Deer on the move

Guarded Sojourn

A 150-mile migratory journey of mule deer has made scientists realise that preserving migration routes is as essential as preserving wildlife, writes James Gorman

 As a small group of scientists and volunteers wait by the side of a gravel road in the Red Desert, a helicopter swoops down, carrying two blindfolded mule deer in slings. It hovers for a moment in a furious swirl of rotor-blown snow, detaching the deer slings. As it lifts and turns, the team runs into the stinging cloud. Team members carry the deer on canvas stretchers to a spot where they can be weighed and tested. From each animal, they draw blood, pull a whisker, check a GPS collar or put on a new one, take a rectal temperature and fecal sample, perform an ultrasound on the haunches, shoot a local anesthetic into the jaw and pull a tooth.

Ten minutes of probing and testing later, the deer are freed and dash off, with numb mouths and doses of antibiotics, perhaps wondering what in the world just happened. The scientists were taking snapshots of the deer’s health and downloading their movements from their digital collars – part of a broader effort to track and preserve their migration route.

Researchers only recently discovered that path, known as the Red Desert-to-Hoback migration, which is as long as any known land migration in the lower 48 states, a twice-yearly, 150-mile journey that has inspired numerous conservation groups to work together to protect the deer’s route from encroaching development.

Conservation drive

Some conservationists hope the unusual collaboration will serve as a useful precedent that could help protect other species and wild lands. “We think this has the potential to be a model for what state and federal agencies do across the West,” said Leslie Duncan, public lands manager for the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Seasonal migrations in search of food are essential to the survival of many animals. The famous herds of the Serengeti chase the rain. In the West, many elk, deer, antelope, moose and other big game move to lush mountain slopes in the spring and summer, and wait out the winter at lower, warmer elevations.

“Migration is the underlying mechanism that allows this landscape to support the deer populations,” said Hall Sawyer, a research biologist with Western EcoSystems Technology, a consulting firm, who discovered the mule deer route.

Because houses and roads, fences and gas wells, and busy routes for four-wheelers and snowmobiles can pose obstacles to animals as they travel, conservationists have long recognised that preserving migration routes is essential to preserving wildlife. About 500 deer travel the full 150 miles from their winter range here in the Red Desert to spring and summer grounds in the Hoback river basin near Jackson, Wyoming. Other herds, totalling 5,000 deer, follow most or part of the path.

The route crosses public and private lands, and scientists say it is extraordinary, given its length, that a relatively clear path still exists for the deer.

But conservationists have recognised that protecting it will require unusual co-operation among public and private groups and a new level of scientific understanding to guide changes in regulation.

The good news, said Steve Kilpatrick, head of the Wyoming branch of the Wildlife Federation, is that conservation groups are joining forces to help the mule deer in ways he had not seen. “I think it’s unique,” said Steve, whose group has hired a co-ordinator for the informal coalition.

Helicopter wranglers

The effort to track the Red Desert-to-Hoback migration of mule deer began in 2011. Hall was working on a contract from the Bureau of Land Management to track wildlife, and he put GPS collars on 40 mule deer in the Red Desert, one of the most open, stark landscapes in a state full of them.
No one really knew what the Red Desert deer did in the spring and summer, although some had been seen there year-round. Most mule deer migrate, but some stay put for reasons that are not well understood. And “unless you collar a herd, it is really difficult to have a sense of whether they migrate or not,” said Matthew Kauffman, a wildlife biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey and a professor at the University of Wyoming who leads the Red Desert and other migration studies.

Capturing and collaring the animals is a bit like a mule-deer rodeo. New Zealanders developed a technique for shooting nets over deer from a helicopter, in which the pilot flies the way a cowboy rides a cutting horse. The pilot isolates a deer, flying close enough for a gunner to fire a net that traps the deer. The pilot then lowers the craft so the “mugger,” who may be the gunner or another crew member, can jump to the ground.

The mugger runs to the deer, wrestles it into a position where he can blindfold it and wrap it in a sling. The helicopter then swings back so the mugger can hitch the sling to the underside of the copter before climbing aboard.

The process can be rough on the deer, and accidents are inevitable. Kevin Monteith, a wildlife biologist at the University of Wyoming who works with Hall says 1 to 3 per cent of the deer die or are injured when trapped by nets, and have to be put down. But the researchers say capturing the deer this way allows them to study populations in remote areas. And without those studies, the migration route would have remained unknown. “Data creates opportunities to do things that didn’t exist before,” said Steve Sharkey, director of the Knobloch Family Foundation, which backs the research.

The scientists do not lobby for policy changes or conservation action. But they understand their importance. So when they released a brochure on the Red Desert-to-Hoback route, they listed the top 10 challenges to the migration route – something conservationists could work with.

In July, Wyoming conservation groups gathered to discuss the Red Desert route – organisations like the Conservation Fund, which purchases land; the Wilderness Society and the Wyoming Outdoor Council, which focus on regulatory issues; and the Wyoming Wildlife Federation and Muley Fanatic Foundation, which have a strong base among hunters.

The coalition focused on the top challenge for protecting the migration route – a bottleneck near Fremont Lake. The deer cross Pine Creek there at a location where one side is federal Bureau of Land Management land and the other is private. Houses and marinas are nearby, as is Forest Service land.

The route there is about a quarter-mile wide, but sometimes narrows to a single-file path. And the land was for sale. If bought by developers, the migration route would most likely be blocked. Buying it made perfect sense to the coalition. “This is one of the last, best migrations,” said Luke Lynch, state director of the Conservation Fund, which is in the process of buying the 364 acres for about $2 million. The Knobloch Foundation is providing half of that; the rest will have to be raised.

A longer-term, more difficult goal of the coalition is to change the management of public land to place greater value on migration routes. The Bureau of Land Management is revising its official plan for land use in an area that includes the Red Desert. If the bureau designates the whole migration route for protection, that could serve as a precedent for other decisions by the bureau and other government agencies.
That, Steve says, is “the big enchilada.”
NYT