highway 75 use an energy beam, either microwave or infrared, which when interrupted by an approaching animal sends a signal that activates a blinking light to warn motorists. These systems are often combined with animal fencing to guide wildlife to select crossing points.

In Switzerland, similar systems have been shown to have a success rate of around 82 percent, said Montana field biologist Angela Kociolek, who works with the Western Transportation Institute.

Fish and Game and ITD recently created a database of the worst highway crossing points for wildlife. Highway 75 and U.S. Highway 20 stand out as roads with high incidents of wildlife collisions, Smith said. He said that in the future, the database will allow Idaho highway officials to use wildlife-friendly measures when designing roadway improvement projects.

“I’m glad we’re starting to see that,” he said.

But last year’s loss of funding for a proposed Highway 75 widening project in the Wood River Valley, which could have included wildlife mitigation measures, likely means that the detection system won’t be installed for the time being, Blaine County Commissioner Tom Bowman said. Cutbacks in statewide highway funding in the past few years have meant that the limited reconstruction funds have been funneled to projects deemed more pressing in northern Idaho and around Boise and Twin Falls.

Simply lowering speed limits on key stretches of Highway 75 won’t solve the problem because commuters are already driving slowly during the worst hours, Blaine County Sheriff Walt Femling said last spring.

“There’s just a lot of cars out there,” he said.

In the near term, easier fixes may be in order. Peregrine ranch owner Harry Rinker recently had crews remove trees from the large earthen berm that stands in front of the ranch adjacent to Highway 75. The trees made viewing wildlife more difficult along that stretch of the highway, said Picabo resident Nick Purdy, who has represented Rinker at public meetings.

Purdy said all trees within 60 feet of the centerline of the highway have been removed. The trees were taken out to give drivers more sight distance “so they can see elk before they jump out onto the highway,” he said. “Mr. Rinker decided to do it as a responsible action for safety.”

Avoiding wildlife on Idaho’s roads

Here are some tips for how to avoid hitting critters:

•    Be aware of posted wildlife crossing signs. These are placed in active wildlife crossing areas.

•    Remember that deer, elk and other ungulates are most active between 6 and 9 p.m.

•    Use high beam headlamps as much as possible to illuminate the areas where wildlife enter roadways.

•    Keep in mind that deer and other ungulates generally travel in herds. If you spot one, others may be nearby.

•    Do not rely on car-mounted deer whistles. They don’t work.

•    If a collision with a deer or elk seems unavoidable, do not attempt to swerve out of the way. Doing so can cause you to lose control of your vehicle or place you in the path of an oncoming vehicle.

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by Jason D.B. Kauffman, Sun Valley Magazine, Summer 2006

They exist equally as well on the margins of the West’s high, untamed landscapes as they do on the peripheries of our imaginations. They lead solitary lives often spanning 1,000 years or more.

Perched on the rugged edge of the skyline in the Rocky, Cascade and Sierra Nevada mountains they survey wild nature at its finest: vertical, pristine, and free. They are Pinus albicaulis, the whitebark pine tree, a species as close to immortal as can be found on this earth.

The whitebark pine occupies a harsh and uncompromising world. Gale force winds bend its trunk and branches into twisted, tortured shapes. The tree’s thick roots reach far and deep in search of every available nutrient in the dry, rocky soils.

Whitebark pine are typically the highest elevation trees and are found on solitary perches, in open, park-like forests, and in mixed stands with other species of trees. In central Idaho, the characteristically round, squat trees are found at the tree line in every major mountain range.

The whitebark is perfectly suited for its harsh and high altitude surroundings, being both resilient and hardy. Small wonder people drawn to high, wild places find them so appealing.

Humans aren’t the only ones drawn to whitebark pine trees, however.

Throughout the year numerous species of wildlife take advantage of what the whitebark pine has to offer. Buried within each of the whitebark pine’s deep-purple cones is an abundance of small pea-sized seeds. Because the seeds are comprised of 52 percent fat, grizzly bear, red squirrels, and other wild critters gorge themselves on the seeds in autumn.

Another species drawn to the whitebark pine is the jay-sized Clark’s Nutcracker. The unique symbiotic relationship between the Clark’s Nutcracker and the whitebark pine is a story truly worthy of telling.

Like other related “stone pines” in Europe and Asia, the North American whitebark pine relies on the intervention of a Nutcracker to open its cones and release the seeds within. While other animals also harvest the seeds of the whitebark pine, only the Clark’s Nutcracker has the ability to harvest and dispatch them in the soil in a manner suitable for germination and the establishment of seedlings.

Clark’s Nutcrackers are known to harvest between 35,000 and 100,000 whitebark pine seeds in a typical year. Like others of the genus Corvus (crows and ravens are also members)—the Clark’s Nutcracker is an extremely intelligent bird. Studies have shown that Clark’s Nutcrackers employ an extraordinary method of using downed logs, large rocks, and other stationary objects to mark where they’ve placed their seed caches.

Even the Clark’s Nutcracker is susceptible to memory lapses, however, and often fails to recover all of its seeds. Over time, a few of these forgotten seeds germinate and send little fragments of green poking up through the warming springtime soils.

The whitebark pine’s broad, sweeping limbs provide an abundance of shade, much more than the subalpine fir, Douglas fir, and spruce, species of trees often found within the context of a whitebark-dominated forest. Unlike those narrow cone-shaped trees, the expansive shade provided by whitebark pines helps retain winter snows well into the summer months.

The deep-rooted whitebark pine also acts as an anchor, preventing highly erodible soils from washing away with the springtime snowmelt.

Stanley resident Dana Perkins, Ph.D., is an ecologist with the Challis Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Perkins’ work takes her high into the Sawtooth-Salmon River region’s mountains to track the condition of local whitebark pine forests suffering from another type of outbreak, albeit a natural one.

If you’ve driven anywhere in the Sawtooth Valley of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area (SNRA) in recent years, you’ve likely seen the red-needled handiwork of the mountain pine beetle. The infestation, which currently affects stands of lodgepole pine and whitebark pine throughout the SNRA, is just the latest chapter of a constant ebb and flow. Mountain pine beetle infestations typically occur in an 80- to 100-year cyclical pattern.

The mountain pine beetle feeds in the phloem layer of the inner bark of trees in both the adult and larval stages. Boring dust around the base of a tree and pitch tubes that look like polka dots on the trunk, are evidence that beetles are attacking it. The feeding leads to the eventual demise of the host tree. In time, beetle infestations die down as the beetle’s food sources begin to run out.

Beetles typically don’t attack small-diameter trees. Some speculate that this is due to diminished food supply, and the beetles’ susceptibility to extreme cold, which are characteristic of small-diameter, poorly insulated young trees.

In her work Perkins uses dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating, to analyze growth patterns of whitebark pine stands in central Idaho. As a master’s student in 1992, Perkins used dendrochronology to establish the date of the last major mountain pine beetle outbreak to hit the Northern Rockies region from 1920 through 1940.

Perkins’ research helped explain the significance of the bleached white and gray stands of whitebark pine—still-standing remnants of the 1920 to 1940 beetle outbreak—that can be found in many locations throughout Idaho and surrounding states. Perkins and other forestry experts call these silent reminders of past beetle outbreaks the “gray ghosts,” or “ghost forests.”

Perkins’ thesis work led to an additional discovery of singular significance. On a west-facing slope in the White Clouds, Perkins and her advisor, Dr. Tom Swetnam, came across a whitebark pine they dated to 726 A.D., making it the oldest known whitebark pine anywhere.

A number of factors determine when outbreaks of mountain pine beetle happen, and the intensity of outbreaks, Perkins says.

Variables affecting the current outbreak include the density of lodgepole pine stands, the 80- to 100-year-old age of the stands, and may include the extended drought the region is experiencing.

The beetle outbreak isn’t limited to Idaho.

“It’s not local, it’s regional,” Perkins says. “It’s moving around and extending into surrounding states.”

Perkins speculates that global warming may also be a contributing factor to the success of mountain pine beetle in whitebark pine and lodgepole pine stands today commenting, “it makes it easier for the beetles to make it through their life cycle.”

Perkins isn’t surprised at the recent outbreak of mountain pine beetle, especially in the SNRA’s lodgepole pine forests. “It’s time for it to occur. The stands are dense enough and the lodgepole pines are of the right age.”

Perkins is currently conducting a study looking into a method of repelling mountain pine beetle from whitebark pine stands using natural pheromones that signal beetles to stay away from particular stands of trees. The pheromones trick the beetles into thinking there are already enough beetles in the trees, she said.

Perkins’ project, located on BLM land near the confluence of the East Fork and Main Salmon rivers, is producing promising results, and she hopes to continue gathering data through the course of the outbreak.

Robin Garwood, a wildlife biologist for the SNRA, is collecting information in order to address the other major threat to whitebark pine: fire suppression.

Historically, fires in lower elevation forests have spread into upper elevations or started within these upper elevation forests and impacted whitebark pine communities, says Garwood. The fires create openings that Clark’s Nutcrackers are known to select as caching sites.

Whitebark pine is a seral species, meaning they’re typically the first tree species to come in after a disturbance like fire. Without wildfire in the equation, however, the openings in whitebark pine forests have become fewer. A sign that fire hasn’t been allowed to do what it does is the increasing numbers of trees such as subalpine fir, Douglas fir and spruce beginning to crowd out whitebark pines, Garwood says.

The answer, and what Garwood is currently working on, is the reintroduction of fire to the whitebark pine landscape. Garwood has applied for federal funding to begin moving beyond planning and actually start initiating small, prescribed burns in areas where subalpine fir has encroached into whitebark pine stands in the SNRA.

Based on the success of the prescribed burns, the project could eventually be expanded into more and larger areas, she says.

Many researchers, Perkins included, believe the role of humans is essential to the future of the whitebark pine. Projects like the planting of whitebark pine seedlings on Bald Mountain at Sun Valley offer the species hope, she says. “It’s visible to the public and you can tell their story,” Perkins says. “It’s a natural classroom.”

Without human intervention, white bark pine could become locally extinct over much of its historic range, Perkins says. “It’s going to take humans working on it. It’s a species we should be concerned about. Everybody loves them.”

Later this summer the importance of central Idaho for the whitebark pine’s future will take center stage when the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation’s annual meeting is held Sept. 29-30 at the Community Campus in Hailey. A field trip is planned for Galena Summit on Saturday, Sept. 30. More information can be found at www.whitebarkfound.org or by calling Dana Perkins at 208.879.6243.

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Inside Idaho’s Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, humans and wolves learn to co-exist.

by Jason D.B. Kauffman, Backpacker Magazine, Dec. 2007

It came from the right, a pale shape zigzagging through the trees 100 yards upslope from where we were hiding. Entering a clearing, the fleeting blur materialized into a pure white adult wolf. It paused, glanced back in our direction, then vanished into the forest.

“They’re like ghosts,” Idaho biologist and noted gray wolf researcher Jim Akenson whispered as we huddled in a conifer forest 50 miles from the nearest paved road. Tall, red-bearded, and an avid hiker, Akenson has spent 25 years studying wolves and cougars from Montana to Oregon. Together with four undergraduates from the University of Idaho, we were several hours into a three-day backpacking trip to locate and count wolf pups inside Idaho’s 2.4-million-acre Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. Earlier in the day, Jim’s wife Holly had dropped off supplies to sustain our search for a pack’s well-hidden den and the litter of newborn pups it might contain. Then she’d led a string of pack mules back to Taylor Ranch, the off-the-grid research station that is their year-round home.

To Jim, the appearance of the all-white female was a good omen. He identified her as the omega wolf, the lowest-ranking member of the pack who often serves as a sentry when the alpha female is tending her pups. Find the omega wolf, Jim told us, and the den is likely nearby.

As carnivore biologists at the University of Idaho, the Akensons have conducted census forays in the rugged mountains surrounding Taylor Ranch since 1997, shortly after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) reintroduced 66 Canadian gray wolves to the northern Rockies. Today, wildlife biologists estimate that 700 animals roam the state. As Jim later told me, “We’ve watched them grow from day one.” Because wolves had been missing from central Idaho for decades, the couple’s field research has become the new baseline for understanding pack behavior–and is now producing important findings just as another wolf controversy flares up.

In the 12 years since wolves returned to Idaho, they’ve generated a backlash from some locals who fear the impact of these predators on the state’s economy and customs–ranchers upset about attacks on livestock, hunters who believe the packs are thinning elk herds. The issue heated up again last February when the USFWS proposed removing the Rocky Mountain gray wolf from the Endangered Species List and turning management over to the states. In Idaho, that would place wolves under the jurisdiction of Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter, who said earlier this year that he favors culling the state’s population to 100 animals. But extreme positions like that have recently started to lose ground as Idahoans learn more accurate information about the role and behavior of wolves in their state. And the primary impetus for this attitude shift is the pioneering research by scientists like the Akensons.

So far, their findings have overturned one common perception about wolf and prey interactions: Wolves aren’t decimating the state’s elk population the way many hunters claim. As Holly explained from the living room of Taylor Ranch, elk began to decline five years before wolves were reintroduced to Idaho. “The herds were not at sustainable numbers,” she said. In addition, the Akensons believe that the prowling packs are forcing elk to become more cautious. Fearing ambush, the game animals no longer graze in wide-open meadows, but retreat to thick timber and steep-sided canyons where many hunters can’t find them. Still, the Akensons are not opposed to a wolf hunt. They believe large wilderness areas like the Frank Church should remain off limits, but agree that a limited cull could be directed at packs that prey frequently on livestock. “We need to target the problem wolves,” she said, “not the packs out here.”

On the second morning of our hike, we awoke early and staked out two positions on opposite sides of the forested basin where the white wolf appeared. Within an hour, the pack’s gray-and-white, 120-pound alpha male sauntered out of the trees, the dark band of a radio collar visible around his neck. Even from a distance, his large size and confident bearing were impressive. Then he stopped, shot a wary glance at one of our hiding spots, and trotted over the ridge and disappeared. We tried to follow him, and staked out several more promising clearings, but saw no more wolves for the rest of the afternoon.

Disappointed, we walked slowly back to camp, hoping for a final glimpse. As we crested the grassy swell where the alpha male had appeared, four tawny, marmot-sized animals scrambled for cover just 15 yards to our right. “Pups,” Jim whispered. For all his decades of experience, he looked as excited as a first-year biology student. Remarkably, we had passed by the den several times, but hadn’t noticed a telltale mound of dirt. Not wishing to disturb the pack any more, we dropped below the ridge to return to camp.

Arriving at our tents, we encountered the perfect epilogue: Plainly visible on a tent flap were two dusty paw prints with the distinctive four-toes-and-claw-pattern of Canis lupus. We concluded that a wolf, perhaps the elusive alpha male, had visited our empty camp and sat back on its haunches to shadowbox the tent. Despite the mysterious calling card, we all slept well that night. The wolves of Idaho, we realized, were conducting some research of their own.

Research in the Rough

Jim and Holly Akenson have managed the University of Idaho’s Taylor Ranch Field Station, a 65-acre enclave in the middle of the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, for more than a decade. Located on the south bank of Big Creek, the largest tributary of the Middle Fork of the Salmon, the ranch is an ideal base for students, interns, and scientists seeking a wilderness setting for their research. This past summer, the ranch hosted projects investigating the habitat and behavior of prairie rattlesnakes, Chinook salmon, and steelhead trout. In May, a dozen high school students from McCall, ID, arrived at the ranch to spend several days assisting the Akensons with their research, including several hikes to track and locate wolves and cougars. This summer’s active research season allowed the ranch to live up to its nickname as “American’s wildest classroom.”

Measured from the nearest road, Taylor Ranch is the most remote permanently inhabited residence in the lower 48 states. The shortest approach routes are a 32-mile jaunt along Big Creek from the west, or a 42-mile trek from the southeast (hiked by the author). Most scientists, supplies, and mail arrive by air, landing on a narrow airstrip maintained by a mule team. Several other grass landing strips lie within six miles of the station. The privately-owned research facility is located at the junction of several hiking trails, but does not provide lodging for recreational visitors. Find out more at www.cnrhome.uidaho.edu/taylorranch.htm.

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by Jason D.B. Kauffman, Backpacker Magazine

Need more evidence that sudden weather changes can kill? Look no further than the December 2006 tragedy on Mt. Hood. Above treeline, your risk is tripled: Conditions change more quickly, your exposure is greater, and your escape will take longer. Here’s how to predict and avoid the nastiest alpine developments.

LIGHTNING Even when a storm is 10 miles away and no rain is falling, lightning can strike you. The basic rule: If you can hear thunder, you are in danger. Some peaks are more prone to electrical storms, like Wyoming’s 13,770-foot Grand Teton, where rising warm air spawns daily summer thunder¬storms. In July 2003, one fast-moving storm killed a climber at 13,000 feet. Follow these steps you see dark clouds develop.
Calculate your distance from the storm (in miles) by dividing the number of seconds between flash and boom by 5.
Descend immediately if you can hear thunder. Ditch all metal gear. If the storm is closer than miles, take cover at once.
Find a low-lying, sheltered spot away from tall objects and crouch with your feet close together on a sleeping pad.

WIND Mountain terrain can funnel winds to speeds that make walking, talking, and even breathing difficult. Combined with low temps, these gusts can create life- and limb-threatening conditions. Certain locations are known for mini-gales, such as 5,800-foot Windy Gap in Mt. Rainier National Park, where winds channeled by two ridges scour the exposed Northern Loop Trail. When buffeted by heavy winds, remember to:
Descend to lower ground or seek refuge on the leeward side of a rocks or a stand of trees.
Avoid the tallest trees in a forest. Crouch beside or under a downed log, or seek out trees of the same age and height, which aren’t as likely to topple.
Select a camp away from narrow canyons or valleys, recently burnt zones, and trees with snagged or dead branches.

WHITEOUT Zero visibility is never good, and a sudden whiteout in dicey terrain is down¬right terrifying. Overcast skies combined with blizzards or fog can limit your depth perception and obscure terrain features. Peaks like Mt. Hood with year-round snow and heavy precipi¬tation frequently go opaque—as it did during the 9-day effort to rescue the three climbers. When visibility drops, you should:
Assemble your group to prevent separation as the soup gets thicker. Stay within sight—not just shouting distance.
Keep on the trail. Use a compass or GPS to stay on track; an altimeter watch can help you follow an elevation contour on your topo.
If you’re lost, find a pro¬tected spot such as the leeward side of a boulder or snow cave. And when in doubt, stay put.

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by Jason D.B. Kauffman, www.newwest.net

A female grizzly bear and her three large cubs pause in a secluded meadow along Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front near Dupuyer Creek. Biologists estimate that as many as 70 to 80 grizzlies may inhabit the high plains east of the Front. Photo courtesy of Mike Madel, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

Montanans living along the winding Teton River, well east of the Rocky Mountain Front were quick to notice their new neighbor this summer. As early as the beginning of July, ranchers and other landowners along the prairie began intermittently spotting a solitary grizzly bear journeying east, away from the mountains.

Residents of the rural grasslands, including Mike Madel, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Park’s Region 4 Grizzly Bear Management Specialist based in Choteau, were even more surprised in mid-July when members of a local ranching family captured photographs of the lone bear on their land along the Teton north of Fort Benton, ambling through open prairie nearly 100 miles from the mountains, where Ursus arctos horribilis is expected these days.

For Madel and other bear managers in the state, the bear’s arrival so far beyond the range of today’s grizzlies and into historic habitat was a revelation – and one that would be the first of many throughout the summer and fall.

Madel, a 23-year veteran of working with grizzlies along the Front, called 2009 an “unprecedented” year for bears wandering back on to the prairie, and says the bears’ presence there is only likely to increase in coming years.

That means an entire population of humans will now have to learn how to cohabitate with grizzlies. While the plains are historically grizzly country, for many living there now, the return of the grizzly is – to put it lightly – a surprise.

Karla Ayers, whose daughter Elizabeth snapped the now-famous shots of what turned out to be a young male grizzly near Fort Benton, said ranchers and other residents living on the high plains just aren’t accustomed to having grizzlies in their midst. She said it’s not like on the Rocky Mountain Front, where people have been living with bears now for years.

“Our mindset is just not ready to deal with bears,” she said.

That plains residents aren’t yet ready to live with bears could be reflected in the increase in human-caused grizzly deaths this year. So far in 2009, the deaths of 10 of the great bears have been confirmed in Madel’s region, with eight of those attributed to humans.

“It’s certainly the highest on record,” Madel said.

In one high-profile case, officials are now offering $11,000 for information leading to the arrest of whoever poached a famous 800-pound grizzly nicknamed “Maximus” near Dupuyer in August.

The historic range of the opportunistic grizzly bear once stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Great Plains and from the high Arctic well into present-day Mexico. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that up to 50,000 grizzlies occupied the area south of present-day Canada when Lewis and Clark journeyed across the continent. Today, the population in the lower 48 states covers just two percent of its former range and only numbers between 1,200- to 1,400-strong. Though settlement pushed grizzlies off the prairies earlier than just about anywhere else, bear experts say the wide-open landscape once provided them with some of the richest habitat anywhere.

Now, they’re apparently in search of that habitat once again. Nearly as surprising as the bear the Ayers family spotted north of Fort Benton was the sow grizzly and three cubs spotted by a rancher in October feeding on a cow carcass well out on the plains near the community of Simms. Madel also investigated this sighting and says the grizzly foursome didn’t kill the cow. He believes the bears used the Sun River as a safe travel corridor from the mountains to the plains.

Also this summer, bird hunters spotted another grizzly south of Tiber Dam, which is north of Great Falls and well east of Interstate 15.

Madel speculates that the bear found near Fort Benton was likely sticking close to the Teton River, which flows down in a canyon beneath rolling prairie uplands along much of its length.

Had the grizzly kept to itself and out of trouble after leaving the Ayers ranch along the Teton, it very well may have kept traveling east. But that was not to be. Not long after the Fort Benton sighting, the bear arrived at another sheep ranch about 11-miles downstream near Loma, a small outpost on the plains northeast of Great Falls. There, the bear killed a sheep, officials say, spelling the end of its noteworthy jaunt.

After its capture by a federal Wildlife Services agent, Madel was called into tranquilize and transport the 238-pound yearling male back to a remote spot west of the Continental Divide in the mountains near Marias Pass.

One of the many remarkable aspects of the young bear’s journey is just how close it came to reaching the Missouri River. Had it ignored temptation near Loma, it would have only had to journey another mile to reach the mighty river. Madel believes that could have been the last people saw of the wandering bear for a very long time.

Below Loma, the Missouri enters a lengthy stretch of increasingly remote country that extends clear out into the Missouri River Breaks and the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge. The area’s large cottonwood stands and dense riparian vegetation could easily hide a wandering bear. Miles of wild and winding side canyons on both sides of the river further isolate this remote land.

It used to be excellent grizzly bear habitat and could be again, Madel said. “A bear could get lost out there and establish a home range and survive,” he said.

Madel says stories like that of the Loma bear are likely to get more familiar. Grizzly bear managers have seen an increase in the number of grizzly sows with young expanding their range farther out on the plains, an almost sure sign the great bear is establishing a toehold. Madel said young grizzlies that learn from their mothers that the prairies offer abundant food sources like buffalo berry and chokecherry are far more apt to continue living in these spots.

“It’s more about learned behavior,” he said. “We’re going to see that more and more.”

The movement by grizzlies on the plains isn’t an entirely new occurrence, said Chris Servheen, grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. From his office at the University of Montana in Missoula, Servheen said the bears have been reoccupying these old haunts for the past several decades. He said more tolerant attitudes on the part of ranchers and other local residents on the Front has allowed the population of grizzlies occupying the high plains just east of the mountains to increase from nearly none just several decades ago to perhaps as many as 70 to 80 today. “Thirty or forty years ago the bears were persecuted when they came out of the mountains,” he said.

Whether people living in these potential new grizzly ranges farther away from the Front become similarly accustomed to living with the bears will remain to be seen.

Servheen said the federal government’s grizzly recovery program has helped improve mortality control and habitat management issues along the Front. “We’ve tried to build tolerance with the people that live, work and recreate with bears,” he explained. “Those things together result in fewer mortalities, which results in more cub production and more bears.”

For some time, Servheen has been saying he can foresee the day when bears will reach the Missouri, which nearly occurred this summer. Now, he says he can envision a day when the area’s more remote sections may even provide permanent habitat for a handful of bears. “The Missouri Breaks might offer some good potential for grizzly bears,” he said.

Officials say the presence of so many bears on the plains means that activities like hunting in thick shrub fields may be something that’s best to avoid from now on. Plains grizzlies use these habitats as places to bed down during the daylight hours. Just this fall, a pheasant hunter from Alaska got the surprise of his life when he jumped a grizzly sow and her cubs in a thick mosaic of buffalo berry, cottonwoods and interspersed meadow north of Choteau called the Eldorado Grove. The hunter killed the charging grizzly with the third and final shot from his shotgun. Bear managers say the death of the bear may have been avoided had the hunter been carrying nonlethal pepper spray.

Madel, a firm believer in the value of carrying bear spray, has successfully retarded bear charges three times in his line of work. The broad cloud the spray lays down is a very effective deterrent, even during erratic wind, he said. “Carry bear spray on your belt at all times,” he advises.

Servheen believes the bears showing up on the prairie are responding more to the presence of excellent habitat rather than simply being pushed out of Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall wilderness complex because those area’s grizzly bear capacity has been reached. “We don’t know if the population is at carrying capacity,” he said.

A recent hair-snaring study in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem indicated the presence of approximately 765 grizzlies. And this growing population of bears isn’t just spreading out onto the plains, Servheen said. “We do know that the population is large and that it is expanding its range because we see bears in more and more places,” he said. “Not just on the Front, but to the south and to the west.”

Grizzlies leaving the southern end of the Bob Marshall country are beginning to show up on the south side of U.S. Interstate 90 near places like Drummond, Anaconda, Phillipsburg and in Rock Creek. In 2005, a bear tied to the northern grizzly population was found dead from an arrow in the Mount Haggin Wildlife Management Area adjacent to the 158,615-acre Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness Area. Just last year, a young male grizzly was captured near Drummond after it raided an unprotected beehive.

These bears are the leading edge of what folks like Jamie Jonkel, Montana’s Region 2 Grizzly Bear Management Specialist, believe is the recolonization of much of western Montana by grizzlies. For now, it’s mostly males with a touch of wanderlust moving out.

“They’re slowly trying to recolonize former ranges,” said Jonkel, the son of noted bear researcher Chuck Jonkel of Missoula. “Soon we’ll start seeing a few females setting up shop.”

In Jonkel’s region, which covers notable areas in western Montana like the Bitterroot and Sapphire mountains and the Rattlesnake Wilderness above Missoula, the hotspot for grizzly activity is the rural Blackfoot-Clearwater valley on the southern end of the Bob Marshall country. Still, he has little doubt that at least a few grizzlies are living unseen in spots like Rock Creek and parts of the Clark Fork drainage.

“I would say there are a handful of bears south of Interstate 90 trying to eke out a living,” he said. “There’s some pretty good habitat down there for them.”

And as long as they stay out of trouble, Jonkel said, Montana officials have no intention of stopping these grizzlies from staking out new home ranges.

“We don’t treat them any differently than the bears up north,” he said. “Right now we’re telling people to expect bears pretty much anywhere in western Montana.”

There’s also evidence that a few grizzlies are occupying portions of the upper Rattlesnake Wilderness. Jonkel said they’ve found evidence along the crests of high alpine ridges in the Rattlesnake where something has been digging up biscuit root. He said that’s a behavior only grizzlies are known for.

Back out on the Front, the movements of bears on the plains is being aided by several decades of work by government agencies and private land trusts like The Nature Conservancy to secure valuable private lands as permanent open space.

This program is designed to make sure wide-ranging species like the unique plains grizzly continue to have room to roam years into the future. To date, The Nature Conservancy and its partners have preserved 146,039 acres of private ranch lands along the Front through conservation easements and outright purchases.

Dave Hanna, the Conservancy’s Rocky Mountain Front Science and Stewardship Director based in Choteau, said his organization is working to identify and preserve those places that provide the great bears with the cover and food sources they need to keep flourishing on the Front. “It’s the only place in the lower 48 where you still have bears using a grassland habitat and that’s a pretty special thing,” Hanna said.

Not long after Madel transported the Loma bear to the opposite side of the Continental Divide on the Flathead National Forest, the seasoned grizzly bear manager witnessed something that indicates just how attractive the plains habitat may still be for bears.

Madel got a call from one of his professional counterparts who’s responsible for managing bears on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation east of Glacier National Park. The bear manager had picked up a signal from the Loma bear. Soon after, he lost the bear’s signal farther east in the Marias River country, which has seen reports of grizzly activity trickle in during the past few years.

“He went north and east and got out into very open grassland habitat,” Madel said.

He said the bear likely ended up somewhere along the lower Marias River. “I assume he went farther and farther east,” Madel said.

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