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When the wolf is at the door (continued)
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| MSU students Johnathan Felis and Shana Dunkley use CSI-like techniques to conduct Yellowstone research. |
"In some cases, we've followed elk since the beginning of the study," said Becker, a Bozeman native and self-described campus brat (his father, Mike, is a retired English professor and mother, Stephanie, a retired assistant director of the Office of International Programs). "In the Madison Canyon, we have one 17-year-old cow that was collared as a yearling in 1991; she's seen a lot of winter, a lot of changes, eluded a lot of wolves."
In addition to tracking elk fitted with radio collars, the students also track radio telemetry signals coming from wolves that have been fitted with collars by the National Park Service. Once the radio telemetry signal from a wolf's collar is within range and detected -- eight miles away or less -- the researchers travel as close as they can by snowmobile, then don snowshoes to follow the wolf's trail.
"We don't want to disturb the wolves," Gower said. Instead, she explains, they find the wolf's tracks, and then backtrack from there to find recent kills, which are then documented.
Another important shortcut tool in studying elk is old-school.
"We look for the magpies, ravens and eagles to tell us where to find the carcass," said Becker, adding that they then treat it like a crime scene, documenting the habitat, landscape and animal tracks and blood.
"Sometimes it's obvious how the elk or bison died," Becker said. "You can visualize the whole event. But we want to know if the animal was killed or if the wolves found it dead and scavenged it. We find the tracks to be sure it was wolves. Then we look for a chase scene, signs of a struggle, blood sprays and trails, and hemorrhaging beneath the skin indicating that the animal was attacked while still alive."
The researchers also take an incisor or canine tooth from elk. Teeth represent an important component to the study, well worth the daylong trudge.
"The tooth is like a tree stump," said Becker. "The incisor is the best tooth for aging because it has cementum annuli rings, like tree rings that indicate the animal's age."
In fact, one of the surprising finds of the study was connected to the teeth of elk that live in geothermal areas of the park. Over the years, Garrott's team discovered a large number of winterkill in the Madison-Firehole area, and collected lower jaws. That discovery led to the finding reported worldwide that fluoride in large amounts, such as found in the park's geothermal areas, changed the wear pattern of elk teeth. Fluoride in small amounts is beneficial to humans.
The researchers also collect bone marrow, the metatarsus bone, fur samples for a different research project, and take meticulous notes about the approximately 90 wolf kills they find each winter. Over the 17 years, Garrott's crew has followed collared cow elk every winter day, tracked and observed them to determine how big the herd is, how many cows, calves and bulls exist, documented their behavior and delineated the habitats they use -- that's a remarkable 9,000 researcher days on snowshoes.
Gower and Becker explain that the work is physically demanding. The researchers must avoid scalding thermal areas, climb over deadfall from the burned remains of the 1988 fires buried in snow, hike up and over treed ridges and even slosh across rivers -- wearing waders. The work is exhausting and students involved in the project are often formally trained in wilderness survival, safety and medicine.
"In one season I may have hiked (nearly 500 miles)," Gower said. "Dr. Garrott has a huge emphasis to conduct on-the-ground research."
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