As I hiked the half mile through crusted snow toward the exclosure to inspect a big Wyoming sage plant, three things came to mind…First, I'm out of shape. It was only about half a mile, and I was huffing and puffing like the wolf in the three little pigs story. If I don't hit the gym soon, there's no way I'll be able to keep up with the cute boy deer hunting this fall.
Second, I need better cold weather socks. My fleece-lined socks are okay for keeping my feet warm in the office and shoveling snow, but they weren't really up to par for hiking across the frozen tundra. Besides, if any of my co-workers would have seen that my socks had Tweety Bird on them, I might not have lived it down.
And finally, if I were a pronghorn or a mule deer that had to make a living out on the Wyoming landscape, I would perish. Frankly, I'm just not quite tough enough.
I was touring southeast Wyoming courtesy of Bob Lanka, the Regional Information and Education Specialist in the Laramie region. He had organized this tour for media in the area to see first hand what wildlife have to endure in the winter, and to demonstrate how crucial quality habitat is to their survival.
Habitat is the food, water, shelter and space an animal needs to survive. Not only do animals need all four of these elements, animals need them in the right amounts and at the right time. Here at Game and Fish, we spend a great deal of time talking about how healthy habitats are the key to healthy wildlife populations. Bob hoped to hammer that point home with some in-your-face visual aids.
So two reporters from the Laramie Boomerang, two reporters from the Wyoming Tribune Eagle and a few Game and Fish staff members, including myself, piled into our Expedition and set off to experience a day in the life of a Wyoming pronghorn.
One of the Tribune-Eagle reporters asked me what Game and Fish hoped to gain from offering tours like this.
"We want to show how habitat is the foundation for wildlife, and how and why habitat drives wildlife management. Its all inter-dependent. Habitat drives carrying capacity, or how many animals can survive in a certain area. That in turn affects how Game and Fish manages wildlife. We use habitat as one of the factors affecting how many hunting licenses we issue," I told her.
Our first stop - a school section just north of Highway 34. "It's a race against time," explained Bob. "These animals spend all summer eating, hoping to put on enough fat reserves to help them last through the winter, usually until spring green-up in April. If they don't get enough nutrition through the winter and go through their reserves too quickly, there's only one ending - they die."
Bob picked off a small bit of sagebrush and held it out for our inspection. "Pronghorn need 2.5 pounds of food a day to make it through the winter. This is what one bite would be for a pronghorn. Imagine how hard it is to eat 2.5 pounds when this is the biggest bite you can find."
When pronghorn or other wildlife can't get enough to eat they draw on their energy bank account, the body fat they stored up during the summer.
The "bite" he held in his hand was tiny, probably about half an inch in length and weighing next to nothing. Several years of drought, combined with constant browsing by pronghorn herds in the area have taken their toll on much of the sagebrush and other big game food-source plants in our state.
Rick Straw, a Game and Fish habitat biologist, went on to point out that much of the food the pronghorn needed was crusted in snow, meaning the animals had to spend time and energy pawing at the ground to find suitable forage.
How in the world could an animal possibly get 2.5 pounds of food a day out of this? That would be like me needing to eat 2.5 pounds of food a day, half a peanut at a time, and having to sort through a sandbox to find those peanut halves. It seemed a daunting task.
After some more discussion, we turned to head back to the vehicles. I trudged through the snow, careful to step in the footsteps of the person in front of me so I didn't have to break new ground. A few times I stumbled, barely catching my balance before I toppled over. Occasionally the crusted snow would give out on me and I'd sink into the white stuff up to my knees. By the time we reached the vehicle, I was winded and my hiking boots felt like they were lined with lead. How in the heck did pronghorn do this day in and day out?
Our tour had to be amended when the road to Medicine Bow was closed due to blowing and drifting snow. Ahhh, life in Wyoming in the winter. Unphased, Rick and Bob regrouped and we headed back toward Laramie and the Snowy Range to learn more about mule-deer habitat. Along the way, Rick and Bob explained that plants like sagebrush did more than just provide food for antelope. It provided another important element of habitat, cover, to a whole other host of critters-- sagegrouse, pygmy rabbits and songbirds, just to name a few.
I decided to replenish my own fat reserves by breaking open my bag of Fritos I brought along for lunch. Mmmmm, carbs! Much better than sagebrush, in my humble opinion.
Our last stop of the day was an improptu lesson at a public access point to Sheep Mountain. We had just driven across some pretty nasty roads, the blowing snow making it impossible to see the road in front of us. Grateful for a break in the weather and ready to stretch our legs, the nine of us poured out of the vehicle and hiked a short distance up the hill to look at some mountain mahogany shrubs.
The wind was positively howling. It cut through my clothing layers like one of those TV knives cutting a tin can. My cheeks stung from its bite and my eyes burned behind sunglasses. Snow swirled around us, limiting the visibility. We hadn't been out of the vehicle more than a few minutes and I was freezing. I tried to get out of the wind, if just for a moment, so I could concentrate on what Rick and Bob were saying. But there was little relief.
"Think you could stay the night out here? Think you could make it to dawn if you had to?" Bob asked. "These are the conditions these animals live in, each and every day. Sure, they have fur to help keep them warm, but the point is, they aren't comfortable - they're cold, they're hungry and they are tired. They're racing time, trying to make it until spring. And if they don't have the habitat to support them, they lose the race and we lose lots of animals. That's the reality of life for wildlife in Wyoming."
There's no way. I couldn't make it to dawn. The cold was seeping into my body, numbing my brain and making me a big, whiny baby. I would definitely be the first pronghorn or mule deer to perish-- I'd get picked off by predators because I couldn't keep up with the group, starve to death or just flat-out give up and fall over dead. That's the reality of life for wildlife in Wyoming.
As we concluded the tour and headed back to Cheyenne, I couldn't help but have a new-found respect for our wildlife and what they have to endure. I also contemplated how we as humans, can affect that race against time. Just about everything we do on the landscape has an impact to the habitat these animals depend on.
Are we making the right choices? That's something we'll all need to decide together. But I would ask you this - the next time you're speeding along through this great big, beautiful state of ours, realize that's not just an endless vista out there. It's important, critical habitat: food, water, shelter and space. And habitat means home to Wyoming's 800 species of fish and wildlife. Let's make sure the place we all call home will always have those animals in it.
