wildlife road crossing pathways and culverts must be expanded if wolves and other predators to be with us into the forever--sad story below of how tough it is for wild animals to make it safely across busy roads

A wolf named Delinda
Photographer John E. Marriott followed a gray wolf pack in the Bow Valley for over a year and learned a touching lesson about wildlife conservation.
By Jessica Sims
Most people would turn and run if they came face-to-face with a large, yellow-eyed wolf emerging from a cloud of snow on a secluded stretch of highway. Yet photographer John E. Marriott stood still and took a picture.
Her name was Delinda, and she was the alpha female of the gray wolf pack in the Bow Valley, which runs through Banff National Park.
When Marriott first saw her in June 2007, he knew she was different from other wolves he had photographed; she was the only one who didn't run away from him. Fascinated, he followed her for more than a year.
It was snowing heavily the day Marriott snapped this shot. After several hours tracking Delinda's pack, he had decided to stake out a position where he thought they would appear. Then, out of the white, Delinda emerged.
It was the 10th time he had run into her, and the more Marriott encountered her, the more he saw just how exceptional she was. Tolerant of humans, she had successfully raised three consecutive litters in the Bow Valley, a place full of man-made dangers.
The largest tract of wildlife habitat in Banff National Park, the Bow Valley links busy towns such as Banff, Canmore and Lake Louise, and is lined by railway tracks and several roads, including the Trans-Canada Highway.

Click map to enlarge

Unfortunately, Delinda couldn't escape these dangers for long. She was forced to move her den away from the slower speeds of the Bow Valley Parkway and closer to the Trans-Canada after it was disrupted by human activity, says Marriott. Then, in August 2008, Delinda snuck through a hole in the fence along this unfamiliar road and was struck by traffic.
After Delinda's death, Marriott witnessed her pack's collapse — today more than half of the 12 wolves have been killed on the highway. Although 24 wildlife crossings already exist along the Trans-Canada, by 2012 Parks Canada hopes to build an additional 20 of these safe passages and securely fence the remaining 83 kilometre stretch of highway running through Banff National Park.
Saddened by what he has seen, Marriott believes this fence should be regularly patrolled and says the park could do more to protect its wildlife. "Wolves are extremely resilient — it's not the first time the Bow Valley has been without a pack. They always bounced back," he says. "But the danger lies in continuously expecting that."
Click to view more of Marriott's photos of Delinda.

USA/Canada cross-border Lynx studies ongoing to find ways to preserve and expand the "big pawed" cats range as warming and human caused fragmentation making it harder and harder for it to make a living

Lynx don't care about the line between Ontario and Minnesota, and researchers on both sides are starting to pay attention.

By Cheryl Lyn Dybas with Photography by Ilya Raskin
Ron Moen rattles his grey pickup truck down a back road covered by hard-packed snow in Minnesota's Superior National Forest, a few dozen kilometres south of the Canada–U.S. border. We're surrounded by a winter wonderland of rime-tipped balsam firs and frozen lakes that stretches north to Ontario and beyond. Moen skids to a halt beside a steep snowdrift, and we step out of the truck into banks so deep, they stop the six-foot-tall wildlife biologist in his tracks. It's early March, dusk is settling, and all is silent. Moen and I slog a few metres toward the forest edge and enter a thicket of firs and alders, their boughs doubled over with ice from a recent storm. His voice muffled by the collar of his parka, Moen whispers, "It's out there. Somewhere."

Map the Lynx's range around Lake Superior.

"It" is Lynx canadensis, a northern forest cat as elusive as sasquatch. Known to the Ojibwa as "the vigilant protector of the people," the lynx sees without being seen in this white-on-white world. Here in the boreal forest, the medium-sized wild cat, which can grow to a metre in length and averages 5 to 15 kilograms, appears to have it all: its main prey, the snowshoe hare; the brushy woods the hare prefers; and the deep snows that the lynx and hare bound across using the thick cushions of hair on the soles of their large feet. But the lynx — which lives in all provinces except Prince Edward Island and in Minnesota, Maine, Montana, Washington, Wyoming, Alaska and Colorado, where a reintroduction program has been under way since 1999 — became a prize catch when fur prices boomed in the 1970s and 1980s. It was hunted and pushed to the brink in the lower 48 states and has been listed as a threatened species for a decade, even though it is still trapped, mostly for fur coats, in Canada. (In response to overharvesting in the early 1900s, Ontario instituted a trapline registration system in 1947; the province's population is said to be recovering.)

"A scenario predicted by climate-change models says the cat's habitat could move as much as 200 kilometres by 2100."

Biologists at Environment Canada believe there are at least 110,000 lynx in the country. Because the lynx is so secretive, however, population estimates are just that — estimates. Nobody knows how many live in the United States. (There may be lynx in Oregon and Idaho and from Wisconsin to New Hampshire, but experts believe the animals occasionally pass through and do not constitute established populations.) Fewer than 250 likely live in Minnesota, says Moen, a reserved 49-year-old based at the University of Minnesota Duluth. And as the continuous snow cover and boreal forest shift north, a scenario predicted by climate-change models, the cat's habitat could move as much as 200 kilometres by 2100. Which means, says forest ecologist Lee Frelich of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, "Canadian wildlife biologists need only look south" to see the conservation challenges they'll be facing in the near future.
Scientists on both sides of the border are trying to discover how much lynx populations in Ontario and Minnesota intermingle and which parts of the landscape play a critical role in their border crossings. Needless to say, lynx don't respect the international boundary, crossing the line regularly in search of meals or mates. Yet because they're a threatened species in the United States, they're managed completely differently in the two countries, says Justina Ray, a biologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada.
Minnesota is currently at the southern edge of the lynx's range east of the Rockies. Superior National Forest and Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming are two "priority areas" for lynx conservation, according to a 2007 report by The Nature Conservancy. "Intensive natural resources management intervention" will be required, the report says — in other words, the type of work that has taken Moen into these woods in search of lynx for more than seven years.
Out of sight behind the alders, Moen has set five box traps. Made of steel fencing and wood, with a trigger mechanism that shuts the door, the rectangular enclosures are baited with road-killed deer. Once trapped, as 35 have been over the years, the lynx is tranquilized using a pole syringe and is fitted with a Global Positioning System (GPS) or a Very High Frequency (VHF) radio collar so that Moen and his colleagues can track its movements. Moen also takes a blood sample to determine the animal's health and for DNA analysis to identify individuals.

There are no lynx in Moen's traps today, so we retreat to his truck. He opens the door and leans in, then emerges brandishing what looks like old-style TV rabbit ears to listen for the lynx already collared for his study. Each collar has its own frequency, which Moen can search for on his radio receiver. At first, we hear static. Then suddenly: beep-beep-beep.

"It's probably closer than we know," says Moen, peering into the darkness. Still, he decides to head back to town for the night. Lynx are most active at sunrise and sunset, so we'll return at dawn. The best way to catch a lynx, he says, is to think like one.

Map the range of the Lynx around Lake Superior.

While we sleep at a ski-and-snowshoe lodge about 40 kilometres from Moen's traps — an outpost complete with snowshoes hanging cross-hatched above a stone fireplace — lynx number 28 in Moen's study roams the forest. By the waning light of a last-quarter moon, L-28 walks with its hindquarters up and head down — typical lynx posture — leaving paw prints as big as a man's hand in the deep snow. The lynx circles a small lake and crosses a frozen alder swamp; it can smell fresh deer meat. It pads along a snowmobile trail a meal, the door of trap number one slams shut.
Next morning, I'm on my way back to the woods with Moen, two of his students and a field assistant. We park in yesterday's tire marks and see lynx tracks leading into the trees, as well as signs of a snowshoe hare darting to and fro.
Moen follows his boot prints to the first trap and is met by a pair of soul-searching, translucent green eyes. Crouching in the back of the trap, distinctive black ear tufts standing up, L-28 makes a low noise that's half growl, half hiss. Clearly, the cat didn't appreciate its overnight accommodations. Because L-28 already has a radio collar — it was first trapped in 2005 — Moen sidles to the back of the trap and slides open the door. I stand a metre away in thigh-deep snow. L-28 bounds out and over the snow in a flash, his oversized paws in near-gallop, lynx and forest blurring together as one.

"Crouching in the back of the trap, distinctive black ear tufts standing up, L-28 makes a low noise that's half growl, half hiss."

One way to ensure that the lynx has a future in Minnesota, says Moen, is through "responsible" management programs in Canada and the United States that consider the animal's habitat along natural and not political lines. He has been quietly working to make that happen, organizing international workshops and collaborating with researchers, including OntarioMinistry of Natural Resources biologist Neil Dawson and Trent University ecologist Dennis Murray. They attended a 2007 gathering in Grand Portage, Minnesota, that drew together more than 70 wildlife biologists. It was the first workshop to assemble such a large number of lynx researchers from both sides of the border, fostering a small wave of international collaboration among scientists studying the animal. Which is important, because, as Moen says, "the frequency of cross-border lynx travel turns out to be much higher than anyone anticipated."
Some lynx in Moen's study, such as L-15, are veterans of back-and-forth forays. Trapped in Grand Marais, Minnesota, on March 30, 2004, L-15 was recorded northwest of Thunder Bay five months later — more than 150 kilometres away. Less than two weeks after that, L-15 was back in Grand Marais. It's usually males that wander far afield, says Moen. Females, probably because they have kittens, have smaller home ranges, which can vary from 60 to 100 square kilometres. This spring, however, a lynx in another study set a new record, travelling 2,000 kilometres from its transplanted home in Colorado back to Alberta before meeting its end in a fur trap.
Minnesota logger Joe Foster saw a lynx mother with her young in 2002. Two years later, Moen found lynx dens and saw a female lynx with kittens. These sightings constituted the first direct evidence that Minnesota has a resident lynx population.
There's another connection between logging and lynx: researchers have concluded that the success of a lynx population in its southern range depends not on old-growth forest, as had long been thought, but on early successional forest — woods with trees from 10 to 30 years old. Snowshoe hares, which make up more than 80 percent of the lynx's diet, hide there in young thickets or in "edgerows," the northern wilderness equivalent of the hedgerows where rabbits hop. Moen's traps are located in a region of spruce-fir forests in early successional stages. Sections periodically harvested for timber are scattered across the area. Many have young trees springing up amid a lynx favourite: jumbles of downed branches atop scrubby undergrowth. "Logging isn't all bad for lynx," says Moen. "In some ways, it's the modern equivalent of [the regenerative] fires that once burned [but are now suppressed] from here through Canada."
National borders mean nothing to a fire, a forest or a lynx, says biologist Luke Hunter, executive director of Panthera, a New York City-based conservation organization founded in 2006 to protect the world's 36 species of wild cats. Panthera supports research such as the work of Megan Hornseth, a graduate student of Trent's Dennis Murray, who is studying how various types of forest edge affect lynx movement. "Co-operation between Canada and the United States," says Hunter, "could be a model for how to approach cat conservation around the world."
Ecologist and writer Cheryl Lyn Dybas lives just outside Washington, D.C. Photographer Ilya Raskin is a biology professor at Rutgers, in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Graduate student Cindy DeMaria's eastern coyote survey for a course she is taking in School..............take 3 minutes and complete for her please

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rick Meril <rick.meril@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 10:18 PM
Subject: Re: Coyotes,Wolves,Cougars..forever!
To: Cindy DeMaria <damselfly001@gmail.com>


Cindy................I completed your  survey.........................thanks for using my blog and good luck in school.................i am posting your survey for others to complete for you.......................

On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 4:58 PM, Cindy DeMaria <damselfly001@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello all!

I am doing some research on the Eastern Coyote for a graduate class.  I would appreciate it if you could take my survey and disseminate it far and wide for others to take as well.  Just click on the link below. Thank you!

CLICK HERE TO COMPLETE SURVEY

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZFTSZQD

Cindy

In 18th Century Pennsylvania, evidence shows that Bison did occupy parts of the State................some good historical quotations from frontiersmen, soldiers and naturalists recounting their observations of the Keystone States fauna

History of Buffalo in Pennsylvania    

Van Wagner

Karl Shellenberger

The historical presence of buffalo, Bison bison, in Pennsylvania has been debated for almost a century.  Compiling information from various historical and modern sources, it becomes clear that the plains buffalo was found, for a short time span, in Pennsylvania.  The debate comes when trying to determine the where buffalo lived and how many were present. 

Watershed regions of Pennsylvania

The buffalo range will be addressed by watershed regions.  Of Pennsylvania's six major watersheds, Erie, Ohio, Potomac, Genesee, Susquehanna, and Delaware, the evidence is rather strong that buffalo were only found in a few of these regions.  The strongest evidence relates to the Ohio River watershed.  There are several 18th century accounts of buffalo sightings in the southwest part of the commonwealth.  The Moravian missionary John Heckewelder, who crossed the Allegany Mountains over sixty times and logged 30,000 miles on the frontier, recorded them in this region in the 1770's.  In 1773 he documented meeting an Indian near Marietta, Ohio, "on his way home from a hunting trip.  He had shot a buffalo ox, of which there are many hearouts."1 This is less than 50 miles from the Pennsylvania border. 
Another account is from an officer serving under General Braddock recording a salt lick used by "Deer, Buffaloes and bears" in the area known today as Uniontown, Pennsylvania.
Another reference to buffalo in this region comes from Lewis Ourry's letter from fort Bedford to Henry Bouquet on Feb 21, 1760: "Yesterday I forwarded downwards the General's Baggage, consisting of 5 wagon, each drawn by 6 horses one slope wagon by 4, and a chair by 1 and 5 spare in all 40, and a young Buffalo."  The General he referred to was John Stanwix, who had been stationed at Pittsburgh since August 1759.  Since there was no British post beyond Fort Pitt at this time, this buffalo almost certainly came from the immediate region.3
Although impossible to quantify, it seems unlikely that buffalo were much more than rare visitors in western Pennsylvania.  This would be supported by the evidence that buffalo almost certainly did not cross into the lands east of the Mississippi River until about 1500.4  To date, no archeological evidence has surfaced which supports buffalo in Pennsylvania.5  No bones or Native American cultural evidence has ever been found.  However, this is reasonable given that the specie only appeared in the region after 1500. 
Some researchers have suggested that a severe drought on the plains in the 1600's encouraged buffalo herds to migrate up the Mississippi River to the Ohio River and its headwaters.6  In addition, thousands of acres of land originally cultivated by Native Americans were temporarily abandoned as white encroachment and European diseases forced Indians from their lands. 
Some have argued that buffalo could not have existed in Pennsylvania due to a lack of grazing habitat.  Indeed, the heavily forested ecosystem that was Pennsylvania in the 17th an 18th centuries did not provide much in the way of food for bison.  Instead, Pennsylvania would have classified as fringe habitat - providing just enough low land and floodplain grazing to support the occasional buffalo.  Also, the temporary availability of what had been Native American cropland could account for a small natural food supply for grazing ruminants just about the time that the specie was moving east in its range.  Whether due to human demographic changes or by natural processes, the plains buffalo was beginning to broaden its range towards south and western Pennsylvania.7  This leads to the question of exactly which watershed regions of Pennsylvania may have supported some buffalo. 
As previously established, buffalo were present in the Ohio River watershed.  An additional account of buffalo in this region comes from soldiers from Fort Cumberland in 1763.  While serving under Captain Luke Collins the men followed a group of Indians up to the Cheat River, A tributary of the Monongahela River, and attacked them while "they were barbequing a Buffaloe, not thinking of danger."8
To the north is the land that drains into Lake Erie.  Just to the east in north central Pennsylvania, is the Genesee Watershed.  Between these watersheds is the Northern portion of the Ohio Watershed.  Again evidence is rare for buffalo presence in these areas.  Some people refer to the place name of Fort Le Beuof as proof that bison roamed in northwestern Pennsylvania.  However as explained in Ted Belue's work, this name almost certainly is derived from a French missionary rather than "wild beef" to which it is often attributed.9  Others point to Buffalo, New York, as proof that the Erie watershed was a link in the bison range. However the presence of bison in New York has also been recently debated.  As was often the case, translations from one language to another often turned place name references from deer, elk, and moose into buffalo.10  If plains buffalo are indeed proven to have existed in New York, then the Erie Watershed would be the link to the plains.  To date, not enough evidence exists to support the definite presence of buffalo in the Genesee or Erie Watersheds.
In the south central portion of the state is the region of the Potomac drainage.  There is a possibility that buffalo were occasionally found in this region.  In 1612 European explorer Samuel Argall, often a bit off bearing, reported seeing "a great store of cattle as big as kine…"  within 15 miles of present day Washington, D.C.11  Maryland, West Virginia, and western Virginia all have solid documented sightings of buffalo.  It seems reasonable to assume an occasional animal wandered into what is now Pennsylvania. 
The presence of buffalo in the Susquehanna Watershed is arguably the most controversial among historians.  In 1915 Henry W. Shoemaker printed a book A Pennsylvania Bison Hunt which tells of herds of "thousands" of buffalo migrating from the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia through the Susquehanna River Valley.  This book is very commonly mentioned as proof buffalo were in Pennsylvania.  In this text, the "last Pennsylvania bison" was killed by Colonel John Kelly outside of Lewisburg in 1801 after a group of local marksmen had killed off the last remaining herd in Weikert in western Union County.12  For those who have spent time in the central Pennsylvania ridges and valleys in areas like Weikert and Paddy Mountain, it is hard to not be taken in by the allure of Shoemakers convincing tale. Although still a very worthwhile read, scholars have gone lengths to cast doubt on Shoemakers words.  In 1917 Shoemaker followed up his tale with the book Extinct Pennsylvania Animals.  In this text he acknowledges some of the initial criticism but does little to offer new evidence supporting his tales of buffalo in Pennsylvania. Between plagiarism of Thomas Ashe's Travels in America, published 1808, or just fabrications, Shoemaker's words are far too tainted with fiction to be taken seriously in the scientific community even if they may indeed contain truth.13 
Very little reliable documentation of buffalo in the Susquehanna Valleys exists, and the available information is often secondhand.  For example, Reverend John Ettwein in his Notes of Travel in 1772, writes he "Reached Clearfield Creek, where the buffaloes formerly cleared large tracts of undergrowth, so as to give them the appearance of cleared fields: hence the Indian call the Creek Clearfield". The Reverend is not recording what he saw first hand but rather his assumption or what others had told him.  In fact Clearfield was probably grassland due to controlled burning by Indians.14 
Pennsylvania contains numerous examples of locations named after buffalo.  In frontier culture, people often named their lands after a rare or unique sighting of wildlife, such as White Deer, Bald Eagle, or Native American names like Swatara ("where we feed on eels") and Moosic ("place of moose").  The sheer numbers of buffalo place names makes a very strong case that some of the earliest white settlers in the Susquehanna region almost certainly encountered buffalo or Indians who related buffalo sightings. 


Dots indicate buffalo place names in Pennsylvania.  By Karl Shellenberger 2007
It is also possible that some buffalo place names were named for resembling the shape of a buffalo, and not for buffalo sightings. Buffalo Mountain in Union County could be described as resembling a buffalo.  It has a small western hill (head), a long linear ridge to the East (back) and a small crest between the two (hump).  However, given that this mountain is found in the same vicinity of Buffalo Crossroads, Buffalo Valley, Bull Run, and Buffalo Creek it is more likely that it derived its name from the animal occurring there rather than its topography. 
Other buffalo place name references are found in the Susquehanna Watershed. Whether Colonel John Kelly actually shot a buffalo in Union county, as Shoemaker claimed, it may never be known.  The year, 1801, is in the same general time period when the animals were killed off in neighboring states.  By 1730 buffalo were gone from the tidewater region of Virginia; in 1808 the last Ohio buffalo was killed, and by 1825 the last was killed in western Virginia.15  The location of the Pennsylvania legend, however, is a bit unexpected.  Southwestern Pennsylvania probably had a higher number of buffalo, still far from the herds of thousands described by Shoemaker, but that would be the region expected to harbor the last hold out of the specie.  It is possible however that a small herd of animals was pushed to the northeast and temporarily into the Susquehanna Watershed. As various militaries and explorers increased hunting pressure on the area around Fort Pitt, modern day Pittsburgh, the mountains and valleys of central Pennsylvania may have offered a refuge for a short time until that region too began filling with Europeans and their rifles.   
It is worth noting that small pockets of grassland habitat did indeed occur along the Susquehanna.  In 1743 the botanist William Bartram explored the region and noted "Our journey now lay through very rich bottoms to a creek, six miles from Shamokin [Chillisquaque Creek], a great extent of fruitful low ground still continuing.  Here we found a fine meadow of grass on our right, and rich dry ground on the left…" 16 Shamokin was located at modern day Sunbury.  Bartram was describing the Chillisquaque creek in the area of modern Montandon.  He does not, however, mention seeing any buffalo in his travels through the watershed.  That being said, he does not mention other animals such as elk, moose, or deer, all of which did occur there.
To the east of the Susquehanna lies the Delaware River Watershed.  Within this watershed there exist few historic buffalo place names, no reliable oral or written buffalo tales, and, as in all other five watersheds in Pennsylvania, no archeological evidence.  The closest written reference is that of Thomas Penn, of William Penn's colony, in 1733 paid William Linvil for a "Bull Buffalo."17 Very little is known about this man or the location of the transaction.  Another account refers to a Delaware Indian named Buffalo Horn between 1756 and 1759.18  The Delaware nation encompassed much more than just the Delaware River watershed.  It is impossible to pinpoint the birthplace of Buffalo Horn or the origin of his attire which may have come via trade or personal travels.  It is probable that no buffalo occurred naturally within the eastern portion of Pennsylvania.
Although infrequently and only somewhat recently, buffalo were indeed in Pennsylvania at the time of European colonization.  Some researchers suggest that the specie may have continued eastward in their range had Europeans not eradicated them.19  Given the thousands of armed settlers backed by a lack of appreciation for nature, the buffalo were quickly extirpated from Pennsylvania.  Although it is uncertain when, exactly, the animals began arriving here, it seems likely that by the close of the 18th century, the few buffalo had been in Pennsylvania were gone. Like wolves, mountain lions, moose, and many other species, buffalo were extirpated from Pennsylvania by the hand of man.

An interesting visual and descriptive insight into Jedediah Smith, one of the great Mountain Men trappers who witnessed and experienced the zenith of the Rocky Mtn fur trade 1820-1840--great descriptions of beaver pelts secured and an acknowledgement that the Rockies was "darn near trapped out" by 1840

 

Jedediah Smith and America's Western Expansion and Exploration by
O. Ned Eddins

Jedediah Strong Smith was born in the Susquehanna Valley of New York in 1799. Jedediah was ten years old, when the Smith family moved westward to Erie County, Pennsylvania. The local doctor took a liking to Jedediah. Dr. Titus Simons, who become a close family friend, helped Jedediah with his education and gave him a copy of the 1814 Biddle edition of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. When Jedediah Smith's family moved again to the Western Reserve country of Ohio. Jedediah Smith struck out for the frontier. According to some, Jedediah carried two books—the Bible and the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

James C. Auld wrote an excellent article in the 2008 Journal of the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade questioning where the piety and bible toting image of Jedediah Smith originated.

                                                                      Jedediah Strong Smith 1899 -1831
Not long after reaching St. Louis, Jedediah  learned that the lieutenant governor of Missouri, William H. Ashley, and a veteran fur trader, Major Andrew Henry, had formed a partnership to trap beaver on the upper Missouri. Ashley had placed an advertisement in the Missouri Gazette: 
 
Smith quickly signed on—this was his way west. At the junction of the Yellowstone and Missouri river, Major Henry built a second Fort Henry. From there, Maj. Henry sent a small party farther upriver to winter near the mouth of the Musselshell and Missouri rivers. During the winter, both parties lost horses to the Assiniboine.
When the Musselshell party returned  in the spring to Fort Henry, Major Henry sent Jedediah Smith downriver to find Ashley and tell him  they needed more horses at Fort Henry. Below the three Arikara villages, Smith found Ashley coming upriver with the supply boat . The Arikara villages were located on the Missouri River near the mouth of the Grand River.
                                  
                                             Arikara Village - George Catlin

                                                                 Arikara Lodge

               
                                             
                                            Fort Atkinson Barracks 1819 -1827 

 At the post, Ashley outfitted a party of eleven men under Jedediah Smith to travel overland to the Rocky Mountains. Among the men were Thomas Fitzpatrick, William Sublette, Jim Clyman, Thomas Eddie, Edward Rose, Stone, and Branch. The other three men's names have been lost to history.

Near the Black Hills, Smith was attacked by a grizzly bear. After the bear was killed, Smith gave directions as Clyman stitched up the gaping wounds. James Clyman left a vivid description of the encounter:

Grissly did not hesitate a moment but sprang on the capt taking him by the head first pitc[h]ing sprawling on the earth…breaking several of his ribs and cutting his head badly…the bear had taken nearly all his head in his cap[a]cious mouth close to his left eye on one side and clos to his right ear on the other and laid the skull bare to near the crown of the head…one of his ears was torn from his head out to the outer rim…

                                                                 Wind River
In February, Smith attempted to cross Union Pass to the head of the Green River , but the snow was too deep.

                                             Union Pass - Elevation 9,228 Feet
Returning to the Crow camp, warriors told Smith about a broad open pass at the end of the Wind River Mountains. In March of 1824, Jedediah Smith's party followed the Sweetwater River to South Pass and on into the Green River Valley—Robert Stuart's    discovery of South Pass had been largely forgotten, and Jedediah Smith is credited with the effective discovery of South Pass.

                                                    South Pass - Elevation 7,473 Feet
Jedediah Smith split the party in two. He left Fitzpatrick and five men to trap the Green River Valley. The two parties were to rendezvous on the Sweetwater River in mid-summer.

                                       Beaver Dam  - North Horse Creek
Fitzpatrick's men stayed in  the valley of the Seed-kee-dee (Prairie Chicken River or Green River)--Indians stole Fitzpatrick's horses on Horse Creek and this is where the name comes from. Thomas Fitzpatrick and his men had a good hunt, and by July were back on the Sweetwater River to meet the Smith Party. When Jedediah Smith didn't show up, Fitzpatrick, Stone, and Branch started down the Sweetwater and North Platte rivers with a boatload of furs—the hollowed-out boat tipped over in Devils Gate. The furs were recovered and dried before being cached. The three men struggled across the open Plains to Fort Atkinson. At Fort Atkinson, Fitzpatrick sent a dispatch to Ashley in St. Louis advising him of the rich beaver country west of the Wind River Mountains.

                                                           Devils Gate
A British diarist remarked:

One Jedediah S. Smith is at the head of them, a sly cunning Yankey.

In late June 1825, Smith arrived at Henry's Fork—near Burnt Fork, Wyoming—for the first mountain man rendezvous.

                                      1825 Rendezvous Burnt Fork, Wyoming
Ashley left the one day rendezvous on the second of  July. The furs gathered at the rendezvous came from Ashley's men, deserters from Peter Skeen Ogden, and Etienne Provost's men. Provost was a Taos trapper. An additional forty-five packs were picked up from a cache.
Andrew Henry had left the fur trade, and Ashley needed a new field partner. His choice was Jedediah Smith. Ashley and Smith took the furs  to the Bighorn River, and then floated them down the Bighorn to the Yellowstone where they met Atkinson-O'Fallon Expedition. The furs were loaded on a steamboat and taken to St. Louis.  The new partners took one hundred packs of furs back from the first rendezvous—on average a pack is sixty pelt pressed into a ninety pound bundle and tied.
In less than a month, Jedediah Smith left St. Louis for the mountains. Jedediah's fall hunt was in the Wyoming, Utah, Idaho area. Jedediah met Ashley at the 1826 Rendezvous held in Cache (Willow) Valley at Cove,  Utah--the 1826 site is disputed between Cove and Blacksmith Fork Canyon.

                                             1826 Rendezvous Cove, Utah
After the rendezvous, Jedediah Smith, William Sublette, and David E. Jackson met with Ashley on the Bend of the Bear River and bought Ashley's interests in the Ashley-Smith Company. The new partnership agreed to buy the rendezvous supplies through Ashley. After four years in the mountains, Jedediah Smith was now head of the dominate fur trade company in the Rocky Mountains.
In August, the three partners split up for the fall hunt. Smith, with seventeen men, pushed south to investigate the trapping potential south and west of the Great Salt Lake. This trek took Smith up Spanish Fork Canyon—through Castle Valley—over the mountains to Richfield—then over the mountains to Cove Fort. Except this detour through Castle Valley—then I-70 to Cove—Smith followed I-15 through Utah to the Virgin River (Brooks).

                                                             Smith Map of 1826 - 1827
Smith followed the Virgin River to its confluence with the Colorado River. He crossed the river and continued south to the Mojave villages.
                                                 Smith Butte - Mojave Desert

                                              Rock Springs - Mojave Desert

                                                 Soda Lake - Mojave Desert
It took two weeks to cross the barren, blazing desert before reaching San Bernardino Valley. Spanish Priests welcomed them at the San Gabriel Mission-near present-day Los Angles.
Smith's clerk, Harrison Rogers, described it:

…great feasting among the men. … I was introduced to the 2 Priests over a glass of good old whiskey—and found them to be very Joval friendly gentlemen… . Plenty of good wine during supper, before the cloth was removed sigars was introduced… . Friendship and peace prevail with us and the Spanyards….

Smith was called to San Diego were he was questioned by the Mexican governor. Backed by Captain Cunningham of the schooner Courier and other Yankee sea captains in port, Smith eventually convinced the governor that he sought only beaver. The governor ordered Smith to take his men and leave the same way as they had come into California.

                                                     Ebbetts Pass - Elevation 8,715 Feet
Smith, Gobel, and Evans left on the twentieth of May, 1827, with seven horses and two mules. Smith crossed the Sierras over Ebbett's Pass then skirting Walker Lake, before heading into the Great Basin.
           
                                                               Great Basin
Smith recorded on his map:

This plain is a waste of sand with a few detached mountains some of which are in the region of perpetual snow…a few Indians are scattered over the plain, the most miserable objects in creation.

Smith's journal leaves a terrifying picture of the desert journey. From a high hill, he wrote:

I could discover nothing but sandy plains or dry Rocky hills…I durst not tell my men of the desolate prospect ahead…. With our best exertion we pushed forward, walking as we had been for a long time over the soft sand…worn down with hunger and fatigue and burning with thirst increased by the blazing sands…it then seemed possible and even probable we might perish in the desert unheard of and unpitied. My dreams were not of Gold or ambitious honors but of my distant quiet home, of murmuring brooks of Cooling Cascades.

                                                     Great Salt Lake Desert

                                                1827 Rendezvous - Bear Lake Utah
After the 1827 rendezvous, Smith eighteen men and two French-Canadian women set out for California. Based on his previous experience, Smith took seven hundred pounds of dried buffalo meat. Except a detour through the Bear River Valley and across the mountains and down the Weber River, Smith followed present day I-15 to southern Utah. Instead of going through the Virgin River Gorge, Smith followed an Indian trail from Santa Clara over Utah Hill to Beaver Dam Wash then followed it to the Virgin River.

                                                          Smith's Route 1827 - 1828 - 1829
Crossing the Colorado River, the party continued on to the Mojave Village. After spending three days at the village, Smith and eight men swam the horses and took the supplies across on rafts. With Smith and eight men on the other side of the river, the Mojave attacked and killed the men on their side of the river, including Silas Gobel and the two women—unbeknown to Smith, several Mojave warriors had been killed the previous winter by trappers from Taos led by Ewing Young.

Smith was determined not to leave California empty-handed. The beaver pelts and a few otter skins were sold to the Captain of the schooner Franklin for thirty-nine hundred and twenty dollars. With the money, Smith purchased three hundred and thirty horses and mules to sell at the next years rendezvous.

As most of the trappers contract with the company had expired, Smith re-engaged the trappers at one dollar per day—most historians claim the Ashley men were the more glamorous free trappers…but…they were hired in St. Louis by Ashley and again by Smith in California.

                 
                                                     Fort Vancouver 1829
At the time of the attack, Smith had two hundred and twenty-eight horses and mules, seven hundred and eight beaver pelts, fifty to sixty otter skins, two hundred pounds of beads, one hundred pounds of other goods, and camp equipment. 

                                                Pierre's Hole - Teton River
Not long after the Smith and Jackson parties reached Pierre's Hole, William Sublette arrived with a pack train from the 1829 Rendezvous on the Popo Agie—With beaver getting harder to find and prices dropping, Smith, Jackson, and Sublette decided it was time to leave the mountains. At the 1830 Rendezvous on the Wind River, the three partners sold their company to Thomas Fitzpatrick, Milton Sublette, Jim Bridger, Henry Fraeb, and Jean Gervias. The partners agreed Sublette would remain the rendezvous supplier. The new company was named the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.

This is the only time in the history of the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade that a company was actually named the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.

                                                 1830 Wind River Rendezvous

The type of effort and compassion in the attached SWIMMING POOL RESCUE is what we have to hope us human animals can eventually begin to display toward all of our animal cousins, both predator and prey

A brief history of Bounties paid to residents of New York State for doing in Predators and other "varmints"is reflective of the mentality that existed in the first 400 years of the American experience---bounties still exist in certain States................in 1802, land cost $2.00 per acre in New York State................Killing a wolf in Chenango County, NY fetched you $60 and a Cougar $75................You could buy a 675 acre farm if you killed 10 wolves and 10 cougars.................pretty good incentive to wipe out our top-of-the-foodchain Carnivores.................What sucks is that this mentality is alive and well in a still too large segment of the American, Canadian, Mexcan population

B Y R O B E R T W. A R N O L D I I I

archives around

NewYork

New York's settlers

regarded wild animals

as either food or foe

and exterminated them at an

appalling rate. Food animals

such as passenger pigeons

were slaughtered with no real

idea that they could vanish

entirely; the world's last

passenger pigeon died in a zoo

in 1914. The extermination

of other species, however,

particularly alpha predators

such as panthers, bears, and

wolves, was assisted by the

payment of bounties.

From colonial times until

within modern memory, many

New York communities paid

bounties on "pest animals"

killed for public benefit.

Where the state was sparsely

populated and agricultural,

such animals were viewed as

predators that took domestic

animals, ravaged crops, or

made life dangerous for settlers,

and were therefore impediments

to survival.

The wolf, cougar

 hawks, wildcats, foxes,

crows, rats, lynx, blackbirds,

and probably other animals

were all bountied.

Clinton County was still paying

wolf bounties in the early

1820s, and Montgomery

County's Board of Supervisors

resolved to "allow the sum of

fifteen dollars for every full

grown wolf killed in this county

and the sum of seven dollars

and fifty cents for any wolf

whelp killed within the same."

As settlers pushed into western

New York, Chautauqua County

wolves in 1815 "were as

plenty [sic] as black-berries in

harvest." At that time, wool

was a lucrative farm product

that provided uniforms for the

armies of the Napoleonic Wars,

and sheep farming increased

in response to this demand.

Wolves were a threat to the

valuable sheep, so the county

increased its appropriation for

wolf bounties, but by 1820 the

county supervisors petitioned

the state to have the bounty

reduced because there were

so few wolves left. The last

wolf was killed there in 1841.

In more modern times,

the bounty on a rattlesnake

in Essex County during the

Depression was one dollar; on

a hawk, half that. This was

money much-needed by locals,

some of whom evidently

became at least part-time

bounty hunters. In November

1935, the county paid bounties

on thirty-five rattlesnakes and

seventeen hawks. The warm

months, when the snakes

were on the move, proved the

most lucrative. In mid-August

of 1930, H.M. Lawrence was

paid for thirty-seven rattlesnake

rattles, and Francis Kelly

was paid for eighteen rattles

in September 1939, although

most bounty payouts recorded

in the Essex County Clerk's

Office were for one to three

animals. While men were

usually collectors of bounties,

in 1933 one Lavina Lewis was

paid for two hawks.

Since 1983, the timber

rattler has been a threatened

species—not entirely due to

bounty hunting, but certainly

not helped by it.

Minutes of the Ulster County

Board of Supervisors indicate
that the county paid bounties
on 232 wolves between 1711
and 1731. A bounty was also
paid on whelps, the young of
wolves. As late as 1793, the
board of supervisors paid a
bounty on a panther. At the
other end of the pest chain
was the squirrel. In 1793, “the
Freeholders and Inhabitants
of the Town of Rensselaerville
[Albany County] Resolved
unanimously that one penny
be allowed for every Squirrel’s
Scalp, of any Squirrel kind
which shall be killed... .”
Honest bounty hunting
could be lucrative, at least
when taking alpha predators
like cougars. In Chenango
County in 1802, Daniel Buck
paid for his farm with bounty
money: $60 for each wolf and
$75 for each panther. In a
single year, Buck killed eleven
panthers at a time when land
in New York State sold for
two dollars an acre. However,
in a cash-scarce rural economy,
bounty money raised temptation:
in 1820 in Chautauqua
County, a certificate was
issued for a full-grown wolf
that was later determined to
have been caught as a whelp,
raised until fully grown, and
then killed in order to collect
the twice-larger bounty paid
for adult animals.
Physical evidence of a kill
had to be presented, and to
receive payment hunters had
to swear that these animals
had been killed within town
limits. When a squirrel scalp
was submitted, for example,
the appropriate town officer
immediately clipped off its
ears and burned them so that
the same scalp could not be
submitted again by ethically
challenged citizens. A certificate
was then signed, and the town
supervisors, who collectively
formed the county’s board of
supervisors, paid the bounties
from town funds, to be
reimbursed by the county.
However, sometimes the rules
got broken. In Essex County
rattlesnakes were a threat,
and a higher bounty was paid
for them than in neighboring
Warren County, leading to
the occasional bounty-jumper
crossing the county line to
collect. Rattlesnakes also
regenerate their rattles, so
enterprising citizens would
keep snakes alive, repeatedly
trim off the rattles, and
submit them for payment


 

As times changed, so did

the outlook on the environment

and the appreciation of

the ecological roles of various

species. Bounties were outlawed

in New York State in the

early 1970s, and efforts have

been made—sometimes hotly

opposed in public debate—

to re-establish populations of

some formerly bounty-hunted

predators. Today, research

and sensitivities look upon

pest animals as occupants of

important environmental

niches, or as helpful predators

that eliminate true pests such

as rats and mice, or simply as

prey themselves in the natural

food chain

Bounty Hunting in New York

1902-1930 geographic bounty records of wolf and cougar kills in Montana.............does this early 20th century snapshot accurately portray where wolves and cougars were historically found circa AD 1500 when vast buffalo herds occupied the State? Please remember that even A.D.1800-1805 Lewis & Clark observations of Wolves in Eastern Montana(but no mention West of Continental Divide) does not take into account 300 years of Indians using horses(secured from the Spanish Conquistodors) and European impact on the land(while Lewis and Clark were the first to diary account this part of North America, Spanish colonization and influence as well as French trapper influence had impacts on how the tribes hunted, viewed each other and how their evolving hunting patterns impacted wildlife).....How wolves and cougars were impacted by the gradual shrinkage of the buffalo herds in terms of revised population distribution across the landscape can only be conjectured and not stated in absolutes................the historical distribution of our predators and their prey is a cornerstone interest of this blog and we will continue to pursue our investigations at every opportunity.

*, Genevieve M. Nesslage, Brian A. Maurer

Abstract

Bounty records from Montana (1902–1930) were used to better understand spatial and temporal response of wolves (

Canis lupus)

and cougars (

Puma concolor) to an eradication program. Number of payments for wolves declined from a high of 4116 in 1903 to 0

by 1928. Numbers of cougar pelts fluctuated, but generally declined from 177 in 1908 to 2 in 1930. An inverse spatial relationship

existed between density of payments for wolves and cougars. Payments for wolves were greatest in the Prairie ecoregion, while

payments for cougars were greatest in the Montane(MOUNTAINS). The ratio of pup to adult wolves also was greatest in the Prairie ecoregion and

least in the montane. If distribution and frequency of bounty payments were a reflection of the distribution and abundance of

wolves, populations were highest and most productive in areas where they currently do not occur.--note that where cougars and wolves occupy the same region, cougars tend to occupy higher Country where their stealth and ambush style hunting is optimized...........wolves as a coursing(chasing) predator prefer the open flatlands..............this is how the two predators minimize their conflicts with each other--blogger Rick

Once two of the most widely distributed large carnivores

in the world, wolves (

Canis lupus) and cougars

(

Puma concolor), were nearly eradicated in the western

US as a result of habitat loss and predator control

programs during the 20th century (Mech, 1970; Young

and Goldman, 1944). Central to the success of predator

control programs were economic incentives in the form

of payments (bounties) to hunters or trappers in exchange

for animal parts or pelts. Records of bounty

payments provide a novel source of data regarding distribution

and relative abundance of wolves and cougars,

and response of large carnivores to human-caused exploitation.

Improved understanding of where ancestral

populations existed and their response to exploitation

provide a historical perspective to management of large

carnivores such as wolves and cougars, and may aid

current conservation efforts for these species (Berger and

Wehausen, 1991; Fuller and Kittredge, 1996).

The first territorial bounty legislation aimed at wolves

and cougars in Montana was enacted in 1883 (Curnow,

1969). Bounty payments occurred until 1887, when the

bounty law was repealed. A new bounty program was

reinstated in 1891. By 1930, wolves were eradicated from

Montana, and few cougars remained (Bangs et al., 1998;

Young and Goldman, 1944, 1946).

 County Treasurers kept careful

records of the eradication program through meticulous

ledgers of bounty payments. These ledgers provide a

source of harvest data, which may provide insight into

historical exploitation and eradication of two species of

large carnivores.

The goal of this study was to increase understanding

of spatial and temporal dynamics of exploitation of

large carnivores, and identify implications of this understanding

for current management of these species.

Montana has a land area of 381,086 km2, and averages

approximately 870 km from east to west and 450

km from north to south (Fig. 1). Elevations range from

546 m where the Kootenai River exits the state in the

northwest corner to 3898 m in the Beartooth Mountains

of south central Montana. The western third of Montana

is mountainous and the eastern two-thirds are a

mix of undulating cleft prairie interspersed with rivers

and isolated mountain ranges of the Missouri and Yellowstone

watersheds.

All counties of Montana were assigned to one of

three main ecoregions, the Montane, Intermountain,

and Prairie ecoregions (Riley, 1998). The Montane ecoregion

was comprised of Northern Rocky Mountain

Steppe–Coniferous Forest–Alpine Meadow Provinces

(McNab and Avers, 1994) within the Columbia Basin of

northwestern Montana. Southwestern Montana and the

Rocky Mountain East Front were classified into an Intermountain

ecoregion, which contained a mix of Middle

Rocky Mountain Steppe–Coniferous Forest–Alpine

Meadow and Southern Rocky Mountain Steppe–Open

Woodland–Coniferous Forest–Alpine Meadow Provinces.

The remainder of the state is predominately in the

Prairie ecoregion, comprised of Great Plains–Palouse

Dry Steppe Province.

Bounty harvest records from 1902 to 1930, originally

recorded by county clerks, were transcribed from ledgers

archived in the Montana State Library in Helena. Record

books from 1924 were missing. Records represented

number of bounty payments for cougar, adult

wolf, and wolf pup pelts submitted by individuals in the

county for which the animals were killed. Cougar

bounty prices changed from $7 in 1902 to $10 in 1905.

Adult wolf bounty prices changed from $5 in 1902 to

$10 in 1906 and $15 dollars in 1912. Bounty price for

wolf pups was $3 until 1904 and $4 thereafter.

We summarized the proportion of total wolf and cougar

bounty payments made in each ecoregion.

Bounty records may provide a glimpse of historic

wolf and cougar ecology as well as population response

to human exploitation. However, caution need be exercised

when making inferences from the data. Some

patterns we observed may be an artifact of wolf and

cougar vulnerability to human harvest, or errors in reporting

bounty kills. Data are lacking on bounty hunter

effort, which might enable stronger inference between

bounty kills and actual populations. Another source of

potential bias is our inability to document the entire

history of wolf and cougar exploitation in Montana.

Bounty kills in Montana began in 1883, but only records

from 1902 to 1930 were retrievable. Despite these potential

sources of bias, we believe patterns from these

data may be valuable for conservation planning.

Number of payments declined rapidly from a peak

in 1903 until 1909 (Fig. 2). A temporary increase

in payments occurred from 1911 until 1914, after which

a decline occurred until wolves were extirpated. No

payments for wolf pelts were made in Montana after

1927.

Bounty payments for wolves were widespread across

Montana from 1902 to 1910, but were greatest in the

eastern half of the state. Through time, the

pattern of payments became more scattered across

Montana as payments were no longer reported in some

counties. Wolf kills from 1911 to 1920 were concentrated

in the middle of the state with brief, but relatively

high densities of kills localized in the northwest and

southeast. Small numbers of wolf pelts were presented in

a scattering of counties across most of the state during

the last 9 years wolves were present in Montana. One

exception was the Montane ecoregion, where no payments

were made after 1921. The last bounty payment

for wolves was recorded in Powder River County in

southeastern Montana.

The ratio of wolf pups to adults was greatest in the

Prairie ecoregion (Fig. 3). The ratio of pups to adult

wolves presented for payment never exceeded one in the

Montane (max

¼ 0:07) or Intermountain (max ¼ 0:57)

ecoregions.

Cougar payments fluctuated from 1902 to 1922 with

peaks occurring at an interval of 3–4 years

Payments were greatest in 1908, when 177 pelts were

submitted for payment. By 1930, only two payments

were made for cougar pelts in Montana.

From 1902 to 1910, nearly all counties in Montana

had cougar pelts presented for bounty payment (Fig. 2).

The highest numbers consistently occurred in the

Montane and Intermountain ecoregions. By 1911, few

pelts were presented for payment in the eastern half of

the state. From 1925 to 1930, less than five pelts per year

were presented across the state. Numbers of cougar pelts

were more concentrated in the Montane ecoregion except

in the last 5 years when they were scattered across

the western half of the state.

Bison bison), s first bounty program both occurred Odocoileus virginianus) populations (Riley andMalecki,

2001). Historically, many of these valleys were inhabited

by wolf populations that may have discouraged cougars

from descending to lower elevations (Mussehl and Howell,

1971). If wolf populations continue to expand into

areas currently occupied by cougars, wolves may once

again restrict cougars to more mountainous and rugged

terrain. Research is needed to better understand dynamics

of potential competitive interactions between

wolves and cougars, and their implications for conservation.

Dynamics of early wolf and cougar eradication efforts in

Montana: implications for conservation

The spatial differences in abundance and productivity

we observed between wolves and cougars have several

implications for conservation. Wolves in the western US

currently are limited to mostly mountainous habitats of

Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, on or adjacent to national

forests and national parks (Bangs and Fritts,

1996; Bangs et al., 1998). If historical distribution and

abundance of bounty payments were a reflection of

earlier distribution and abundance of wolves in Montana,

ancestral wolf populations likely were highest and

most productive in areas where they currently do not

occur. Localized pockets of high bounty yields were

observed in the Montane and Intermountain ecoregions.

However, these ecoregions did not sustain high yields

for as long as the eastern Prairie ecoregion. High apparent

productivity of wolves in the prairie was expressed

in the ratio of pups per adults presented for

payment, and this occurred despite high human-caused

mortality. Other ecoregions of Montana experienced

lower harvests, yet these ecoregions did not appear to

support sustained wolf productivity.

in 1883. Wolf populations probably switched

prey from bison to cattle as livestock grazing spread

rapidly throughout the Prairie ecoregion. Potential

conflict with agricultural interests now reduce opportunities

for species restoration in that ecoregion, and may

limit future range expansion of wolves in Montana

(Bangs et al., 1998).

A second implication of our analysis is that optimizing

both cougar and wolf populations in the same

area may be an unrealistic management goal due to interspecific

interactions. The number of wolf bounty

payments was highest where payments for cougars were

least. The spatial pattern of bounty payments indicates a

west to east gradient in abundance (least to greatest)

existed during the early 20th century for wolves, and an

opposite east to west gradient in abundance (least to

greatest) was observed for cougars. This observation is

supported by early explorer accounts of wolves in

Montana. For example, Lewis and Clark reported

wolves present throughout eastern Montana, but made

no mention of wolves once they reached the continental

divide (Coues, 1893).

Competition between wolves and cougars may exist

and have profound effects on their behavior and population

dynamics. Patterns of winter prey selection

in Glacier National Park indicated wolves and cougars

exhibit exploitation and interference competition

(Kunkel et al., 1999). Wolves can effectively compete

through direct competition for prey or occasionally

killing cougars (Bangs and Fritts, 1996; Boyd and Neale,

1992; Kunkel et al., 1999; White and Boyd, 1989). Potential

for competitive interactions is an important

conservation consideration because cougars exist in every

area where wolves are presently being restored in the

western US (Hornocker and Mobley, 1992). Cougars

are capable of exploiting valley and foothill habitats

because of relatively new, abundant white-tailed deer

(

Received 11 June 2003; received in revised form 17 October 2003; accepted 14 January 2004