Through the shimmering heat waves of a midafternoon sunbreak, hundreds of yards across the silent expanse of the Lamar Valley, students can barely see three wolves through a spotting scope. The elusive animals are curled up in the snow, camouflaged against a backdrop of brown sage.
All week long, during a springtime experiential learning course in Yellowstone National Park, students from the University of Washington have been hoping to catch a glimpse of the iconic predator. Now they take turns sharing the scope, each getting a brief but precious look.
It’s the class’s last day in the park, and while this much-hoped-for sighting is the exclamation point on their pilgrimage, the experience has been about so much more than wolves.
Why Yellowstone?
A week of intensive fieldwork followed by a research project and presentation, the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences’ course “Wildlife Conservation in Northwest Ecosystems” teaches UW students about the intertwined ecosystem of America’s oldest national park.
Some students have already done several animal surveys at the UW. Others are just dipping their toes into research and have never even been to a national park. Leading them in the field are professors John Marzluff, a bird expert with a focus on ravens, crows and jays; Aaron Wirsing, who studies how large carnivores shape the behavior of their prey; and Beth Gardner, who uses mathematical models to monitor and manage wildlife, plant and fisheries populations. Together, they teach their students about the rigors of science, life in the field — and what their futures might look like.
Yellowstone has long been a bellwether for scientists to study how ecosystems work. Learning about both wildlife and humans here has given students an experience they’ll bring back to their classrooms in Washington — and to their careers in the wide landscape beyond.
Experience the park
In the vignettes below, read more about who the students met in Yellowstone, the animals they saw and studied, and what they discovered about the challenges and rewards of careers in wildlife management.
On the trail of cougars
Nikki Furner, a UW junior, trudges through mud and snow back to the Hellroaring Creek trailhead. She and the rest of the class just met in the backcountry with Connor Meyer, ’16, who took this very class in 2015 and now works in the park as a wildlife technician.
“When I was on this trip, we got to talk to some of the wildlife technicians, and we were able to help with some research,” says Meyer. “This experience drove me to find a way to come back when I graduated.”
After leading the students on a hike to the remnants of a cougar-killed elk, Meyer explained how he helps monitor cougar populations in the park. He also gave the class a glimpse into how they might track and gather data on wild animals someday.
“Going to Yellowstone with wildlife biologists is like going behind the scenes of a play,” says Furner. She definitely sees a future doing fieldwork, she adds.
For students like Furner, learning about predators is one thing. But seeing — and tracking, listening, collecting data and asking questions of experts in the field — is believing.
Predators and ecosystems
Lessons from Yellowstone are often applied in our own state. Researchers who want to know how wolf recovery and grizzly reintroduction might influence Washington ecosystems can turn to what experts have learned from the park: What has worked? What hasn’t? Where do conflicts between people and predators develop? When it comes to very wild places that can teach us how ecosystems work, Yellowstone is king.
Following elk, gathering data
It’s 7:08 a.m. Professor Wirsing and students Andrew Wang, Jenny Brent, Hannah Booth and Suzannah Yu crouch behind snow-covered sagebrush and spy on a group of elk on a ridge across the Yellowstone River. They’re gathering data for a project Wirsing has been running since 2012. How do elk behave in relation to their landscape? Their herd size? Their position in the herd?
Booth keeps the scope on a single elk for 15 minutes, noting every 30 seconds what it’s doing: “Foraging.” “Bedded.” “Vigilant.” Yu keeps the time, and Wang notes the behaviors. Field research like this is often tedious, painstaking and uncomfortable. But once those 15 minutes are up, there’s a sense of accomplishment. It may be one sheet of data among sheaths, but it’s important — and the students have contributed.
Knowing what we don’t know
Decades of research in Yellowstone have produced a treasure trove of information — and exposed research gaps. Scientists need to identify what they don’t know to help wildlife managers make better plans. Take the case of the elk: Biologists are still learning how many animals Yellowstone can support, and ongoing research is critical.
Ravens in search of a meal
Professor Marzluff and a group of students have pulled over at Blacktail Pond. Some 150 yards from the road, a grizzly is feasting on the remains of a bison that plunged through thin ice and drowned over the winter — then was dragged out in the spring for an easy meal.
Ravens fight over the scraps of another unfortunate bison nearby, and coyotes lurk as they wait their turn. Marzluff “translates” the ravens’ vocalizations: “That one’s begging. That one’s asserting dominance. That one’s just been pecked.”
The students are in the middle of a bird survey. They’re shuttled every half-mile to make note of how many ravens, magpies, golden eagles and bald eagles they see. They’ve stopped to watch the grizzly, but soon they’ll return to their data quest, adding to a decades-deep database that shows scavenger dispersal throughout the park. It’s valuable information: Scientists can use it to look into where scavengers go, when and why.
It’s in the details
Field science requires true commitment. Students listen intently for crows, jays and magpies, jotting down minute details: temperature, wind strength and cloud cover. It’s arduous and detail-oriented work. Students find this out quickly during the class, gaining key insights about whether or not this is the right career path for them.
Finding common ground
High up in Montana’s Tom Miner Basin, rimmed by peaks that approach 10,000 feet, the Anderson Ranch is just a few miles north of the Yellowstone border. Inevitably, wild animals migrate in and out of the park — some making their homes on the ranch, some just passing through. The basin is also home to a growing collective of ranchers who work to coexist with wild animals. Hilary Anderson is one of them.
On a blustery day, she explains best practices for raising livestock on land that predators frequent: Fladry — brightly colored flags strung up on property borders — serves as a visual deterrent to wolves. Moving dead livestock away from a herd, or vice versa, is an example of carcass management, and it aims to put distance between living livestock and hungry scavengers. And finally, there’s range riding: traveling the acreage via horse, demonstrating a human presence and keeping predators at bay.
Anderson also speaks to the value of working to find common ground among the basin’s residents, a crucial step to overcoming widely different opinions on how to handle an increase in predator levels. Building trust, she explains, is invaluable.
“But how do you win people over to your side?” a student asks.
“By not making it a side,” Anderson says.
The human landscape
Even the best management practices fail if they don’t consider the needs of people living in the ecosystem. Park biologists and ranchers tell students directly: There are conflicts over how to manage parks for both people and wildlife. Many new researchers don’t have that perspective, which limits how well they build trust with locals in the field — and which, in turn, can affect the success of their science.
Back home in Washington
In late May 2017, the students reconvene in Anderson Hall on the UW campus. They’ve spent weeks preparing presentations that demonstrate how research in Yellowstone is relevant to Washingtonians.
One group of students from the course has analyzed how human roads and trails affect the hunting habits of wolves and cougars, and what this might mean as our state’s wolf population continues to recover and expand. Another group has looked at the dining habits of scavengers such as ravens, eagles and bears, making predictions about how those populations might fluctuate as wolf populations grow — and what the effect of climate change might be on scavengers’ diets.
A third group has studied bison migration inside and outside Yellowstone, as well as the complexities, worries and politics involved.
Junior Hannah Booth’s big takeaway is that, whether it’s about wildlife management in Yellowstone or here in Washington, “There’s room for education on both sides of any conservation debate.”
This education includes UW students. During their week in the wild, they explored Yellowstone’s plateaus and valleys alongside scientists. They studied the varied landscape of the region’s wildlife management policies. And they gathered data themselves, demonstrating that what they’ve learned in America’s oldest national park can inform the work they do back at the UW — and in their future careers in wildlife management.
Continue your journey
Experience the sights and sounds of Yellowstone through the eyes of UW students.
Yellowstone Student Experience
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