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In Wyoming, Industry and Wildlife Advocates Spar Over Mule Deer Statistics

By Shauna Stephenson, 11-16-10

Photo by Flickr user greg westfall.

When it comes to the disagreements over mule deer on Wyoming’s Pinedale Anticline, common ground is in short supply and emotions are high over this intensely developed patch of land. A new report about the herd’s decline has caused no shortage of head butting.

The report released in late October, has wildlife managers looking for the next level of mitigation, trying to help a mule deer population that appears to be hemorrhaging. The herd on the Mesa had declined 60 percent since development began in 2001, and 28 percent since 2005, according to the report.

Survival rates are also down on the plateau. In the past, Mesa survival rates for adult does had been about 80 percent. This year they dropped to 70 percent, indicating that does coming off the winter range were in much poorer condition than usual.

The population decreases will force wildlife managers to step up mitigation efforts and explore new measures to maintain or increase the mule deer population, according to a Bureau of Land Management environmental impact Record of Decision from 2008.

Industry was quick to caution the public not to overreact to the new report. The numbers, they said, could reflect a natural variance due to the intensity of recent development to install a liquids gathering system. The system is a series of underground pipelines between wells and processing stations designed to minimize mule deer contact with workers and machinery.

The Bureau of Land Management echoed that sentiment.

“It’s worth noting that wildlife do naturally cycle up and down, and we could be seeing a cycle down,” said Shane DeForest, field manager for BLM’s Pinedale Field Office.

However, Hall Sawyer, who authored the report and has been studying the herd for a decade, didn’t seem convinced.

“It doesn’t appear to be some sort of fluke or natural variation,” he said.

Conservationists say the report confirms what they have long suspected: mainly that mule deer are in real trouble.

And it’s not trouble that is going to let up anytime soon. Since the 2008 Record of Decision, 754 new wells have gone in and a total of 4,399 are planned. BLM estimates intense development will continue through 2023.

“It’s a reasonably dire prospect for this mule deer herd,” said Rollin Sparrowe, a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist and board member of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. “There’s very distinct threats to their existence in many places in the West.”

This week TRCP issued a news release blasting the BLM for their management of the situation.

“Sportsmen frankly are outraged that these mule deer losses are not seen by the federal government as ‘severe’ and warranting specific reparative actions,” said Steve Belinda, TRCP director of energy programs and a former BLM biologist. “This lackadaisical response is, in a word, unacceptable, and it continues a string of broken promises by the BLM that were meant to assure responsible management of these public resources.”

Added Sparrowe, “This portion of the Sublette mule deer herd is one of the most studied, documented populations of mule deer in the country, yet the BLM continues to insist that we don’t know enough to change course on actions that affect them. By labeling its misguided approach ‘adaptive management,’ the BLM is avoiding doing what it must to sustain these animals and fulfill its multiple-use mandate for all resources, not just extraction of energy.”

But DeForest disagreed, noting they were not waiting for more data to come in and they were looking at additional mitigation, which was “exactly what we meant to do.”

“We are taking the reduction in numbers seriously,” he said. “I can’t see where the broken promises were. Our record of decision in no uncertain terms said we anticipated impacts to wildlife.”

But Sparrowe doesn’t buy that argument. He doesn’t disagree on the fact that mitigation measures have been put in place. He just wonders why they weren’t put in place 10 years ago, knowing what they knew about the nature of deer and the intensity of the development.

“What’s happened so far to try to accommodate mule deer hasn’t been enough. That’s the bottom line,” he said. “A two-thirds decline is unacceptable to everyone.”

Shelley Gregory, spokesperson for the BLM, said even though the technology to help avoid wildlife impacts might have been there at the start of development, implementing it takes cooperation from industry and time to install. She said the recent construction of the liquids gathering system puts the anticline at the technological forefront when it comes to mitigation.

“It wasn’t an easy task for them to undertake,” she said.

Additionally, the BLM notes there could be a variety of reasons for the dip in population.

Energy aside, deer have been declining across the West. They have been driving managers nuts for decades. They can be a finicky species, prone to cyclical highs and lows. Drought has put the pinch on much of their preferred habitat. Fire suppression has turned what used to be productive shrubs into old woody garbage, hardly something a nursing doe can survive on. Urban sprawl has pushed them out of what used to be prime territory, and the increase in roads and traffic tends to be unkind as well.

To add to that cost, studies are predicting that climate change will not bode well for deer. As climate changes, so does the forage available and mule deer as a rule don’t tend to be very adaptable.

All those things being the case, Sparrowe wonders why more isn’t being done.

He said industry wants to point the finger at a lot of other factors, but the data doesn’t support it. If it were due to natural causes, Sparrowe said, those causes would be felt across the region, not just on the mesa. But neighboring herds aren’t seeing those rates of decline.

And even rates are subject to speculation. As with most battles over wildlife, there are questions over data and whose data should be used. More specifically there are questions over why 2005 was chosen as the year to compare to. The Record of Decision notes that additional mitigation will be taken should there be a 15 percent cumulative change in mule deer abundance compared to the 2005 population. However, some have questioned why 2005 was chosen, as there had already been a documented decline by then – if the goal was to understand the impact of energy on deer, then why not compare to the year development really started gearing up, which was around 2001?

DeForest said data was not specific enough prior to 2005 to get an accurate picture of populations. He said they wanted to compare apples to apples in essence.

He compared it to a jar of jam. The jar may already be half empty he said, but you have to put a mark on it somewhere to begin measuring what’s happening in the jar.

However, Sawyer says there’s no difference in the specificity of the data pre or post 2005.

“Regarding the 2005 (benchmark), that’s incorrect as far as when data were reliable,” he said. “We started collecting good data in 2001, the first year of development, so essentially all the data that’s included in that report, 2001 though last year, are good data. So there’s really no reason not to use 2001 as the reference.”

Again, this doesn’t seem to sit well with conservationists.

“This is not a new set of evidence,” Sparrowe said. “And I sat at the meeting listening to industry and BLM and was struck by how much it is like the first responses when the deer began to decline in 2005 and 2006 when we still had an active wildlife monitoring group. And yet here we are sitting around the table seeing the same thing but happening more dramatically.”

Added Sparrowe, “Biologists made recommendations for what not to do. The political forces and agencies made the decision to continue and see these impacts.”

Now, to complicate things further, the herd faces even more uncertainty. After wintering on the Mesa, portions of the herd migrate west to the Wyoming Range to summer. Currently plans to develop portions of that range are being reviewed by the Forest Service, and are due to be released any day. 

“If you want to guarantee the demise of this herd even further, allow development on transitional ranges. Go into fawning and summer range. That would wipe them out for sure,” Sparrowe said. “It’s not an easy fix at this point.”

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