Setting Some Bobcats Loose in a Canyon Near Home

The bobcats in June, hostile and ready to go wild.

I not only got to release some bobcats recently, but I got to pick the place, which felt good. 

There was a certain canyon more or less torched by a forest fire nine years ago. Lots of the conifers are gone, except down along the creek where the fire skipped them, but the Gambel oak has sprouted copiously.

Steep slopes, thick brush, lots of rock outcroppings -- and I had been seeing more rock squirrels, etc. It all seemed like good country for an adaptable mesopredator. 

The local wildlife rehabilitators had raised six orphaned kittens over the winter. Now they were full size and full of hatred for civilization and all its works. As they should be.

A couple were "soft-released" — just open the enclosure at the foothills location and let them go.  Two went elsewhere on the national forest. The local district wildife manager (game warden) met my suggestion for the last two with a "Yeah sure, sounds good."

 

M. and I went to the site along with one of the rehabbers—he was mainly interested in getting photos and a chance for some sightseeing.

I set the two live trips down near the stream. I figured that if the first thing the encountered was the water, they would know where to get a drink-- and maybe the creekside area provide good hunting.

Didn't really need the heavy gauntlets, but I was taking no chances.

 

And there goes bobcat number one. A moment after the shutter snapped, it took off running. As it should.

 

The second one followed half a minute later, and our work was done. 

 

These bobcats are not collared or anything. No one knows where they are but themselves. I just hope that the prey base is there and that they are doing all right.

 

As a wildlife-transport volunteer, I am usually bringing birds and animals to one rehabilitation center or another. But setting them loose (when they survive) is even better. 

What to Watch When Herding Buffalo

Close-up of buffalo in a squeeze chute. (Owen Preece for HCN)

High Country News ran this article last March on the work of the "head bison wrangler" at the American Prairie Project in eastern Montana, Pedro Calderon Dominguez: "The Art of Moving a Buffalo."

At American Prairie, Calderon-Dominguez works with about 900 bison, divided into two herds. Each herd grazes at least 25,000 acres. The bison are wild animals, but not, legally, wildlife. Montana classifies them as livestock, and they graze land leased from the Bureau of Land Management for that purpose.

Like any big project in the West, it's not without controversy:

A few months after Calderon-Dominguez moved to Montana, the BLM permitted American Prairie to graze bison on six allotments in Phillips County. The state’s governor and attorney general both petitioned the decision, arguing that public rangelands should be for commercial agriculture. Their protests were denied by the Interior Board of Land Appeals in October 2023, and again on appeal last May.

Calderon-Dominguez tries to reduce the tension by keeping bison off neighboring property. Ranchers have his cellphone number to call if they see open gates, broken fences or off-premise bison, and American Prairie offers compensation for bison-related damage. So far, the group said, no one has ever requested it.

The owner of a now-gone buffalo ranch near me used to say that they could not be herded like cattle. No dogs. No "Yee-haw" wranglers on horseback.  When he wanted to move his herd to a different pasture, he laid a trail of hay through an open gate and just waited. 

Calderon is somewhat similar in approach: 

Moving them anywhere takes patience. When Calderon-Dominguez needs a herd to change directions, for example, he gets close on his ATV. (He said he’d rather ride a horse but cannot do so for insurance reasons.) It’s enough to pressure the bison to move without agitating them. He always watches their body language carefully.

“The way they move an ear, the eye is going to follow. Then the nose is going to follow and then the feet,” said Calderon-Dominguez. “You’re observing that all the time across the whole group of animals.”

When the herd turns in the right direction, Calderon-Dominguez drives away. Knowing when to release the pressure, he explained, is as important as knowing when to apply it.

From Sagebrush Rebellion to Tech Bro Megacities: Someone Always Wants the Public Lands

What a change a week makes. Last week my email blew up with responses to the possible sale of public lands  in the West, thanks to language inserted in the "Big Beautiful Bill" by Senator Mike Lee (R-Deseret). 

Now the bill has passed and been signed by the president but without that language, thanks to a huge outcry by organizations and ordinary Westerners (and others).  

(I don't like huge "omnibus" bills on principle, because who knows what horrors lurk on page 635, but apparently Pres. Trump wanted One Big Bill as a part of the "shock and awe" tactic he has adopted in his second term.)

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers was one of the most involved groups, but as the graphic suggests, it was a multi-headed effort.

“This win belongs to the hunters, anglers, and public landowners who stood up and said loud and clear: Our lands are not for sale,” said Patrick Berry, BHA President and CEO. “BHA members flooded the phone lines, sent emails, rallied their communities, and kept the pressure on until this provision was pulled. We didn’t just show up—we led the charge.”

Some crisis is always invoked to justify taking public lands away. "States can manage them better" was the war cry of the 1980s "Sagebrush Rebellion" during the so-called Energy Crisis. What that really meant was that it would be easier for oil companies etc. to influence state legislators while it would be harder for conservation groups to fight battles in Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, etc all at once. 

Now the war cry is "housing." But at this map that shows the lands identified for sale in Senator Lee's proposal. Housing for cities? For ski-town workers? Or for mountain mini-mansions? Lost forever to hunters, campers, etc.

Condos are often the first step on the home-ownership ladder, but Colorado, for instance, killed condo building by piling too much legal liability risk on builders. So they just stopped building. This year the legislature tried to undo its stupidity with "Governor Pudge" proclaiming that the new  "Construction Defects Law, Ending Years of Gridlock to Build Housing People Can Afford."

Resort towns zone for big houses on big lots while the workers sleep in their cars.

Selling public lands will never be "the fix," but you can bet someone will propose it again.  How about brand-new high-tech cities in the desert? 

The always-radioactive idea of selling off federal land comes and goes from Mesa County [western Colorado] and the environs, where 3 out of every 4 square feet of the high desert is owned by a government. Biting off a piece of forlorn pasture next to a highway exit for an apartment building may be controversial, though it has been done. 

But when the proposals started flying this month for everything from selling the popular Lunch Loops bike trails, to plunking 150,000 new residents down onto a no-rules “Freedom City” of the sage, the tech-bro think tanks floating the edgy concepts are finding that the practical folks of the Western Slope have a few questions.

 There will be more, you can bet on it.