Study finds Yellowstone moose rely on unprotected private land | Daily News Byte

The bucking bulls and their harems of cows are a major part of the appeal of the iconic western park, which has been protected for the past 150 years. However, down the Yellowstone Plateau dozens of miles to the east, the landscape is privately owned, increasingly valuable, and rapidly changing. And the same moose spend a large part of their lives there.

“These herds are important not only to people who live in Cody and own property here, but they’re what I would consider a worldwide resource because of their use in Yellowstone,” said Tony Mong, a wildlife biologist with the Game and Fish Department. in Wyoming that manages the Cody and Clark elk herds in Fork.

Private landowners, he said, are “a piece of the puzzle” that will ensure Yellowstone’s elk thrive for generations to come.

While it’s no secret that elk are high country creatures that migrate to the ranches, foothills, and river valleys where people typically live, their dependence on private land has only recently been scientifically quantified. The data, prepared by former UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow Laura Gigliotti, reveals the vulnerability: More than 36% of all mapped elk habitat in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem lacks even basic zoning. It is land ripe for real estate development in an era of great interest in owning a piece of the West. “We only focus on moose at GIE, but it’s something that happens all over the world,” Gigliotti said. “Conservation thinking that embraces these different [land ownerships] is relevant beyond just this one particular system.”

Gigliotti’s research included all 26 elk herds that spread from the interior of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem toward its edges when winter arrives. This involved mapping the movements of 1,088 GPS-collared elk into seasonal ranges and comparing those movements to databases showing land ownership, protected areas and homestead numbers. The study, recently published in the journal Biological Conservation, also quantifies other human influences on the seasonal ranges of each individual elk herd, such as fencing density, energy infrastructure and cattle.

Gigliotti’s high-level analysis is overdue, said UC-Berkeley wildlife policy professor Arthur Middleton, who advised the research and has spent a decade studying the migratory elk of the Yellowstone ecosystem. He sees Gigliotti’s work as a fundamental, “back-to-basics” type of research that provides context and direction for more targeted studies, such as how development affects elk. (Disclosure: Middleton is married to VioFile board member Anna Sale.)

“In a sense, it’s a paper we should have done 10 years ago that would have informed where we go next,” Middleton said. “It took me a while to realize that we skipped the meat and potatoes.”

That research reveals which elk herds are most vulnerable to development, where and at what time of year.

In the Bighorn Basin, for example, only 25% of the winter range of the Clark Fork herd and 18% of the winter range of the Cody herd fall on lands where some type of zoning exists. For now, most of that habitat is on the large ranches that dot the Absarokas foothills. It is still open country; there is only one building per square mile on the winter range of the Clark Fork herd and 1.9 buildings per square mile where the Cody herd resides. But that could change as development pressure increases.

Other elk herds in Wyoming are already under more human pressure.

Where wailing flocks feed on the southern Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the Fall Creek herd navigates a winter landscape where there are 20 buildings per square mile. Just north of where the Jackson herd winters, building density exceeds 12.5 per square mile.

Both of those herds, in particular, are doing well – and the elk in the Jackson Hole subdivision and ranches are doing especially well.

Moose as a species thrive and are often overpopulated. That’s especially true in central Wyoming, where large carnivores like wolves and grizzly bears are lacking, but many herds in the Yellowstone area are also larger than wildlife managers’ goals.

“Being on private land is not a problem in and of itself,” Middleton said. “In fact, elk can thrive, like many other wildlife, on private lands.”

While there is no inherent conflict with elk that depend on private lands, he said, their vulnerability stems from development that can occur on that land.

A forthcoming paper by Gigliotti that is under review quantifies how much development moose tend to tolerate. It’s a complementary study that also looks broadly at large ungulates across the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, examining 21 herds.

“What we could see is that, at all scales, when you start developing between 1% and 2% of the habitat area, you start to avoid it,” Middleton said. “There is a tendency for elk not to use areas with more than that level of development where they spend the winter.”

If the winter range included even those sparsely developed areas, elk tended not to use that part of their range as much, he said.

As long as the edges of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem continue to divide, that means elk in the region will have less room to roam. For big game species, habitat alteration and loss is often a proven formula for population decline.

While the region’s hottest markets, like Jackson Hole and Bozeman, Montana, are rapidly transforming, even slower-growing places like Park County are desirable. There was enough interest in the Absaroka Front cattle ranch life that even Kanye West infamously tried it out.

“There are very few properties in Park County right now that are immune to some type of development,” Park County Commissioner Lee Livingston told VioFile in an email.

The commission is in the process of revising the land use plan that makes zoning recommendations for the county. It’s the type of document that could, in theory, mandate protections for valued environmental assets like the Cody and Clark Fork elk herds.

The current plan, nearly a quarter-century old, does not mention moose, but in preparation for the review, Livingston and other commissioners held a series of meetings with Mongo and other Game and Fish employees to learn about wildlife, including moose, on private lands.

“They’ve been very responsive to the data we have,” Mong said, “and they’re trying to incorporate that data into the planning process.”

The outcome could be some sort of wildlife-specific overlap in the land use plan.

Still, the Park District’s updated plan is unlikely to include regulations requiring the protection of private winter habitat for the Cody and Clark Fork herds. Even Livingston, who hunts, isn’t sure landowners should be forced to maintain wildlife habitat. Incentive-based programs are a better way forward, he said.

“I would like as much land as possible to remain open and accessible to wild animals,” Livingston wrote, “but I do not think that the landowner should be compelled to bear the whole cost of it.”

That attitude comes as no surprise to professional wildlife advocates who have tried to move the needle on county zoning regulations in places like Park County. Early in his time with the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Scott Christensen, now executive director, was the organization’s private manager. More than a decade ago, he tried and failed to tilt planning and zoning regulations toward preservation in conservative areas like Sublette and Park County.

“I found that the counties at that point were basically not politically ready to make major improvements to their land use plans,” Christensen said.

“Everybody wants to see elk continue to be part of the landscape — and pronghorn and mule deer and everything else,” he said, adding that “the hard part is when you get into a more detailed discussion of what it takes to do that. It will have limitations in development. Landowner X will need to see his land value go from $2 million to $500,000 because he won’t be able to put as many houses on it.”

On the other hand, Christensen said, there is a “tremendous amount of funding” currently available for wildlife conservation on private land, especially in Wyoming.

The Absaroka Front has been identified as a priority area where landowners are eligible for an initial infusion of $16 million in USDA funding.

The largest portion of USDA funding, $10 million, is for permanent conservation services within migration corridors. Although scientifically documented, moose migrations in the region are not flagged through the Wyoming state process—moose as a species, in fact, are not eligible under state policy. Because the Abrasoka Front has been identified as a priority area, elk habitat there qualifies for conservation easement funding, Middleton said.

Other funds can be used for habitat improvement projects and conservation leases that pay landowners to keep their land undeveloped for 10 to 15 years.

Momentum is building for non-regulatory means to protect moose in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem and other migratory wildlife on private lands. This fall, the state of Wyoming and the USDA entered into a memorandum of understanding creating a partnership that seeks to conserve, restore, manage and manage public and private lands to support migration.

“Ranchers and farmers truly deserve to be recognized and rewarded for their role in wildlife management,” said Gov. Mark Gordon as he formalized the MOU. “Wildlife in Wyoming depends on those private lands and it’s important to ensure that family ranches and private landowners have a great way to work together to make sure we continue to have good wildlife populations.”

Institutional support is also coming online to support private land conservation in the Bighorn Basin. There is currently no land fund dedicated to the region, but that is changing. The Jackson Hole Land Trust will soon launch a chapter there, similar to its programs in the Green and Wind River valleys, said CEO Max Ludington.

Middleton, for his part, is making a concerted effort to make the science he advises more actionable for wildlife managers and county planners. He positioned himself to serve as a unique resource by stepping “out of his comfort zone” and taking on the role of senior wildlife conservation advisor at the USDA earlier this year.

“For me, it’s not necessarily about what the next research study is,” Middleton said. “It’s about how we connect this with government, programs and putting boots on the ground to do something about it.”