When These Fragmented Public and Private Lands are Connected
Post by Clemson Montana Summer Program student Jade Chapman
The highlights of this second week in Montana for me were speaking with the wildlife restoration manager at the American Prairie Reserve, dusting the prairie dog colony there, as well as spotlighting for black-footed ferrets.
Danny, the wildlife restoration manager at the American Prairie Reserve (APR), went into great detail about the methods the APR is using to get more wildlife on the reserve. Their bison herd is currently at carrying capacity with 800 currently on the property. They unfortunately cannot expand their bison herd until they have purchased more property to expand their range to hold more bison. The goal is to have 3.2 million acres of connected land with 10,000 bison. So far since 2004, APR has a habitat base of 399,379 acres, but only 91,588 acres are private lands owned by the reserve. 307, 791 acres are public lands both federal and state leased by the reserve. A lot of the money donated to the reserve goes into buying new land from private land owners that are selling their property. They also seek to increase their elk and prairie dog populations. For the elk, they are trying to create a travel corridor from a highly elk populated area to the reserve, as well as give ranchers an incentive not to shoot elk on their property. The ranchers dislike the elk because they eat their cows' hay in the winter. They see the elk as competition for their cattle. They also speak with ranchers about adapting their fences for pronghorn, going so far as to buy fence for the ranchers to adapt for pronghorn as well as sage grouse. The bottom wire on the fence is raised so the pronghorn can slip under, and it’s un-barbed so the pronghorn doesn’t lose fur and freeze to death during the winter. White tapes are added to the fence wire so sage grouse don’t fly into them. APR is also doing prairie dog conservation. They are taking prairie dogs from neighboring ranches and putting them in new places on the American Prairie Reserve. Because it takes prairie dogs years to dig their tunnel systems, these new prairie dogs will have synthetic prairie dog burrows made from pipes APR has buried. If prairie dogs were released without an established tunnel system, they would scatter and die within a week.
One of the most extraordinary experiences of my life was when we went to the UL Bend to spotlight for black-footed ferrets. We started at 12:00 am and by 2:30 we saw a beautiful 2-year-old female ferret that we identified by pit tag. We watched as she moved four kits to a new den site. They were tiny. At first, we thought they might be mice because they were so small. The manager Randy said he had never seen a mother move kits so young before. We saw something that he hadn’t seen in 20 years of working there. It’s just amazing that we got to see the future of black-footed ferret conservation carried before us.
