WILDLIFE, A RESOURCE OF THE RANGE

R. J. Costley, P. F. Allan, Odell Julander, D. I. Rasmussen

MANY OF OUR major wildlife species inhabit the range lands. Elk, deer, and antelope normally depend upon the range grasses or the weeds and browse that are associated with them; equally characteristic of the range lands are the prairie chicken and sage grouse, and many rodents, rabbits, and predators.

The existence side by side of these wild creatures and domestic livestock sometimes brings a conflict for forage. Frequently the result has been controversy between persons interested in wildlife and the owners of the livestock, but from experience we know that the stockmen and the sportsmen can meet on a common ground and solve their problems if they have knowledge of the habits and ranges of the animals, the grazing capacity of the land, and the factors of economics and sociology that each kind of range use involves.

Wild animals are a product of the land. The types that occupy any area are an expression of the nature and quantities of food available to them. Nearly as critical as food in determining the range of an animal is the kind and distribution of shelter and water.

The activities of man that bring about a change in the vegetation are soon reflected in a change in the kinds and numbers of animals. As with livestock, various degrees of use by wildlife have often changed the character of a plant cover. Sometimes deer that normally browse more than they graze overuse a cover so badly that the browse has been killed and excellent bunchgrass permitted to spread.

Journals of early travels tell glowingly of the teeming fish and game the pioneers encountered. Most characteristic of the prairie were buffalo, antelope, wolf and coyote, black-footed ferret, prairie chicken, badger, black-tailed jack rabbit, and black-tailed prairie dog.

Not so numerous, perhaps, but equally characteristic in the shrub areas were sage grouse, desert quail, road runners, jack rabbits, and kangaroo rats. These areas often were used by antelope yearlong and were the winter range or the seasonal spring and fall range of the mule deer, the southwestern white-tailed deer, and elk, which moved for the summer to the grasslands that were interspersed with woodland or forest. Besides the deer and the elk that summered there, some other animals that lived in the wooded areas were the bighorn sheep, woodland grouse, wild turkey, pocket gophers, ground squirrels, bobcats, lynx, and pumas.

Throughout the United States are places and topographic features named for the animals the first inhabitants encountered there everyone has gathered wood on an Elk Mountain, drunk from a Deer Springs, fished in Salmon River, camped on Antelope Flat, enjoyed the scenery of Wolf Creek Canyon, irrigated his pasture with water from Buffalo River, or had something to do with Beaver Falls, Bear Mountain, or Goose Creek.

Those early settlers would have had an even more rigorous life had it not been for the venison, smoked fish, buckskin, and buffalo robes that the country supplied.

Much of the country was first explored by trappers in search of untrapped beaver streams, and the early transcontinental railroads depended upon their Buffalo Bills and other professional meat hunters.

Today the wildlife of America has values as important as during the pioneer era. On the national forests of Colorado and eastern Wyoming alone at least 10 million dollars were spent in 1947 just in the pursuit of fish and game, not counting the value of the meat and hides involved. It is often estimated that in some localities every deer is worth $150 or more on the hoof. In the next few years 26 million Americans expect to go hunting and fishing; each year they will spend more than 4 billion dollars.

Just as telling is the value that these creatures of the wild have to people who merely want to see and study them, the commercial value of the enormous annual fur take, the destruction of insects and the distribution of seeds by birds, and the stabilization of streams by beaver.

The different types of range with their characteristic animals were particularly significant to the early stockmen. The choice spots became cropland or hay and pasture lands. Most of the remainder was used as open grazing lands. In a few areas only a few the degree of use of the land has been consistent with its capacity; there the range is still in almost its original state and wild and domestic animals live in relative harmony.

Under heavy grazing or burning, the highest types of grasses disappear, and other plant species invade the range. When use of the vegetation is heavy and continues long enough, only annual grasses and weeds persist. Such a condition undoubtedly brought about the reduction of the number of greater prairie chicken. Damage to the desirable grasses and streamside vegetation adversely affect the sharptailed grouse, beaver, wild turkey, and white-tailed deer, but favor the increase of the ground squirrel, jack rabbits, and some other rodents.

Continued damage to this vegetation encourages shrubs; pricklypear, sagebrush, shadscale, yucca, and mesquite commonly come in. Such changes also result in increases in the number of prairie dogs, ground squirrels, and jack rabbits. Some ranges in relatively poor condition for livestock support many antelope and mule deer because they prefer this invading browse.

One of the notable game species of the southern coastal prairie, the Attwater prairie chicken, is close to extinction because of overgrazing, mowing for hay, and burning.

Although overuse of the range by livestock limits it as a desirable habitat for wildlife, there is abundant evidence that under proper range management satisfactory numbers of game animals can be maintained. Wildlife management and range management, however, must be completely coordinated before this objective can be realized.

Many good range-management practices are also an aid in the production of wildlife the development of range water, deferred and rotation grazing, and range reseeding, the installation of flood-control devices, the control of fire, and other steps followed in watershed protection. Indeed, practically all measures taken to improve watersheds and ranges are steps toward bettering conditions for wildlife.

In general, the management of large acreages in such a way as to shift the trend of vegetation toward its original condition may have more profound effects than the treatment of small areas to solve specific local problems.

Not only does good range management tend to provide favorable conditions for many desirable wildlife species; it tends to lower the number of less desirable ones, such as rodents and rabbits, that are more abundant in low stages of plant succession.

The exact pattern and the intensity of the conflict between livestock and big game varies throughout the country. In many places the conflict has been overemphasized. Usually the different types of grazing animals do not prefer the same kind of plants for food. Deer, for example, take a little grass during the spring and some weeds when they are available, but they are normally browsers. Conversely, cattle and sheep select grasses and weeds. In addition, game animals, when they can, often inhabit different and more inaccessible Parts of the range than do livestock.

On ranges in good condition both livestock and game animals can graze in fairly close harmony. If the range deteriorates, the competition for available forage becomes more severe and eventually the range, the game, and the livestock must suffer.

On some of the white-tail deer ranges of Texas that is the case. There is competition among sheep and goats and deer, although on some of the mule deer ranges of the more mountainous West it is not so pronounced.

An analysis of a sample area in Utah showed that when the range was properly managed and even when all the deer were removed, only 18.7 percent of the forage otherwise consumed by them was available for cattle. Serious conflicts do sometimes occur; however, certain plants, such as bitterbrush, are palatable to all grazing animals. When the bulk of a forage type is made up of such species there is likely to be competition, especially if either animal is present in numbers that more than fully utilize its other preferred forage plants.

Stockmen and wildlife managers have learned that they can never afford to let jointly preferred plant species become overutilized. To do so is to court disaster. Even on range areas where either livestock or game animals graze alone, their numbers must be limited and managed on the basis of the supply of palatable range forage.

A few words about rodents and rabbits are necessary. The effect on the range of the many different kinds of such creatures is quite variable; they often compete in some degree with livestock and big game for the forage produced.

Sometimes the competition is direct and serious, and cannot be ignored by stockmen or biologists. That prairie dogs, for instance, can denude the area around their towns is well known; under some conditions kangaroo rats, ground squirrels, and pocket gophers do damage.

But, as in the case of the deer we mentioned earlier, the damage may be less severe than it appears. Many species live in rocky ledges and other parts of the range not usually frequented by cattle or sheep, and many of the plants they select are not highly palatable to livestock. Besides the point of variable use, hasty observations all too often have obscured the true relation of cause and effect. Frequently many species of range rodents become more numerous as the ranges go downhill. In other words, they are found usually on an area because it is in poor shape the area is not necessarily in poor shape because the rodents are there; in fact, naturalists often regard them as indicators of poor range conditions actually "animal weeds."

Careful students of the problem know that if an operator is seeking to regulate most kinds of rodents on his range he can follow no more effective and inexpensive method than merely being sure that his range is stocked and managed in such a way that it will develop toward the highest type of vegetative cover that can exist on it.

Closely akin to the relationship of livestock to game and rodents and the dependence of all of them upon the range is the problem of predatory animals. Predators have a complex relationship to wildlife and domestic stock, and a controversial one. The main attack on the most important of all predators, the coyote (as is the case with most of the other predators) , comes because he sometimes kills domestic stock; the coyote also feeds on antelope and other desirable species of game. Sometimes, because of special local conditions, there are possibly instances in which all predatory animals should be eliminated from particular areas to protect domestic stock and game.