New West Feature
What Happened to the Mulies and Pronghorns?
Theories abound concerning why Colorado and Wyoming deer and antelope populations have plummeted.By Shauna Stephenson, 8-08-11
A pronghorn at Arapaho National Wildlife Refuge in northern Colorado. Photo by B&M (Bill and Mavis) Photography.
A suite of habitat stressors appears to have caused a massive decline in mule deer and pronghorn herds around the border of Wyoming and Colorado, according to a recent National Wildlife Federation (NWF) report.
The herds, which tend to migrate back and forth over state lines, have encountered a number of pressures over the past 30 years, including fragmentation of habitat, disease, energy development, drought, and harsh winters.
“The tricky thing about this is we can’t absolutely tie this to one or two specific occurrences,” said Steve Torbit, recently retired NWF regional executive director. “One thing we do know is that we are asking more and more of the country between Interstate 80 and U.S. 40 (the region included in the report).”
The NWF has scheduled public meetings this week to discuss the issue in two northwestern Colorado towns, Steamboat Springs on Aug. 11 and Craig on Aug. 12.
The report, “Population Status and Trends of Big Game along the Colorado/Wyoming State Line,” was issued as a call to sportsmen to wake up and understand what is happening to wildlife in the area.
“If they don’t speak up, they’re going to experience declining opportunity,” Torbit said.
The report was put together by John Ellenberger and Gene Byrne of Wildlife Management Consultants and Associates, LLC, both of whom are former veteran biologists at the Colorado Division of Wildlife. The two analyzed wildlife agency statistics from the past 30 years, taking into account state differences in data collection, changes to unit boundaries, and hunter license types.
“We are concerned that at some point, the resiliency of these herds to recover will be lost, creating a situation where we can only expect further declines,” Ellenberger said in a NWF press release.
One particularly bleak area is the northwest corner of Colorado. Deer populations have plummeted over the past 30 years and hunter harvest has followed suit. In 2008, the population objective (the population wildlife officials think is appropriate for the area) was set at 13,500.
However, the population estimate of animals actually on the ground was only 1,448. Over the past 30 years, deer density in that area has decreased by 66 percent, the report shows.
Hunter harvest also has declined significantly, mirroring the drop-off in populations. In the late 1980s, more than 800 deer were harvested in the area. Twenty years later, only 48 were harvested.
Pronghorn aren’t faring much better. In 2008, populations were only half of their objectives.
“It tells you it’s something bigger than just restricting those licenses,” Torbit said during a public meeting in Walden, Colo. “That’s a crash, and that’s scary.”
He added, “If we want deer and antelope to be huntable in the future, we’ve got to do something different.”
Just south of Rock Springs, Wyo., mule deer have declined about 38 percent since 1986. Hunter harvest has fallen from a high of 1,200 in 1987 to less than 400 in 2008.
Possibly more problematic are the rates of recruitment, or how many young animals survive to adulthood each year.
For pronghorn, those rates typically need to be around 80 young per 100 female pronghorn to maintain robust populations. However, 2008 recruitment rates barely reached the 50-per-100 level in any surveyed area, dropping as low as 38-per-100 in some areas.
One popular contention is that severe drought and bad winters in the area are mostly to blame. True, officials say, a significant portion of declines can be attributable to weather patterns, and to the cyclical rise and fall of herd populations over the years. But these herds aren’t seeing the rebounds in population that formerly followed natural declines.
“What it tells us is that habitat is being challenged and not responding,” Torbit says. “It can’t respond at this point like it used to, to regrow a herd.”
Intense energy development also has been identified by many as a cause of the gradual declines. A number of oil and gas wells have already gone in and thousands more are planned.
Plans also are developing for multiple wind farms, such as the 1,000-turbine Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind Energy Project.
Energy industry advocates counter that they have a good environmental record in the West. Bruce Hinchey, president of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, told the Associated Press that drillers are required to reclaim all disturbed areas.
“In Wyoming the first oil well was drilled in 1884,” he said. “We’ve been here 127 years, and we’ve got lots and lots of wildlife. They continue to thrive.”
Torbit doesn’t buy it.
“I don’t tell the oil and gas industry what kind of oil or gas the geological formations hold. I don’t tell them where the best location is for a well. They don’t tell me what’s best for wildlife. But for some reason, they seem to think they know it all.”
Shauna Stephenson writes from Wheatland, Wyoming.
Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.
Comments
Add your comment below
Are there more coyotes in the area, wolves, lions? Eagles take baby antelope and deer, more of them?
You are dumber than a box of rocks. And remember, you said it first
But energy development must be stopped. This is a direct function of NWF's money stream from Climateworks and associates -- not "science." The only thing these guys MIGHT have gotten correct is a possible need for habitat manipulation.
What did you contribute to the discussion besides name calling? All of my statements are true, the article did not mention any effort on their part to determine how many animals are predated, how many are hit by vehhicles, how many froze last winter, how many are damaged by the energy production nor how.
Do environmental fund raisers see a single problem that cannot be solved by eliminating food and energy production?
See, this is the point in a nutshell. you have no comprehension of the written word. Your nickname is (Honey-wagon) as in a manure spreader. That is what you do.
The main point of the story is habitat fragmentation and it's affect on the local herds. What they do not talk about is the amount of poaching that is probably happening due to the increased access given by new roads put in by oil companies.
You sound like teh head of the group that funded the recent study on grouse. The researcher found ravens were predating on the eggs and chicks. She stated predation was not their focus!
I suspect I use a lot less fuel than you do since I drive a Focus, and have to need to run all over the country trying to control what other folks do. I fill up about every other week. What do you drive and how many miles/week? How many of your meetings are held online? When I hear of enviros trying to decrease the use of fuel by themselves setting an example and publicizing it, I will be impressed, I am NOT impressed by efforts to reduce availability for other folks (I am sure you will figure a way to get yours and at taxpayer expense).
How often do you drive over a hundred miles to hike? How much does that reduce the need for fuel?
I do not KNOW if the problem is predation, but it definitely is one of the factors that should be considered the same as a bad winter, late wet cold spring, etc.
In the spring Montana came out with their predation numbers - Coyotes predation sky rocked! The northeast has seen quite a jump in predators & their effect on game herds out there. Same thing with areas of Virginia http://www.whsv.com/home/headlines/35656519.html. Such a statement renders your opinion and post biased and misleading! You can do better! Nothing constant about predation anywhere anytime!
For elk not deer, and I don't buy it.
Units 20,29, 38, and the rest of them up and down the front range are criss crossed with roads and houses, deer thicker than rabbits. Habitat loss aint it. Also much much higher CWD along front range. NW colorado has pretty low detected CWD.
I'd want to see some sort of numbers for predators especially coyotes and bear. A long time ago you got a bear tag with your elk tag for free. No one seems to plink song doggies anymore.
I'd encourage predator hunting and wait and see, I dont' think it's such a big deal.
All vegetation responds to pruning or disturbance. Many species depend on disturbance for throwing new shoots. Cows and horses are not going to use the feed that deer and antelope use unless there is a drought crisis or there are too many on the land. Overgrazing grasses is not going to make the deer and antelope browse prosper. And where do the deer and antelope end up?? On the alfalfa fields, where the browse is not only pruned on a schedule producing tender and lush new growth, but it is also highly nutritious. And, wild horses and grazing cows are taking enough of the ancillary browse that there is little left for the deer and antelope. It used to be that at times, domestic sheep had left little for cattle and that was the issue. However, since cattle did not eat much of the browse deer and antelope prefer, sheep grazing actually promoted more growth of the deer and antelope food. But those days are long gone, and a generation of college and agency "ologists" have come and gone, all having spent their time fighting about "distinct" races of meadow mouse, ferrets, and other charismatic ESA candidate species used like a two dollar whore to further destroy the graze and the habitat of deer and antelope. Their food supply depends on disturbance, often frequent disturbance, and the ongoing urban armchair wannabe defenders of the wildlife are into polaroid snap shot preservation of landscapes, which is an exercise of destruction of a magnitude most cannot see.
Once, it was native Americans setting fires and tending the wild that kept vegetation in a perpetually disturbed state. Metes and bounds, assets and risk, none are amenable to the needed disturbances needed for renewal of plants, and the animals that use those plants. It is over. We no longer can get there from here. And, God, how many have tried? The whole of the environmental holocaust of non-use has been litigated, legislated, and all that we got was gridlock and paralysis by analysis.
Deer and antelope got the same treatment as deficit spending and debt ceilings, bond sales to China, and debt service advancing beyond the ability of the populace to pay it. It was a long, slow slog, and in the end, all the resources we thought we had were lost to high minded liberals with hugely dysfunctional ideas of how the world should be governed. Unfortunately, the never have worked poor, the unemployed poor, and the working poor are all going to be much poorer. However, if this deal works for people like it has for the critters, we will see a lot less obesity in the future. As it stands, alfalfa has a value because it can be sold or fed, both options having an end game of meat in the meat market. But if there is not a market for meat due to a paucity of means to buy meat, and the Liberty Garden, the Victory Garden, is a prime feeder of people, and there is no allowed disturbance in the habitat of deer and antelope, neither the poor nor the antelope and deer will see much gain. The range will still be unproductive for deer and antelope, the alfalfa gone due to market disturbance and loss of buying power, and the urban setting will not be productive for people who believe they are entitled to a living without having to work or even fend for themselves.
We got Change and Hope. Neither appear to be helpful at this time. Better we had markets for skills and goods. Better we had a quarter of the regulation we have to live by today. Just like the food for deer and antelope being regulated out of abundance, this country has done the same to its entrepreneurs and rain makers. Our regulatory distain and prejudice against sheep on the public and private range has impacted charismatic mega fauna in a bad way. There is, however, no way to get there from here, today, or tomorrow. We cannot get change and have no hope of ever having change. We can't even legislate without it being a shoot out at the OK corral. Our inability to do "the right thing" as a democratic country with elected officials, is not a pretty picture of how corrupted and entrenched the pros in politics have made themselves.
I once worked for a guy named Bob Jacks. Had a logging outfit. Drove a Ford Ranchero. A non-useful pickup it was. No ground clearance and only held two people. He showed up at lunch time one day, and went into a diatribe about how we ought to go to Washington and hang every politician from a lamp pole, and start over. I was in college. Thought he was a horse's ass for his brutal opinions. However, I liked working there due to all the hours we got, and so much inch and a half for overtime. Today I would probably chime in with a "by God we oughta..." of my own. Those pompous asses have got us in a real mess, Ollie. Like the Chinook and Seal Team the Taliban trapped and killed with an RPG, we are doomed. There is nothing you can do with money, right now, to make more money. Not a thing. And like a high stakes poker game, the guy with the most money will probably be the winner. He can absorb some losses. Us small fry can't. And neither can the deer and antelope. They were the victims of unintended consequences of bighorn sheep protections, market returns for forage favoring cattle, and the endless litigation that produces little but more wealth for lawyers and keeps the courts in business. Like old people, young people who no longer can afford the debt of college, middle aged people who lost jobs and can't get another, the deer and antelope are f--ked, fouled, and fly blowed. No hope.
I've seen this around Denver, Colo. in the 1970s. I said cowboys because that's what they thought they were. I should have mentioned dirt bikes zooming around the herds too.
I think the bigger picture should include the impacts that are affecting the praire wildlife and the causes of them. Is the real problem just the well heads dotted all over the land or also the roads, fences, housing, noise, and vehicle traffic that comes with them? Modern humans carry a lot of baggage with them when they invade areas of land for whatever reason.
We should also think to ourselves: Why is fossil fuel so essential to our country? Also consider that he who posseses a thing, controls all things that rely on it. And finally remember that absolute power corrupts absolutly.
NGO means "non (wink-wink)governmental organization. So if they are "non governmental", why is it their legal expenses are always paid for by taxes from the slush fund at the Justice Dept. and the Equal Access to Justice Act legislation?? NGOs are breast fed by the US Govt teat of EAJA. And the leftists in Congress love it.
The way this NGO bullshit works is this: You have the CEO of GoldmanSachs who was a prior Sec of the Treasury lead The Nature Conservancy. Paulson. The same TARP teat that was set up to "save" the brokerage houses from their liar loan folly encouraged by Sen. Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank and their machinations at Fanne and Freddie. Willie "the Actor" Sutton said he robbed banks because that is where they keep the money. I am sorry, Willie, but you were wrong then and are wrong today. They keep the money in the printing presses at Treasury, and the money controllers are all employed by the "Fed", Federal Reserve Banks, who are "private" entities that provide a foundation for currency values, interest rates, and OK the printing of money even though all will maintain they have nothing to do with that. NGOs are set up as tax dodges. A way to transfer gross wealth to the next generation and not lose it all to taxes. You will hear the left hollering about taxing the very wealthy. That is a ploy. The very wealthy will avoid the taxes by moving money, and by the trust and foundation process. They can only spend so much money of fast cars, faster women, and pointy toed shoes. They can buy those with trustee fees and salaries, stock options, and any other way to lower or avoid taxes. And all with the consent of the far left in Congress, because they are integral to their power, and their ability to control the process. NGOs are not much more than a shit load of untaxed wealth used as a slush fund to control markets and landscapes. All, of course, in the name of "saving" the environment. Or is it they are no more than a way to use other people's money, tax forgiven money, to stockpile land and resources for use down the road??? That appears to be the purpose of the TNC. Buy some land here to "protect" it, and then sell a chunk of it to another rich guy like they did with conservation lands on Martha's Vineyard and David Letterman ending up with them. Just money and rich guys looking out for each other...
I learned early and young how this all works. First, you have young charismatic folk doing your PR work and ingratiating themselves to old people with coveted land. Show them how they can get some money, live there until they die, and then the land will be "protected" by TNC...and the day the coffin lid is closed, the land is sold at a profit to the US Govt by the TNC, with an added 30% to 100% for "expenses" and "fees" of land acquisition. And of course, that is tax money going to a tax forgiven NGO, and like the late great Sen. Everett Dirksen once said, "A billion here and a billion there, and it adds up to some serious money", or words to that effect. TNC gets a huge chunk of the taxes energy companies pay to extract oil from offshore leases of US Govt ocean bottom. The Land Conservation Fund. The Interior Dept slush fund. The money that Willie Sutton was after. Paulson, GoldmanSachs, and the TNC tapped that years ago. Probably set it up for them to tap, if the truth were known.
So the USFS bought a little ranch in Hells Canyon from the Trust for Public Lands, another tax forgiven NGO, which the TPL had bought dirt cheap from this elderly rancher. And as soon as they bought it, it was sold to the USFS. In fact, the USFS buying deed was filed in the Wallowa county courthouse a couple of days before the selling deed was filed by the TPL. And for about twice the money they paid for it. Congress has set that process up well for the NGOs, and so besides being tax forgiven, they also get paid the big bucks by Uncle Sam for putting together deals, which Congress then has to OK and pass in the budget process. No Joe Sixpack land owner can get the kind of deal and attention the Congress routinely gives to the NGOs, who after all, an adjunct part of that body. Congress funds them directly and indirectly. And why not?? The whole process was set up during the forty or more year the Democrats had both Houses of our Congress before 1994. And it is so ingrained, so part and parcel to the "way things are done" that NGOs are Congressional agencies of environmental change, regulation, enforcement, and propaganda. All for free to the NGO. Taxpayers get the bill.
NGO is a lie. Non-governmental is just so not true. They are governmental. If they were not, and all monies from the US Govt to NGOs were to stop tomorrow, the majority of them would not last a year. No reason to exist.
So, Dewey, if you think that deer and antelope are not involved with NGOs, US Govt decisions, and state regulatory decisions from on high at the NGOs, you had better do some more investigating as to who and what an NGO is when it is about the "environment" and "biological diversity" or "land use planning and development."
Oil and gas don't cause the declines. I watch those antelope and deer using the oil roads in the winter and watch them graze around those rigs all the time.
I often wonder how many get smucked by trucks and such on roads, however. Way more deer are killed by vehicals in our county than harvested by hunters. That is a fact.
Except for the vehical collision theory, I can't say that I have seen anywhere where the deep population fell because of housing units, etc. It seems it forms a sancuary for them. No hunting, predators stay away, and they thrive till they become a problem.
I sure don't like to see housing developments anywhere outside of towns or cities, but it happens.
If anything, maybe the environmentists should focus on keeping the developers from building housing developemnts in the the country and leave the people who live there alone.
Traffic is now dense enough and fast enough that critters don't have a chance. Especially since we have all those trucks hauling doodads from China to and from warehouses.
An examination of deadly traffic patterns on highways, and travel patterns of critters, and you could draw, perhaps, a conclusion of how and why highways kill more critters in some places than they do in others, and viola', a Masters Thesis.....
I would say all the existing Federal law would dictate that no action on a highway could be exempt from an EIS, or some type of study of the impacts on charismatic and ESA candidate species or migratory species. It would probably be a reasonable action for a hunting group to undertake, as their avocation is surely impacted by available for harvest census work. If traffic is taking out half the population each year, and there is little or no recruitment, there is probably a corresponding number of tags, a paucity as it were, for hunters to draw. The freight rigs and car pool vans are taking the surplus and then some.