Tracks in snow lead to insights into wildlife
Group learns that Hoback Rim is important habitat for predators, prey.
By Cory Hatch, Jackson Hole, Wyo.
January 27, 2010
East of the highway on the north side of the Hoback Rim, a putrid stench rises from beneath a layer of fresh snow.
A few weeks ago, a yearling cow died here, and while its rotting carcass might be offensive to the olfactory sense, it provides a wealth of visual clues for biologist Steve Gehman as he leads our small expedition on a tour of the backwoods of Bondurant.
Tracks of various shapes and sizes form a narrative in the snow that tells the history of the scavengers that visited here since last night. Delicate, parallel indentations on a snowbank mark the spot where a bird wing, perhaps from a raven, beat against the fresh powder. Coyote tracks, some walking, some bounding, squiggle around the kill.
Our group, composed of naturalists, conservationists and interested citizens, splits into two, and Gehman leads my half back toward the road through a mixed conifer stand. The big, deep footprints of a moose parallel a snowmobile track. What seems like two coyote tracks at first splits into four, and the four-print hops of snowshoe hares emerge from the understories of pine, fir and spruce trees.
The reason we’re here is this is one of the region’s most important wildlife corridors. The Hoback Rim links the Gros Ventre Mountains and the Wyoming Range and thus serves as transitional habitat for thousands of mule deer as they travel from Sublette County to Jackson Hole and elsewhere. Hundreds of elk and pronghorn and dozens of moose also use the forest, some as cover, as they wander back and forth in their respective ranges.
Perhaps just as important, this habitat, along with the prey species that use it, brings in large predators, such as bears, wolves and mountain lions, as well forest obligates such as boreal owls, great gray owls, goshawks and pine martins.
But it’s the bunny tracks that have us most excited. Snowshoe hares are the favorite prey of Canada lynx, and this area we’re exploring is known to be one of the few places in Wyoming where the elusive cat thrives.
David Giallard, a staff member of Defenders of Wildlife, explains that the Canada lynx is listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act, and its existence here could serve as an umbrella to protect the other species that rely on this habitat. The tour is part of a larger effort to raise awareness of other wildlife corridors in Greater Yellowstone, including Togwotee Pass and Mount Jefferson on the boarder of Idaho and Montana.
“In some cases, it may mean just kind of keeping them the way they are already,” Giallard said. “In other cases, they may have problems that need to be fixed to improve them for wildlife.
“This area of Bondurant seems in pretty good shape because of the lack of human development in the area, but there are problems on the horizon,” he continued.
Those problems include impending energy development just to the west in Noble Basin. Housing developments, logging and increased traffic on 189/191 also pose threats.
“We’re trying to get people out into these areas so they can enjoy them and learn more about them and ultimately have a connection so they can help maintain them for wildlife,” Giallard said.
Tom Segerstrom, an area homeowner and wildlife biologist, has watched wildlife movements on the Hoback Rim for years.
“Northeast to southwest there’s almost an intersection of prey species going perpendicular [to the Hoback Rim] and large carnivores and forest obligates going along the rim,” he said. “It provides a topographical and vegetative bridge between the foothills of the Gros Ventre mountains and the Wyoming Range, which, in my opinion, is important for maintaining the biodiversity of the Wyoming Range as part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.”
As we continue into the woods, we transition from an area where the U.S. Forest Service thinned trees as a fire break to an area with lots of different ages and types of trees. We don’t find any lynx tracks, but snowshoe hare, pine martin, red squirrel and weasel tracks abound.
“That area, I would say, is right up there in terms of its productivity,” says Gehman, who is the co-founder and program director for a research group called Wild Things Unlimited. “There’s a strip of nice habitat there that’s attractive to animals. That ridge that cuts through there provides that continuity of habitat, and there’s not a whole lot of human activity.”
