There are probably few if any wolves in colorado(although we hope Cristina Eisenberg will prove that statement wrong).............Therefore, wolves and cougars are likely not doing the bulk of the damage to the declining Mule Deer and Pronghorn herds......."So Don Pardo, tell us who is behind population crash door number 1",,,,,,,,,,Who is to blame this time"? ............Coyotes and bears of course--so say some ranchers and hunters..............It is always some other creatures fault for ungulate decline................."Door # 2 " reveals the real reason for Mulies and Prongs shrinking precipitously...............It is us humans manipulating the land for extractives and other uses that changes the navigatable habitat for the Prongs and Mulies..........And of course severe weather and other natural environmental stresses kick in producing a toxic brew that makes it easier for coyotes and bears to increase their calf take ...........Heres a novel idea: Instead of waiting for the disease to kick in(habitat unraveling and weather/environmental factors) and then having to treat the factors that the disease encourages beyond normal levels(coyotes, bears taking calves))..........Perhaps we should practice preventive medicine and keep the disease from happening in the first place(habitat degradation), thus allowing the mulies and prongs to withstand natures millenia dance of predator and prey(mulies, prongs, wolves, cougars, bears, coyotes, lynx, bobcats , elk, white and blacktails, moose) all dancing the life and death dance the creator intended without extinction occurring--as it did for millenia before we populated out of control and went nuts punching holes, putting up barbwire fences and diverting streams "every which way but loose" to the point of killing off the Prongs and Mulies(bison and nearly the wolves and Cougars)

What Happened to the Mulies and Pronghorns?

Theories abound concerning why Colorado and Wyoming deer and antelope populations have plummeted.

By Shauna Stephenson

	A pronghorn at Arapaho National Wildlife Refuge in northern Colorado. Photo by B&M (Bill and Mavis) Photography.

A suite of habitat stressors appears to have caused a massive decline in mule deer and pronghorn herds around the border of Wyoming and Colorado, according to a recent National Wildlife Federation (NWF) report.
The herds, which tend to migrate back and forth over state lines, have encountered a number of pressures over the past 30 years, including fragmentation of habitat, disease, energy development, drought, and harsh winters.

"The tricky thing about this is we can't absolutely tie this to one or two specific occurrences," said Steve Torbit, recently retired NWF regional executive director. "One thing we do know is that we are asking more and more of the country between Interstate 80 and U.S. 40 (the region included in the report)."
The NWF has scheduled public meetings this week to discuss the issue in two northwestern Colorado towns, Steamboat Springs on Aug. 11 and Craig on Aug. 12.

The report, "Population Status and Trends of Big Game along the Colorado/Wyoming State Line," was issued as a call to sportsmen to wake up and understand what is happening to wildlife in the area.
"If they don't speak up, they're going to experience declining opportunity," Torbit said. The report was put together by John Ellenberger and Gene Byrne of Wildlife Management Consultants and Associates, LLC, both of whom are former veteran biologists at the Colorado Division of Wildlife. The two analyzed wildlife agency statistics from the past 30 years, taking into account state differences in data collection, changes to unit boundaries, and hunter license types.

"We are concerned that at some point, the resiliency of these herds to recover will be lost, creating a situation where we can only expect further declines," Ellenberger said in a NWF press release.
One particularly bleak area is the northwest corner of Colorado. Deer populations have plummeted over the past 30 years and hunter harvest has followed suit. In 2008, the population objective (the population wildlife officials think is appropriate for the area) was set at 13,500.

However, the population estimate of animals actually on the ground was only 1,448. Over the past 30 years, deer density in that area has decreased by 66 percent, the report shows. Hunter harvest also has declined significantly, mirroring the drop-off in populations. In the late 1980s, more than 800 deer were harvested in the area. Twenty years later, only 48 were harvested.

Pronghorn aren't faring much better. In 2008, populations were only half of their objectives.
"It tells you it's something bigger than just restricting those licenses," Torbit said during a public meeting in Walden, Colo. "That's a crash, and that's scary." He added, "If we want deer and antelope to be huntable in the future, we've got to do something different." Just south of Rock Springs, Wyo., mule deer have declined about 38 percent since 1986. Hunter harvest has fallen from a high of 1,200 in 1987 to less than 400 in 2008.

Possibly more problematic are the rates of recruitment, or how many young animals survive to adulthood each year. For pronghorn, those rates typically need to be around 80 young per 100 female pronghorn to maintain robust populations. However, 2008 recruitment rates barely reached the 50-per-100 level in any surveyed area, dropping as low as 38-per-100 in some areas.

One popular contention is that severe drought and bad winters in the area are mostly to blame. True, officials say, a significant portion of declines can be attributable to weather patterns, and to the cyclical rise and fall of herd populations over the years. But these herds aren't seeing the rebounds in population that formerly followed natural declines. "What it tells us is that habitat is being challenged and not responding," Torbit says. "It can't respond at this point like it used to, to regrow a herd."

Intense energy development also has been identified by many as a cause of the gradual declines. A number of oil and gas wells have already gone in and thousands more are planned.
Plans also are developing for multiple wind farms, such as the 1,000-turbine Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind Energy Project.  Energy industry advocates counter that they have a good environmental record in the West. Bruce Hinchey, president of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, told the Associated Press that drillers are required to reclaim all disturbed areas.

"In Wyoming the first oil well was drilled in 1884," he said. "We've been here 127 years, and we've got lots and lots of wildlife. They continue to thrive."

Torbit doesn't buy it. "I don't tell the oil and gas industry what kind of oil or gas the geological formations hold. I don't tell them where the best location is for a well. They don't tell me what's best for wildlife. But for some reason, they seem to think they know it all."

Shauna Stephenson writes from Wheatland, Wyoming.