New GPS for bison
The bison of south-central Utah’s Henry Mountains will be tracked using GPS for the first time this winter as a team of USU wildlife biologists and researchers begin an extensive study of herd population. The study will focus on the conflict between livestock grazing and intruding wildlife.
Transplanted from Yellowstone in 1941, the Henry Mountain herd is one of the largest free-roaming bison herds in the United States and has traversed the dry, isolated range for dozens of years along with deer and other animals. According to Ted Winder of the Capitol Reef Visitor and Information Office, the climate and elevation of the range, with its highest peaks reaching 11,000 feet, provide a suitable environment for the animals.
The bison do not always stay at these higher elevations, however, creating problems with cattle herds that also roam across the range.
“Conflicts arise when some bison remain in the lower elevations and consume cattle winter forage on allotments leased from the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) by ranchers for their cows. As such, ranchers sometimes pay for forage they don’t get, which can really have significant impacts on some ranching operations, “David Koons, assistant professor said.
Under the direction of USU Assistant Professor Frank Howe, who coordinates the study of the bison and acts as a liaison to Utah’s Department of Wildlife Resources, a diverse team of researchers from USU plans on studying the animals this winter by marking a large sample of the herd with GPS enabled collars and VHF transmitters that will be used to study their demography and foraging patterns.
Wade Taskett, a biologist with the Utah Department of Wildlife Resources who studies in the Henry Mountain Range, said, “It is a fragile environment down there with competing interests from cattle and buffalo. One of the reasons for this study is to understand more about what the buffalo are eating and what influence, not only buffalo, but cows, are having on the winter range.”
Ph.D. student Pat Terletzky is examining ways to determine population abundance using technological advances in remote imagery that Koons said he believes will be more inexpensive than manned helicopter flights and may lead to the use of satellite imagery. The use of the GPS will help the biologists to estimate the amount of animals missed during aerial surveys and then correct that count.
Dustin Ranglack, also a Ph.D. student, and adviser Johan du Toit, department head of Wildland Resources, will study the foraging behavior, herd size, social interaction, movement, and reproductive success of the marked bison, Koons said.
“They will also develop vegetation enclosure experiments to study the impact of bison on plant forage species,” he said.
He said M.S. student Ian Ware and adviser Peter Adler will also participate in comparing plant communities.
“This will also help us learn more about the differential impacts of bison and cattle on the community of range plant species, and the degree to which they might compete for forage,” he said.
Through the study of the Henry herd, researchers hope to provide a new population model that will help the UDWR accurately regulate the target amount of hunting tags they give out each year, and they hope to provide a way to help ranchers balance the needs of their livestock with the needs of the bison. Anis Aoude, big game coordinator of Utah, said, “Basically we want to find what overlaps between cattle and bison. We want to have as many bison as we can have, but if they compete with livestock, that limits how many we can have.”
Funded by grant money from the UDWR, the BLM, Sportsmen for Fish & Wildlife, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the study is expected to go on for a minimum of five years and Howe, the studys’ head coordinator, said he hopes it will continue to go on for more.
“This science should help managers create a sustainable situation that suits both rancher’s and sportsmen’s needs,” Koons said. “The general framework is not applicable to only bison, but to many other large mammals in the American west.”
–ariwrees@gmail.com