[chapter-communicator] FW: Glacier and Waterton Park
- From: "BIANCHI, John" <JBIANCHI@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: #Audubon Board of Directors <IMCEAEX-_O=AUDUBON_OU=NATIONAL_CN=RECIPIENTS_CN=BoardOfDirectors@xxxxxxxxxxx>,#Audubon Staff <audstaff@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 14:37:36 -0400
-----Original Message-----
From: Donalobrien@xxxxxxx [mailto:Donalobrien@xxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2002 2:16 PM
Subject: Glacier and Waterton Park
To the Audubon Family,
This article is well worth reading.
Donal C. O'Brien, Jr.
_____________________________________________________________________
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July 16, 2002
Where the Bears and the Wolverines Prey: The Wildest Valley
By JIM ROBBINS
<http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/dropcap/p.gif> OLEBRIDGE, Mont. — The
paved road, such as it is, peters out here at the last outpost of commercial
civilization, a log cabin saloon and barely stocked general store. From here
a heavily washboarded gravel road slices through thick pine and spruce
forest along the North Fork of the Flathead River, a forgotten corner near
Glacier National Park and the Canadian border.
Grizzlies, wolves, wolverines, pine martens, cougars, lynx and 11 other
species of predator roam and prey to their hearts' content here. Biologists
say it is America's wildest valley.
While the density of predators is part of what makes this valley wild, it is
also the fact that carnivores behave the way they would naturally, across a
range of different habitats and elevations, rather than having to bend their
ways to accommodate and avoid civilization.
"Other places where there are predators get into micromanagement and try to
modify behavior," said John L. Weaver, a wildlife researcher with the
Wildlife Conservation Society, who recently prepared a report on population
densities of five of the predators found here. "But that's a diminishment of
wild behavior. Here the animals have a chance to be truly wild."
The snow-tipped mountains and purling, glacier-fed streams and river seem
more like Alaska than anything in the Lower 48. The realization that people
are not alone at the top of the food chain lends this region a distinct
feel, and demands caution for everyday events like a hike in the woods. At
night every snapping twig demands attention, while ululating wolf howls, the
yip of coyotes and the scream of cougars punctuate the silence. The woods
are also thick with predators' meals, moose, deer, elk and rodents.
Bears are so abundant here that there are 65 to 80 of them per 385 square
miles, an extremely dense number. That is largely because a grizzly bear can
walk across the valley, left alone by humans — a situation almost unheard of
in any valleys in the United States outside national parks and Alaska. Four
packs of wolves, numbering about two dozen in total, roam the Flathead on
each side of the border.
Elsewhere in the West, people have gobbled up so much critical habitat,
especially in the fertile valley bottoms, that many predators have either
disappeared or are forced to carve out a living on the steep, more marginal
slopes of the mountains.
Most other wild reserves in the Lower 48, meanwhile, have become islands
surrounded by humans, roads and other trappings, isolating wildlife from
others of their kind. Not here. "The difference is that the Flathead is
still connected to the Canadian mother ship of wildlife," said Dr. Diane
Boyd, who studied the return of wolves to the North Fork from Canada for 18
years for the University of Montana. Now, she manages a private wildlife
refuge near Missoula. She described the link to the larger source of wolves
in Canada as critical.
Such links have emerged as a premier issue in conservation biology. Island
populations have a limited genetic repertoire and may, in the future, face
problems adapting to changing environmental conditions without a flow of
genes from others of their kind.
The problem of "genetic impoverishment" in these islands may be exacerbated
by climatic warming, scientists say. "A species may have to move up slope or
north in order to adapt in a warmer climate," said Dr. Reed Noss, a
conservation biologist and the chief scientist for the Wildlands Project in
Corvallis, Ore., who has been working on a large study of 10 species of
carnivores in the West, including the North Fork.
If the gene that aids that adaptation is not present, the population could
collapse. "The smaller the genetic population, the greater the chance they
won't succeed," Dr. Noss said.
In fact, many of the wolves that have returned to the West and helped
recover the Western population have come from Canada, through the abundant
wildlands of the North Fork, as the population up north rebounded after
hunting was ended in the 1970's. The genes the wolves bring with them are
crucial to maintaining diversity, Dr. Boyd said.
Grizzly bears, an endangered species in the United States, also thrive in
this valley. "For a noncoastal area, it's as good as it gets," said Bruce
McClellan, a biologist with the British Columbia Forest Service in
Revelstoke, who has studied bears here since 1978.
Huckleberries, he says, are the biggest reason. They grow in profusion in
burned and logged areas. In the fall, bears wallow in the berry patches for
days, stripping and gobbling the plump berries. Grizzlies also eat carrion
and buffalo berries, and in the spring find succulent vegetation in a broad
flood plain.
A wider variety of predator behaviors is seen on the sprawling landscape
here than among the same species elsewhere because of the vast amounts of
wildness. Long distance migration patterns are still intact. Moose leave the
North Fork and traveling more than 50 miles north into Canada.
Wolves are also peripatetic. In 1989, a lone wolf left the Polebridge area
and, with a male from Banff National Park, established a new pack 100 miles
north.
Grizzly bears sometimes do not hibernate in the winter here, perhaps because
of abundant food sources killed by other predators and available all winter,
but no one is sure.
Researchers have also witnessed clashes between predators — something known
as trespass issues. "It goes on every day," Dr. Boyd said. "They don't know
the territorial boundaries of other species. Wolves kill cougars, cougars
kill coyotes, wolves kill grizzly cubs, and wolves kill black bears. Wolves
kill wolves. It's just part of life."
The North Fork also gives scientists a rare chance to study how predators
regulate an ecosystem. When predators disappear, for example, deer and other
browsers can grow wildly in number and damage plant populations, wipe out
ground nesting birds and cause erosion from overgrazing. But here things are
still intact.
The simple formula for assuring the wildness of this valley is wild land.
Conservation biologists know that the more human beings in an area, the
fewer the carnivores. Some carnivores, for example, will not cross major
highways. As people move into a valley, the food source that was once
available becomes difficult to get to, and a piece of the survival puzzle is
taken away. Take away too many pieces and the carnivores disappear.
Wolves and grizzly bears that disperse out of Yellowstone National Park, for
example, have an extremely high mortality rate — there are simply too many
sheep, llamas, filled dog-food bowls on porches and other temptations
surrounding the park, and when predators get into trouble, they get killed.
Biologists and conservationists want to maintain this wild chunk of America,
and keep it from becoming an island ecosystem, with help from the Canadians.
Sometime this summer, conservationists hope the federal and provincial
Canadian governments will move to designate a 100,000-acre chunk of the
Flathead Valley just north of the United States and adjacent to it, a part
of Waterton Park, and set it aside to keep the region from becoming another
fragmented, truncated island ecosystem.
"Completing Waterton is a priority," said Bob Peart, executive director of
the provincial chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. "It's
part of the plan to keep a link between Waterton and Banff-Jasper."
The Glacier/Waterton Park region, in fact, is part of an ambitious proposal
by environmentalists to provide a link between a long chain of islands of
protected wilderness along the Rockies, from Yellowstone National Park in
northern Wyoming to the Yukon, in northern Canada, to head off the
continuing isolation of wildlife species.
Though the proposed Waterton park expansion is relatively small, it is
important for a couple of reasons. It is adjacent to the already protected
Glacier and Waterton parks. It has a fairly steep elevation change, which
means it has a variety of habitat niches and so a greater variety of foods.
Diversity helps assure survival; if a crop of huckleberries fails one year,
buffalo-berries may take up the slack.
That is not to say this region is pristine. Huge clear-cuts interrupt the
vast blanket of trees on both sides of the border. But there are just 50 to
80 year-round residents on the American side and no year-round residents in
Canada. Supporters fear that without the expansion, developers may try to
exploit coal, oil and gas deposits there.
While wildness in this valley is what keeps the carnivores alive, it also
makes the study of carnivores difficult. The dirt road that crosses the
border used to have a customs station. When a bridge washed out a few years
ago, Canadian officials decided not to replace it and the crossing was
closed. Now Dr. McClellan has to drive all the way to the other side of the
park, "and it takes another day."
"It's a problem," he said. "We used to be able to track bears in an
airplane," he said, but since the Sept. 11 attacks, "we can't even fly
over."
The logistical challenges are a small price to pay for carnivore security,
most experts agree. Abundant carnivore populations, Mr. Weaver said, show
that all is right in their natural world.
"They epitomize wilderness," he said. "If you have enough space and security
for carnivores, you provide security and space for a lot of other species.
Carnivores are canaries in the coal mine in that sense."
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