Over 45 Madison and Gallatin County residents attended the "Elk, Wolves…Cattle?" tour held at Wall Creek Wildlife Management Area on August 3rd. Wildlife Area Manager Fred King opened the day by describing the uncertainty that surrounded the grazing program at Wall Creek in its early years. Now, wolf reintroduction has brought that uncertainty back: "We don’t know yet with [wolves]… and that’s the way we started with the grazing program in the early 80’s. Now it’s 20 years later and here we are… still grazing cows on the game range."
When Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) purchased the game range in 1960, domestic livestock were removed. According to Wildlife Biologist Kurt Alt, "... it was pretty characteristic of wildlife biologists in Western states at the time. You’d go look at a grazing allotment on public land and you knew something wasn’t right…Your first reaction was there’s just too many cows out there. You’ve got to cut the cows."
Wall Creek was rested from livestock from 1960 to 1982, when concerns that elk were avoiding the decadent grass on the game range and practical experience from the Mt. Haggin Wildlife Management Area prompted a change in thinking: "What we started seeing was that it wasn’t the number of cows and it wasn’t utilization rates… It’s how the cows are managed on the landscape," said Alt.
The Wall Creek grazing system is based on plant physiology, specifically the physiology of Idaho Fescue: "Idaho Fescue is important to us because it’s a long-lived bunchgrass. In the plant ecology profession, species like Idaho Fescue and Rough Fescue, which they have up North, are maybe the equivalent of our old-growth forests in terms of the range landscape," said Alt
"The basis of the system…is plant physiology. It’s not producing beef, it’s not producing elk," continued Alt. "Our objective is to maintain or enhance the vegetative condition of the game range." Tour participants enjoyed the opportunity to view several of the 100 photo monitoring sites used to track changes on Wall Creek, along with other measures that describe the impact of both livestock and elk.
Fred King highlighted the cooperation among agencies and ranchers that has made Wall Creek a success, including Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, and the Wall Creek Stock Association. Asked to elaborate on the relationship between private land and the National Forest, Madison District Ranger Mark Petroni explained: "The Forest Service has always tied ownership of a piece of land to the [grazing] permit. The base property has to be able to support the cattle for at least half of the time that they’re off the forest. The importance of that is you have to have a ranch."
"...This is also an ecological tie," continued Mark. "The elk that summer in the mountains and share the summer range with the cattle, also come down to the Valley in the winter. By maintaining the balance with ranchlands, we’re maintaining a borderless ecological setting for those elk and other wildlife species, where they can also find open space on private land when they come down in winter, which they need to survive. The grazing program is essentially a conservation reserve for that base [ranch] property."
"We’ve mapped the base property and the subdivision," said Mark. "Essentially, the base property is holding back some of the subdivision…Economically, that might not make a lot of sense for ranchers since a lot their equity is in the land. But, that way of life and that culture is helping hold the area in open space and helping hold back some of the subdivision."
The afternoon discussion focused on wolves. Montana State University wolf study leader Bob Garrott described ongoing research in the Madison/Firehole within Yellowstone, private lands in the Upper Madison, and public lands in the Gallatin Canyon. "The primary idea is to answer 2 questions," said Bob."These are: 1. What are the wolves going to do to the number of elk and other ungulates in these systems? 2. Are they going to change ungulate behavior? How elk aggregate? Where elk winter? How elk move or don’t move?"
"Wolves are probably here to stay," said Bob. "So, the real question is how do we learn what it’s like to live with wolves? How do we understand how to manage wolves and how do we have to change whatever management scenarios we have on-the-ground now to accommodate at least some wolves in places like this?"
"All of the old stories we have about wolves are at the time when they had decimated the natural prey [due to market hunting]… just as people were trying to establish good ranching programs. They didn’t have the ungulate prey base," said Bob.
Bob cited the high reproductive rate of wolves as a reason to be concerned if wolves remain listed under the Endangered Species Act and the State continues without management: "The worst case scenario is to keep the debate [about wolves] so rancorous that nobody can agree on how to manage wolves and they stay [a] listed [species]," said Bob. "It will hurt livestock owners, it will hurt the public agencies, and ultimately, it will hurt wolf conservation."
FWP Wildlife Biologist Ken Hamlin described ongoing data collection throughout the Montana on elk and other ungulate populations: "People tend to forget about it, but near Glacier Park and the North Fork of the Flathead, we’ve had wolves for the past 15 years or more…There have been no major changes in hunting over those 15 years. That doesn’t mean there are not going to be impacts, but I’d like to allay the panic that some people have."
Ken described numerous areas throughout the state where FWP tracks wildlife numbers, both in areas with and without wolves, the latter which can serve as a control."You’ve heard about low calf crops this spring, which some segments of the public relate entirely to wolves, as cause and effect…Our long-term data sets show that calf crops have been that low before. Some of our recent mid-July flights show the elk crop is going to be fairly low again. In some of our study areas, the wolf distribution during calving time does not overlap with elk distribution during calving time, so something else is causing this drop in calf survival. There are probably a lot of factors, including the long-term drought."
Ken described the need for all of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho to write credible management plans prior to delisting: "I think there will not be any problem with numbers of wolves and distribution to qualify biologically for delisting. The problems will be more political."
"One reason we’re here today is because the grazing that goes on here at Wall Creek is a good example of what can happen when people work together," said Madison Valley Ranchlands Group President John Crumley. The tour was the last of the 5-part "Cows Conservation and Community Series," sponsored by the Collaborative Land Stewardship Program, a joint effort of the Madison Valley Ranchlands Group and Artemis Common Ground. More information on the Upper Madison wolf-ungulate study can be found at www.montana.edu/ecology/staff/garrott/wolf%20ungulate/index.htm.