|
When the wolf is at the door (continued)
| MSU's Bob Garrott has led a Yellowstone study considered to be one of the longest and most important in park history. |
Now, Garrott and his colleagues' years of research will be documented in a new book, Large Mammal Ecology in Central Yellowstone: A Synthesis of 16 Years of Integrated Field Studies, to be published this fall by Elsevier in its Academic Press Terrestrial Ecology Series. In the book, Garrott and 40 fellow researchers, most with MSU roots, detail scores of important interrelated studies about the Yellowstone ecosystem. Key findings in the MSU work have already led to international news and impacted wildlife decisions, including:
- Winter recreation and plowed Yellowstone roads have had little effect on migrating patterns of bison. "Winter recreation use is so regulated that it is highly predictable to the animals, and therefore generally benign," Garrott said. Bison use the plowed roads only when they coincide with what are likely their traditional migrating patterns, and they largely ignore vehicles in the park in winter and summer.
- The reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone has had impacts on other mammals, but the size of those impacts also varies with climate and topography. For example, a non-migrating elk herd that lives in the central area of park that receives deep snow and is therefore less mobile is now smaller as a result of the predators. Another herd that is located 40 miles down the Madison River near Ennis, in an area where snow blows clear, continues to grow as the elk that flee from wolves aren't hindered by deep snow.
- Fluoride -- naturally occurring in the park's famous geothermal waters -- has caused tooth problems called fluoride toxicosis that affects the life expectancy of elk living in the geothermal areas of the park.
"What (Garrott) has done that is remarkable is a long-term ecological study," Olliff said. "All his funding came from a competitive grant-funding process. His science speaks for itself."
Only the hardy should apply
 |
| The MSU study has focused on Yellowstone's Central Range for 17 years. Courtesy of Bob Garrott. |
As part of Garrott's team of backcountry technicians and graduate students, Claire Gower spent seven winters based in Yellowstone Park's Madison Junction ranger station. She is now back on campus working on her doctoral dissertation that contrasts elk behavioral patterns in the presence and absence of wolves, but the petite native of Britain recalls that in past winters she snowshoed five to 15 miles a day, seven days a week to conduct the fieldwork in the Firehole, Madison and Gibbon River drainages. In all, MSU researchers will cover just about the entire 76,000-acre study area during the 160-day field season that runs from mid-November to early May.
"Our days are never the same as the day before" said Gower of her work. "We never know what the day ahead of us will present, as the work is governed by the behavior and interactions of the animals."
When Garrott first initiated his study about the park's non-migratory elk herd with then graduate student P.J. White (now supervisory wildlife biologist for Yellowstone), little was known about many of the ecological processes occurring in the west-central portion of Yellowstone. The methods Garrott developed then are still used by his students today to study bison, elk, climate and other aspects of park ecology. The consistency of studies, combined with their long duration, have provided an unusually clear picture of the ecological processes influencing large mammals in the park.
Matt Becker, another MSU doctoral candidate who studied the wolf predation rates and prey selection, explains that a key tool in the project is following elk from the time they are fitted with radio collars until they die. Four percent to 8 percent of the elk population wear tracking collars.
> Spring 2008 Contents
|
Email this article
