How wildland springs affect mule deer population dynamics studied by CABNR

Kelley Stewart lab looked at mule deer in arid environments, particularly juvenile survival

Led by CABNR associate professor Kelley Stewart, a team of scientists and students capture, study and release mule deer in their research to quantify the effects of springs and cattle-watering stations on juvenile mule deer populations.

By Robyn Feinberg
Nevada Today

In 2008, Kelley Stewart, a large mammal ecologist in the College of Agriculture, Biotechnology and Natural Resources, started a project looking at how wildlife guzzlers, or springs, affected population dynamics of mule deer.

"The park service was trying to decide if they wanted to allow California Department of Fish and Wildlife to turn deactivated water sites into water developments for wildlife" Stewart, associate professor in the College of Agriculture, Biotechnology and Natural Resources, said.

"We were asked to determine how important those water sites were for mule deer. We did that for eight years, and had some really interesting information not only on water and how water developments help wildlife, but a lot of it became timing of precipitation and timing of green-up and how that affected juvenile and adult survival and helping those populations persist."

"Green-up" refers to the beginning of a new cycle of plant growth following winter. The research conducted at the Mojave National Preserve in Southern California, in the Mojave Desert completed in 2017.

Decommissioned cattle watering sites studied

Before the research began in this area, the U.S. National Park Service put out a request for research because of the wells that were left behind when the cattle allotments were purchased from cattlemen and troughs that had been maintained for cattle were decommissioned. They required an environmental assessment of the effect of the wells before the California Department of Fish and Wildlife could change anything.

"Right before I got hired here, two colleagues, Jim Sedinger, professor in the natural resources department, and Vern Bleich, emeritus biologist from California Department of Fish and Wildlife, put in a proposal to look at the effects of providing water to mule deer," Stewart said. "When I got here, I took over the project, and I got to run with it because I was hired as the large-mammal ecologist in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Science.

"I wrote a more detailed proposal describing the experiment to test the effects of provision of water on mule deer population dynamics. It was really exciting to get here and have this project kind of ready to go, so I designed the experiment for the study on how we could experimentally manipulate water availability and test the effects on mule deer populations."

Stewart's particular interest was in the juvenile mule deer population.

"When we looked at juveniles, we captured neo-natal mule deer, fawns, and put small, expandable collars on them and monitored their survival," she said. "We started doing that right as we entered the four-year drought that we just recently went through, and so survival was pretty low. In fact, the lowest deer survival rate was about 19 percent for the year, and then in 2016, when we had this great winter, we had really good rains between January and March, which translated into really good green-up that spring, and survival went to about 70 percent."

"So, the drought had a really huge effect on that population, and that pulse of water, which of course affected vegetation, affected nutrition, which helped those females be in better shape to be able to pull off those offspring," Stewart said.

While Stewart's team had originally been studying water sources in terms of survival and importance to deer, they found that the green-up in 2016 also played a pivotal role.

Maintenance of water in the desert

"Maintenance of water is probably really important for a lot of populations in the desert, including species we didn't work on, like mountain sheep and desert tortoises, but really, that timing of green up, and the timing of the amount of green up in the spring, also had a big effect on survival of juveniles," Stewart said. "And juvenile survival is the life-history characteristic that varies the most, and has the biggest effect on changes in populations."

Stewart and her team looked more closely at juvenile mule deer because their general survival rate is lower than fully grown mule deer, so their population can be affected easily.

"Adult survival has a very big effect on population growth. You can tweak it just a little bit, and it has a big effect on the population, but adult survival tends to be pretty high and doesn't vary that much," Stewart said. "So generally, if you make it to be an adult, you're pretty good, but the fawns, we lost the majority of them in the first month of life, and if you get them through that first winter, get them recruited into the adult population, then they tended to survive for a long time. Increasing juvenile survival is where you can actually tweak things to help the population, much more than trying to affect adults."

Stewart's overall research showed the importance of water to mule deer survival rates, with strong selection for areas closer to sources of water. They also saw strong effects of timing of precipitation on survival of fawns, as well as size at birth playing an important role in survival. Stewart said that while the U.S. Park Service is determining what to do with those water developments since the conclusion of the research, she advocates for keeping the water available.

Through the duration of the project, Stewart trained three graduate students who have all since gone into wildlife careers. The research also culminated in three research papers so far, including "Timing of precipitation in an arid environment: Effects on populations performance of a large herbivore" (2018) and "Spatial distributions and resource selection by mule deer in an arid environment: Responses to provision of water" (2015).

The team has another research paper in review, titled "Resources selection by female mule deer: tradeoffs associated with reproduction."

Stewart is planning to continue research on mule deer populations, and has just begun a new study in collaboration with the Nevada Department of Wildlife involving the effects of removing pinyon-juniper trees on habitat selection and use by mule deer. Stewart has always been interested in large mammals, especially the interaction between population dynamics and effects of herbivory on vegetation and, in turn, the whole ecosystem.

Stewart received her bachelor's degree from the University of California, Davis and her master's from Texas A&M University - Kingsville, where she worked in the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute. She received her doctorate from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where she worked in the Department of Biology and Wildlife and the Institute of Arctic Biology.

Water plan being developed for Mojave National Preserve

Restored game guzzler near Goffs, March 25, 2009. (Chris S. Ervin)

By KAREN JONAS, staff writer
Barstow Desert Dispatch

MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE • The National Park Service is seeking public input for a plan to manage water sources in the Mojave National Preserve.

The plan will focus on what will be done about abandoned above-ground water sources — such as abandoned wells, former stock ponds, springs, previous development by ranchers, and artificial water sources for wildlife that are already in use, said Linda Slater, public information officer for the Mojave National Preserve. The proposed plan also includes water sources below ground.

Slater said that many of the ranchers who previously used the preserve are now gone and have left behind many of their abandoned water structures. The preserve needed to develop a comprehensive plan so it already has a game plan when it comes to water issues instead of resolving issues on a case-by-case basis.

The plan will most likely include at least four alternatives developed with the help of public comment — including taking no action on the water sources, said Slater.

The large water sources mainly affect bighorn sheep and mule deer, said Slater. The artificial water sources were mainly intended for bighorn sheep and are currently maintained by a bighorn sheep conservationist group, said Slater.

A study was started in 2008 to determine the effect on mule deer when water sources were opened for them, said Slater. Researchers would shut off water sources and turn them on again over periods of time. They fitted mule deer with radio tracking collars to determine their location when the water sources were either off or on. The study is still underway and Slater did not have preliminary results on Friday.

The plans to possibly open up more water sources to wildlife is complex and the preserve wants to make sure that it isn’t locked into anything that would lead to problems, said Slater. She said the scientist who is leading the study on the mule deer wants the plan to be flexible, so it can be adapted as more information is gathered on the complex relationship between water and wildlife.

It will most likely be months before the plan is put into place, said Slater. There will be a number of scoping meetings in nearby areas, including one in Barstow this June. Public comments on the plan will be accepted until July 11 and an environmental impact statement will be developed after the public comment period is over.

For more information on the plan, visit http://bit.ly/mchHE3

East Mojave Mule Deer Research Project

Kelley M. Stewart, Assistant Professor, University of Nevada Reno

Vernon C. Bleich, Adjunct Professor, University of Nevada Reno

Debra J. Hughson, National Park Service

Neal Darby, National Park Service

California Deer Association

A mule deer doe released after capture. (Kelley Stewart)

Water is thought to be an resource for wildlife species in desert ecosystems. If water is limiting, then provision of water must increase survival or reproduction for individuals in areas with free standing water available all year. State and federal agencies in the western United States have used water developments as a component of management of wildlife habitats in arid and desert regions since the 1940s.

Considerable effort, from state agencies and sportsmen’s organizations, is focused on providing water in areas where it is believed to be limited and may benefit populations of wildlife. With increases in urbanization and demand for water by human populations, many springs that once were available for wildlife have run dry and no longer provide free standing water. For example, some springs near Las Vegas, Nevada that had provided water for populations of wildlife, have not done so for the last 10+ years.

Water developments are likely becoming more important for sustaining populations of wildlife in arid regions of the western United States. There is controversy associated with water developments. Some people claim that they do not benefit wildlife or are detrimental to populations of wildlife by concentrating animals and providing opportunities for predators.

Mule deer occur throughout Western North America and require relatively large areas for viable populations, especially in desert ecosystems where resources such as food and water are scarce and widely distributed. Certainly the distribution, abundance, and seasonal availability of water affect the distribution of mule deer across the landscape.

Mule deer are an important game species for sportsmen and have aesthetic value for those who enjoy observing wildlife. Mule deer also are good indicator species of changes in habitat quality and ecosystem health, which is in part why we selected mule deer for the species to study with this project.

Cattle have been grazed in the Mojave Desert for more than 100 years, and ranchers used a system of wells to provide water for livestock. Many of those artificial sources of water were present in the Preserve when it was created in 1994. From 1998 to 2002, grazing allotments in MojaveNational Preserve were purchased, retired and donated to the National Park Service. When those allotments were retired, numerous water sources for livestock were deactivated within the Preserve.

Many of those water sources had been available to native wildlife for periods in excess of a century. Loss of those water sources generated controversy among sportsmen’s and environmental organizations about how loss of those wells affected populations of wildlife.

In 2004, Safari Club International(SCI), in cooperation with California Department of Fish and Game (DFG), Quail Unlimited, California DeerAssociation, Mule Deer Foundation,Desert Wildlife Unlimited, and the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep, proposed to reactivate 12 retired wells to provide water for mule deer and other species of wildlife. The National Park Service (NPS) undertook an environmental assessment to address whether to grant the permit to retrofit those wells. The result of the environmental assessment was for a science-based research project to determine the existence and extent of benefit for artificial water sources for mule deer and other species of wildlife.

The University of Nevada Reno answered the call for proposals for the research project. In cooperation with NPS, SCI, and DFG, we designed an experiment to address the effects of provision of water for mule deer and other wildlife. We reactivated six wells and included several developed springs in an area designed to have permanent water available to compare with another area where the wells were kept off. We will compare areas with and without permanent sources of water and examine movement patterns, reproduction, body condition, and food availability in each of those experimental areas. We also included a ‘control area’ that will be monitored, but remain unchanged throughout the study.

The study has a 10-year duration, years 1 to 5 will include the comparison of areas with and without permanent sources of water, and those that have water available all year. During phase 2 of the project, years 6 to 10, we will turn on the wells in the area without permanent water and will compare effects on the mule deer herd before and after water was made available. With this study we hope to answer the question of whether provision of water in Mojave Preserve is beneficial to mule deer populations and provide both the National Park Service and California DFG with information regarding the value of continuing to provide artificial sources of water in the Preserve and other arid regions of the West.

Many western states spend many hours and dollars providing water for wildlife, and management agencies from several states are interested in the results of this project. Indeed, the Nevada Department of Wildlife felt that this research was relevant to its needs and provided funding for a portion of the project. Support also has been received from California Deer Association and the Golden Gate Chapter of SCI.

The first 5-year portion of the study began in 2008. Six wells were turned on in the “water available” study areas during September and October. The movements and reproduction of mule deer in those two study areas and the ‘control’ area will be compared. During January of 2008 and 2009, we captured mule deer with a netgun fired from a helicopter. Netguns are an effective way to catch mule deer, and in Mojave National Preserve the “gunner” has his work cut out for him when trying to catch deer while avoiding cactus and Joshua trees.

Using the helicopter, deer were brought back to base camp where we collected data and placed radio collars on them. The radio collars are used to determine movement patterns and use of water sources in the Preserve. We are using GPS-type collars in Mojave Preserve. Those collars obtain highly accurate locations of mule deer about 7 times a day, so we have very detailed data on movements of deer in the Preserve. The only drawback is that the collars store all of the locations on the collar, known as store-on-board collars, so we have to get the collar back at the end of the year to have access to that data.

Collars are programmed to drop off the deer at a specified time and then they transmit a signal so technicians are able to go out into the Preserve and find the collars. We have just recently obtained the collars from last year, and next winter we will locate the collars that we placed in January to examine movements of deer in relation to the recently reactivated water sites.

We have a remote camera located at each water site that is monitored with this study and several sites in the nonwatered area. Some of the cameras were purchased by NPS for their ongoing camera study, which we have incorporated into this project. Several of the cameras were purchased by SCI, and are currently in use on the Preserve for this study.

The cameras record use of our treatment areas by mule deer so we can use them throughout the year to identify our deer at the water sites. The cameras also record use of the wells by other species of wildlife, such as many species of birds, including hawks and owls, and several small mammals and reptiles. Another criticism of water developments is that they only benefit ‘game’ species, although to date many non-game species have been photographed using these water sources.

We examined captured deer for physical condition and pregnancy using ultrasound technology. Using ultrasound we are able to measure the amount of fat on several areas of the body, which is a good index to how good or poor condition the animal is in. Using ultrasound we also determined if females were pregnant and if they were carrying twins or single fetuses. We are able to get accurate measurements of fetuses to determine health of the offspring and determine the stage of gestation, similar to human women visiting the doctor for ultrasound during pregnancy. By determining physical condition and numbers of offspring we are able to assess the health of the mule deer herds in the different study areas.

In January 2008, we captured 18 mule deer: 15 does, 2 bucks, and a yearling doe. We captured 6 deer in the control area, 7 in the study area that will have water provided, and 5 in the no-permanent-water study area. Since the experiment had not yet been set up — water sources were turned on later in the year — we used the initial data to obtain an overall idea of demography. We checked for the pregnancy of those females and 94% (15 of the 16 females, including the yearling) were pregnant. Of those 15 females, 73% were carrying twins. Twinning is an excellent indicator of overall quality of the habitat and health of the population.

During January 2009, we captured 30 does, and 1 juvenile (born spring 2008). Several of those deer were recaptured from last year to remove old radio collars. We captured 27 new individuals, 9 does were captured in the control area, 10 in the watered area, and 8 does in the area without permanent sources of water. We tested 28 of those deer for pregnancy, and 93% of those females (26 of 28) were pregnant, but only 14% were carrying twins. We suspect that because 2008 was a very dry autumn compared with 2007, fewer sources of food were available for deer as they entered the breeding season, and possibly resulted in a lower twinning rate. We need to examine more years of data following future captures to determine the relationship between water developments, precipitation, and availability of food to understand those effects of pregnancy rates, twinning rates, and condition of deer in this population.

Since data on deer in 2008 were collected before the experiment was fully set up, we cannot compare the different study areas yet. We are looking forward to examining differences among deer in the different study areas next winter.

University of Nevada Reno is primarily a place of learning and one of the attributes of this study is that students receive training on handling of wildlife, collection of data, and design of experiments. We are currently training a Master’s level graduate student on this project, and several undergraduates have accompanied us on our captures to gain experience handling wild deer in a field setting.

This project is the result of years of effort by concerned sportsmen’s groups to restore historical water sources to areas from which they had been removed. Safari Club International, California Deer Association, and the Society for the Conservation of Bighorn Sheep have led this effort.

The project is necessary because restoration of historical water sources as described in the environmental assessment approved for that action must be fully evaluated in terms of the Grateful Nation responses of mule deer to the provision of water.

Deer Hunt Zone (D-17), in which the study area is located, produces on average the largest trophies (as determined by proportions of 3-point, 4-point, and 5-or-more-point bucks) of all zones in California. Hunter success is not the highest in California, but trophy quality is outstanding and the zone sells out on an annual basis. Restoration of water sources in the study area has important implications for conservation of mule deer, and maintaining high-quality recreational hunting in that area.

Finally, collaboration is the key to any successful venture and this project has evolved into a huge collaborative effort. Collaborators include state agencies: University of Nevada Reno, California Department of Fish and Game, Nevada Department of Wildlife; a federal agency: National Park Service; and Conservation Organizations: Safari Club International, Golden Gate Chapter Safari Club International, and California Deer Association.

Conservationists restore East Mojave guzzlers

Guzzler #S-18 near Goffs, California. (Chris Ervin)

by Leslie Ervin
Exclusive Field Report

Goffs, CA -- The Goffs Cultural Center provided camping facilities for an important work group during the weekend of March 27-29. Cliff McDonald of Needles, California, and XX of his volunteers staged their operations at Goffs while they made day trips to repair five wildlife water guzzlers in the area.

What is a wildlife water guzzler, you ask? Guzzlers come in many shapes and sizes and are made of different materials depending on the wildlife population they are intended to serve. The ones in this area consist of a concrete slab that collects rainwater and funnels it into an underground tank. The tank is covered and has a sloped opening that allows animals and other creatures to walk in and out to reach the water. Guzzlers are vital to desert wildlife like deer, bobcat, coyote, cougar, quail, bighorn sheep, and desert tortoise.

Most of the local guzzlers were built decades ago and over time they develop cracks and collect debris, which makes them less effective. Cliff’s volunteers come prepared with trucks full of equipment to make the appropriate repairs. The work first involves prepping the pad. Chippers are used to clean off the old sealant and then QUIKRETE concrete bonding adhesive is applied to the cracks. Two coats of Merlex are then applied over 24 hours to seal the pad so the water runs down into the underground water tank. The tank is also cleaned out and tortoise nets are installed so the tortoises can get out of the tank.

On Saturday, my husband Chris and I were interested in witnessing this work firsthand, so we took a break from our weeding at Goffs and drove to the closest worksite, just two miles up Mountain Springs Road. When we arrived at guzzler #S-18, they had already fixed the cracks in the pad and were cleaning out the tank. Since this guzzler happened to be in a particularly lush area of spring flowers, we wandered around a bit to take photos. When we returned, they had finished sealing the pad and were moving on to the next work site. You can see how nice the guzzlers look when they finish.

Finished guzzler #S-18. (Leslie Ervin)

The group assembled at Goffs consisted of volunteers from the High Desert Chapter #759 of Quail Unlimited, the California Foundation for North American Wild Sheep, and…. On Saturday and Sunday they divided into work groups and headed out to the guzzlers. They even brought along a cooking crew who whipped up such delicacies as eggs and elk sausage and elk burgers. Those of us fortunate enough to be at Goffs during that time enjoyed exchanging sleepy pre-dawn greetings and friendly waves as their caravans rolled back into camp at the end of the day.

Cliff has been the driving force behind restoration of water sources inside the Mojave National Preserve and surrounding areas. He coordinates with groups like Quail Unlimited, the Safari Club, the Bureau of Land Management, and California Fish and Game to accomplish this important work. He was recently honored with a $5,000 grant as one of three finalists in the 2009 Budweiser Conservationist of the Year Award sponsored by Budweiser and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF).

If you are interested in helping this worthy cause by volunteering or making a donation, you can contact Cliff at 760-326-2935.

Needles man up for conservation award

San Bernardino Sun

Cliff McDonald, a tenacious Needles hunter-conservationist who almost single handedly beat back the National Park Service's attempt to remove all man-made water sources from the Mojave National Preserve, has been named one of four finalists for the Budweiser Conservationist of the Year award.

The award carries a $50,000 prize and just being a finalist means McDonald will win at least $5,000 to further his efforts.

Besides battling former Park Superintendent Mary Martin over the shutting down of over 100 water sources used by wildlife in the preserve, and eventually winning, McDonald has now been at the forefront of organizing manpower, equipment and money to refurbish and restore the water sources that were shut down and those that were degrading. It was also at his prodding that the Park Service agreed to study the importance and impact of these water sources of wildlife, focusing the study on desert mule deer.

"Thanks to Cliff's persistence and quality volunteer service, the National Park Service has not only withdrawn its resistance but has gradually become a participant and supporter of the effort to provide these important water sources," said Anna Siedman of Safari Club International. "In the East Mojave, Cliff is wildlife's greatest champion."

It was also announced this week that McDonald won the Californian of the Year Award given by the Outdoor Writers Association of California (OWAC) for his efforts in the Mojave.

Jerry Springer, a long-time California writer and hunter who runs the online magazine WesternHunter.com from his Fresno home, nominated McDonald for the OWAC award.

"This all started in the fall of 2002 when it became obvious to Cliff that something bad was going on in the Preserve," Springer said. "He saw empty water tanks and started asking questions and found out that the staff of the Preserve was allowing over 100 water sources to go dry.

"That's when McDonald started his one-man campaign of letter writing, testifying at numerous meetings and informing wildlife organizations, in his attempt to save the wildlife of the Preserve."

When McDonald first started his restoration efforts, it was just him and a couple of buddies from Needles filling gamebird guzzlers with water or making sure desert springs had pools of water where wildlife could drink.

Today, McDonald's e-mail list of helpers is over 400 individuals long, and he's pulled together groups and individuals to create a diverse coalition.

He's managed to have Quail Unlimited, California Deer Association, Safari Club, and Society for the Conservation of Bighorn Sheep volunteers working together on "McDonald projects," as they've come to be called.

There was and really is no name for McDonald's "group." In fact, the group is doing a major work project this weekend at Camp Cady, a state wildlife area east of Barstow.

Since McDonald started the effort, the group has repaired and refurbished 52 guzzlers and six springs, contributed more than 3,200 hours of labor, and raised more than $22,000 worth of equipment and materials for these efforts.

The list for this coming year of work is already long, targeting 40 guzzlers for repairs on and off the Preserve. There are also plans hatching for the installation of new water sources for wildlife.

Five grand will be a big help toward that work. But $50,000 would be enormous. McDonald will turn either amount into about 10 times their value in on-the-ground effort. You can count on that.

The public votes on the four finalists on the Budweiser Web site, determining who gets the $50,000. While the site wasn't set up to accept votes yet or the process delineated, I'll keep you posted on when the voting opens.

Water For Wildlife Guzzler Repair
Mojave National Preserve
December 2007



This video is about Water For Wildlife, a group of volunteers who maintain the water guzzlers in the Mojave NP in CA. This repair was on the B-18 guzzler near Goffs CA.

The work involves prepping the pad, the big flat part that catches the rain first. Chippers are used to clean off the old sealant and then Quickcrete concrete bonding adhesive is applied to the cracks. 2 coats or Merlex are then applied over 24 hours to seal the pad so the water all runs down into the underground water tank. The tank is also cleaned out and tortoise nets are installed so the tortoises can get out of the tank.

These water guzzlers are vital to the desert wildlife like the deer, bobcat, coyote, cougar, quail, bighorn sheep and desert tortoise.

Great food was served by the group and a raffle was held Saturday night to raise money for supplies to maintain the guzzlers.

Temps were in the low 40s at night and 60s during the day.

Huge thanks go out to CDA (California Deer Association), QU (Quail Unimited) SCBS (Society for the Conservation of Bighorn Sheep), SCI (Safari Club International), Bass Pro, DFG, BLM, PCOC (Predator Caller of Orange Co.), CA FNAWS and other groups that supplied gear, volunteers or other help.

We need more volunteers and it's a great campout in the desert.

For more info on Water For Wildlife please contact Cliff McDonald at 760-326-2935.

Utah governor stakes a claim on roads

The idea is to keep the byways open for energy drilling and recreation

By Patty Henetz
The Salt Lake Tribune

Federally posted closure signs on roads that cross federal land in Utah have prompted the Governor's Office to invoke state laws to keep them open. (Associated Press file photo)

Employing a 2-year-old state law for the first time, the Governor's Office is claiming ownership of roads that cross federal lands as a way to keep them open to off-highway recreation and oil and gas drilling.

The maneuver, which relies on a bill sponsored by Kanab Republican Rep. Mike Noel that passed during the 2003 and 2006 legislative sessions, could be a tidy way to skirt federal law.

Or it could set up yet another expensive series of courtroom fights and ratchet up the New West's already intractable civil war over wilderness and access to some of Utah's most beautiful wildlands.

The state law allows counties to record the roads on their master land documents. Federal agencies, organizations and other members of the public have 60 days to protest the action in state court. If no one protests, the county assumes ownership of the right of way.

In its first action under the 2006 Noel bill, the state's Public Lands Policy Coordination Office has sent a list of 60 Class B roads to Box Elder County for recording, and will do the same with 23 more counties by mid-summer, said coordinator John Harja. Salt Lake, Weber, Davis and Cache counties have opted out of the program, and Morgan County doesn't have any affected public lands, he said.

"We're recording [our] belief we have a property interest," Harja said. "We are putting the [U.S. Bureau of Land Management] and the rest of the world on notice."

Heidi McIntosh, conservation director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and an attorney, expressed some wariness about possible legal precedents the state's new efforts could set. During 2006 House floor debate, Rep. Jacki Buskupski, D-Salt Lake City, called the bill an "open invitation to further litigation."

Glenn Carpenter, manager of the BLM's Salt Lake City field office, acknowledged the arguments but wasn't keen to be drawn into the politics of the state's action.

Carpenter was a defendant in a federal court case filed by an OHV group, the Utah Shared Access Alliance, over his decision to close portions of Box Elder County to OHVs in 1999 to protect critical deer and sage grouse habitat. Shared Access Alliance, defeated in district and appellate courts, tried again with the U.S. Supreme Court, but the court refused the case.

Carpenter said he was aware of the 60-road list Harja's office sent to Box Elder County in mid-December, but had no plans to protest. Besides, he said, the U.S. government is sovereign. "We're bound by federal law," he said.

For now, the lists focus on Class B roads, which are graded, graveled, open to general use and generally noncontroversial. Harja said he expected to have all the B roads by mid-summer, and then start on Class D roads.

That's when hostilities between wilderness advocates, energy developers and OHV users could erupt in court, McIntosh said.

Class D roads - which include recognizable two-tracks, but also meandering livestock paths, abandoned pathways oil and gas drillers once used for seismic exploration and even narrow trails across creeks - are the real front lines in the access war, she said.

"People are going to be furious," McIntosh said. "What's driving this is wilderness. That's something the counties have long tried to fight."

Wilderness designation depends in part on the public lands' roadlessness. In opposing wilderness, counties point to generations of driving the disputed byways as a way to continue motorized access on federal lands.

Road claims rest on Revised Statute 2477, a Civil War-era mining law that granted rights of way across public land. Congress repealed the law in 1976, but grandfathered in existing claims. In 2005, a federal appeals court ruled that such ownership claims were dictated by state law. In Utah, that means proving the road was in continual use for 10 years prior to 1976.

The counties have gotten road-claim help from the state, which through the now-defunct Constitutional Defense Council and now the Public Lands Policy office, has spent $9.6 million since 2001 in legal and other fees on road claims, according to Harja. The money, allocated by the Legislature, comes from royalties paid on oil and gas drilling on state land.

Even though public money has supported the Public Lands office's information gathering, and even though the information is being used in both federal lawsuits and the state claims on behalf of the counties, Harja's office won't make the work public before the lists are sent to the recorders. And under a confidentiality agreement crafted in 2000, participating counties are forbidden from sharing the information with the public.

Such evidence was part of a federal lawsuit seeking ownership of old roads across federal land in six rural counties that the state recently withdrew.

Roger Fairbanks, the assistant attorney general who oversees R.S. 2477 claims, said the state abandoned Utah v. United States because the six Class B roads at issue in Beaver, Box Elder, Emery, Uintah, Washington and Wayne counties weren't really threatened with closure.

SUWA agrees with the decision, but will continue to fight the state's federal lawsuits to claim roads in Canyonlands National Park, the San Rafael Swell and the Deep Creek Mountains.

Fairbanks said the state doesn't seek to bulldoze the areas. "We don't want to destroy the environment," he said. "On the other hand, we don't think roads should be closed."

In the west desert Deep Creek Mountains, Snake Valley residents want to drive in Granite Canyon, where about a mile of the road is in a wilderness study area near Ibahpah Creek.

"All the locals want to do is open the road to Camp Ethel," Fairbanks said.

Thirty years of outdoor writing

Commentary

By JIM MATTHEWS
Outdoor News Service
www.outdoornewsservice.com

To the best of my recollection, I’ve been doing this column since the latter 1970s, thirty-something years. I know there are some of you who’ve been reading nearly the whole time because when we bump into each other somewhere, you remind me of a column from years ago.

I know you’ve been reading a long time because you talk to me like we are old friends (or old enemies). How you can recognize me from the little photos that have run with the column for decades, I don’t have a clue, but you don’t have to tell me I look older than in those photos. I am older, but so are you.

You usually mention a column about my family or dogs, the personal ones. I think they hit close to home for you and resonate. Talking about the importance of family and marriage, and hunting and fishing, is increasingly the antithesis of everything that is politically correct.

But we know that the fundamental breakdown in American society today relates to the breakdown of the traditional family, about the inability of anyone to take responsibility, and the distance we’ve moved away from the land. It’s not complex at all, but there are whole agencies whose sole purpose is to cloud issues.

We desperately hope our children don’t make up the last generation that understands personal responsibility and the thrill of catching wild trout from a beaver pond on a fly rod. The two go hand-in-hand because there comes a point when you have to decide if you’re going to eat the trout or let it go. It’s like so many choices in life: simple but wrought with consequences on so many fronts. Frankly, I don’t know how I’ve gotten away with writing about it so long.

When this column first began, Southern California newspapers often had two or three pages devoted to traditional outdoor sports -- fishing and hunting. Some of the smaller daily newspapers are lucky to have that much space for an entire sports section today, thanks to newsprint and ink costs and corporate ownership that would rather squeeze more blood from the publishing turnip than actually serve, inform, and entertain readers. We are among the last generation of newspaper readers anyway. The demographics of those who read print versions are gray.

When I was a kid, Sunday morning meant an early trip to church, and then crepe-thin pancakes made by my dad, stacked up five or six deep, and slathered with peanut butter and syrup. It meant all of us sprawled all over the living room reading different sections of the Sunday newspaper, passing them around, and a day together.

Our house transformed from the bustling train station that it seemed every other day of the week into a lounging, luxury resort of reading, discussion, ideas, and games. The television was only allowed on for three things on Sunday, Dodgers’ baseball, that wonderful old American Sportsman show with Curt Gowdy, and The World of Disney. Sunday was what I imaged every day of a cruise would be like. The newspaper was the centerpiece.

Some things have changed a lot over the past 30 years. There are more political threats to hunting and fishing than ever before, and there is a growing contingent of politicians who believe guns are intrinsically evil and want to do away with them, but most of the outdoor things I like have not changed much.

Depending on the weather, more than anything else, I still get to miss my share of doves and upland birds every year. Public land hunting in California still ranks up there as some of the best in the nation when we have wet winters. Unless we put wind turbines on all our public lands, I don’t imagine this hunting will get much worse, either. Here’s the asterisk to that comment: The former superintendent of the Mojave Preserve, Mary Martin, probably did more in one year to reduce quail populations in our deserts by removing cattle water than all of the development in the desert has over the past 30 years. And her move was more damaging to those of us who hunt and watch wildlife because it was all on public land, where we all have access. We have to remain vigilant for these kinds of threats.

Deer populations are at the bottom of the barrel throughout Southern California because biologists still believe deer are at carrying capacity of the land. Maybe. But we can increase K, as they call it. But no one has any interest in management, so fire is the only positive influence we have on the herds. Things can only get better for deer, and they are right now -- but that has come at a huge cost in homes and human lives lost or disrupted. I blame the Forest Service and environmental groups that sue over every tree cut down in the woods. Both of them can’t tell good management from bad management, the forest from the trees, any longer. This long slippery road to the bottom was well underway when I first started writing about deer in the 1970s, and it doesn’t look like it will get better anytime soon. The “managers” are to the point they don’t even try to improve things. It’s a shame I find myself pulling for fires to burn up canyons where I know it will help the deer. That hasn’t changed.

I’ve watched bighorn sheep populations yo-yo up and down, but the long term trend has been upward thanks -- mostly -- to volunteers who keep fighting their way through the red tape to build new water sources in desert mountain ranges. Every new water source is like turning on a fountain the pours more sheep back into our deserts where they were extirpated by livestock diseases, drying up of springs through groundwater pumping, and development. But there are still some who want to shut off the sheep restoration by shutting down the water developments. I have less and less patience for those people.

We’re stupidly moving into a management program for ocean fisheries -- the marine reserve program that locks sport anglers out of vast areas of ocean -- that has proven a failure on land for birds and mammals. We still have vast “game reserves” all over the state under the guise of acting as pools of wildlife that will spill over and keep areas outside the reserve restocked with fish and game. They never have and never will work as envisioned. But no one has the political courage to say the experiment has failed and do away with them. You’d think this lesson should be applied to the marine reserves, which should only ban commercial exploitation of fisheries and allow recreational users. We can fish in national parks. Why shouldn’t we be able to fish in marine preserves? We can hunt on state and federal wildlife areas. Why not marine preserves? It’s the “lock out humans” mentality that is so pervasive today in management of public lands and resources. They forget: We belong here, too. We belong as much as the cougar or kangaroo rat or the vermillion rockfish or yellow-legged frog. We belong here more.

Today, I feel like a lone voice pointing out that simple fact. When I started doing this, there were a lot of us. Laughing and talking with an old editor friend of mine this week, he said we were dinosaurs. I corrected him: Dinosaurs are extinct. I told him I thought we were more like fire-belching dragons. My fear is that new fire-breathers won’t come along, that no one will believe in us much longer, and then we will simply disappear. Like dinosaurs.

Numbers stable as deer season opens

by Jim Matthews
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin [Ontario, CA]

Most of Southern California's deer hunting zones open this Saturday for the fall rifle season, and Department of Fish and Game biologists and game wardens say deer numbers are stable or up slightly across the region.

Even more importantly, there are no general access closures due to fire conditions this fall on any of the four National Forests in the region where most of the hunting takes place.

"All of the fires we've had the last couple of years have been a blessing for deer herds," said Kevin Brennan, a DFG biologist in Riverside County. "Although tragic, they've opened up a lot of deer habitat, and there's only one direction for the deer herd to go and that's up."

Zones D11, D13, D14, D15, and D17 open this Saturday. The D19 zone, which covers the Santa Jacinto Mountains in Riverside and eastern San Diego county, opened last weekend. Zone D16, which covers most of San Diego County, opens Oct. 27, and the popular D12 burro deer zone along the Colorado River, opens Nov. 3.

The best news seems to be coming from the increasingly difficult-to-get desert deer zones in the East Mojave and along the Colorado River. Joe Branna, game warden for the Imperial County region, said desert zones D12 and D17 should be very good again this year.

A big fire in the Mojave National Preserve opened up a lot of pinon-juniper habitat in D17 just before last year's hunting season, and those areas have greened up this year. It looks like there was good fawn survival, which bodes well for future seasons, too.

"There were a lot of deer taken last year, and this season should be as good or better," Branna said.

Preserve superintendent Dennis Schramm said deer were using the burned areas extensively in D17, and he said there were a lot of places where the deer were bedding right out in the open in the burn throughout the summer and early fall. Schramm said you couldn't drive Black Canyon Road between Cedar Canyon and Wild Horse Canyon without seeing deer.

Branna said the D12 zone finally got a significant amount of rainfall this year, and he believes the harvest will be equal to last year's near record season when 90-100 bucks were taken from the zone. The rainfall also should improve deer production for this year, which will allow the herd to continue to grow.

"You can thank Leon Lesicka (with Desert Wildlife Unlimited in Brawley) for the record harvest. All the water he's put in the desert has made a big difference in deer numbers here," Branna said.

Both D17 and D12 filled before the general deer tag drawing in June, the first time a first-come, first-serve zone filled before the deer tag drawing. Many hunters who normally counted on getting a desert tag after applying for a premium late season Sierra hunt were disappointed to find they didn't get a desert tag this year.

These two zones have become increasingly popular as hunters have discovered both produce a good number of quality bucks each year. Just over 30 percent of the bucks taken from D12 are four-point or better bucks, while 18 percent of the bucks from D17 are four-point class deer. Hunter success rates in D17 were 26 percent, while only 12 percent of hunter in D12 shot bucks. This is dramatically better than most Southern California deer zones.

"I remember when I first came on, no one hunted out here in either of these desert zones," said Branna. "They've been discovered."

Brennan said the drought has not had a negative impact on deer numbers in most of the Southern California mountain ranges. While the DFG has initiated new survey methods for deer in the region and he said you can't directly compare the old data to the new data, he believes deer numbers are up throughout the region, mostly because of fires creating new habitat.

Brennan, an avid deer hunter, shot four-point bucks in D19 and D14 last season and pointed out D19 produced the same percentage of four-point or better deer last year as D17 - and D19 tags still are available. It also had a hunter success rate of nine percent.

Most of the other deer zones in Southern California have about nine percent of the buck harvest each year as four-point bucks, with only about a seven percent success rate on public lands. The D16 zone in San Diego County has a 12 percent hunter success rate, but a good percentage of deer in this region are taken on private land.

Fire closures have been a problem in the D11 zone (San Gabriel Mountains) during deer season the past few years, but this zone - along with most of the the D14, D15, D16, and D19 zones - mostly will be open for this year's opening day.

Preserve approves science-based alternative to manage water for wildlife

National Park News
Mojave National Preserve

In response to a California Department of Fish and Game proposal to convert twelve abandoned ranching wells to wildlife waters, the National Park Service (NPS) initiated an environmental assessment in November 2005.

After considering potential impacts and public comments, the NPS has selected a science-based alternative from among several proposals for managing water for wildlife in Mojave National Preserve.

The decision was recorded through the signing of a Finding of No Significant Impact document.

The selection of this alternative means that some abandoned ranching wells will be converted to wildlife watering devices, known as guzzlers, in order to carry out research on the need for additional water sources for wildlife over broad areas. The research will provide sound factual information which will be used to make future management decisions about the need for additional wildlife waters.

In implementing the decision, the National Park Service, in consultation with the California Department of Fish and Game, is soliciting independent research proposals for projects that address the presence or absence of artificial waters and their effect on mule deer and other wildlife.

Research topics may include:

• -Effects of water developments on wildlife populations, including both game and non-game animals;
• -Effects of water developments on predators;
• -Water quality at both artificial and natural water sources;
• -Effects of water developments on plant communities;
• -The role of water developments in transmission of diseases.
• -Mule deer population studies to determine distribution, abundance, health, population genetics and water needs.

Over 130 springs and seeps are spread across Mojave National Preserve. The National Park Service recently initiated a long-term monitoring project to determine how precipitation patterns affect the availability of water for wildlife at these natural water sources by surveying them during the driest part of each year. Over 75% had water during the last survey.

In addition to natural water sources, there are also six existing large-game guzzlers (principally used by desert bighorn sheep) and 119 small-game guzzlers (principally used by quail, chukar and other small wildlife), as well as several dozen currently operating water developments for cattle ranching.

Fish/Game seeks guzzlers for Mojave Preserve

News West

By LEE CHOQUETTE
Mohave Valley News [Laughlin, NV]

NEEDLES - A proposal first floated by the California Department of Fish and Game to restore artificial water sources in the Mojave National Preserve has finally reached the public comment stage.

The state agency began meeting with the National Park Service in the summer of 2004 regarding the proposal to retrofit 12 former ranch wells in the Mojave National Preserve as wildlife guzzlers.

Ranchers raised cattle for many decades in what became the preserve in 1994. They drilled wells to provide water for their cattle. One well was first developed in the 1860s and many of them date to the dominant period of the Rock Springs Land and Cattle Company between 1894 and 1927, according to the park service.

Cattle ranchers turned their wells on and off to move cattle around, according to the park service, to keep them from overgrazing in a particular area.

Most of the larger grazing leases in the preserve have been retired, and the ranchers have shut off their wells and removed much of the above-ground equipment.

Wildlife have come to depend on the water sources initially developed for cattle and the state agency believes that the shutdown has had a detrimental effect on wildlife populations.

The state agency proposes to transform 12 ranch wells into guzzlers over a three-year period, for use by mule deer and other wildlife. The guzzlers would be filled by well water pumped into a holding tank. Generators would be carried to each guzzler periodically to refill the tank. The drinkers themselves would be placed a foot or two off the ground to keep desert tortoises from crawling into them.

Routine monitoring would try to prevent an incident similar to the one in 1995 when lambs fell into a guzzler on Old Dad Peak. The lambs' decomposing bodies poisoned the water drunk by other bighorn sheep, ultimately killing 38 sheep.

The park service has called for public comment on three possible alternatives: take no action, leaving the shut-down wells as they are; permitting the state agency to proceed with its proposal; and leaving things as they are while further scientific studies are conducted.

The park service has issued an environmental assessment that compares these three alternatives. According to the service, the assessment was distributed to libraries, but the Needles Branch Library did not receive a copy.

A copy of the assessment is available at www.nps. gov/moja and by request from Superintendent, Mojave National Preserve, 2701 Barstow Road, Barstow CA 92311. Public comments on the proposal must be postmarked by Jan. 31 and sent to this address or to MOJA_Superintendent@nps.gov.

Mojave National Preserve gets new boss

ENVIRONMENT: A decision about wildlife watering holes awaits the superintendent.

By JENNIFER BOWLES
The Press-Enterprise

Dennis Schramm, a 28-year veteran of the National Park Service, will return to his old stomping grounds at the Mojave National Preserve as its superintendent.

Schramm, 53, returns in February to the 1.6 million-acre park in eastern San Bernardino County -- known for its sand dunes, volcanic cinder cones and lava flows, Joshua trees and towering mountains. He worked there for seven years as an assistant manager until 2002.

In announcing the selection last week, Jonathan Jarvis, the park service's regional director, said Schramm has extensive experience as a biologist and manager in the Mojave Desert and that his leadership in the 1990s in crafting the preserve's management plan demonstrated strong leadership skills.

Schramm replaces Mary Martin, who transferred to Lassen Volcanic National Park in Northern California.

Among Schramm's first decisions will be whether to approve a controversial plan to turn 12 groundwater wells left over from a cattle grazing operation into wildlife guzzlers to help mule deer flourish for hunting.

The proposal is available for public comment until Jan. 31.

The three options are to abandon the project, allow it to go forward or conduct further studies to assess whether the guzzlers, artificial water sources, are needed.

"It's really a matter of taking that information (from the public) and seeing whether or not it makes sense to allow something to happen," Schramm said about the proposal in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C., where he works at the park service's national planning office.

The California Department of Fish and Game and hunters with Safari Club International are pushing for the artificial water sources. Environmentalist says they're a bad crutch for plants and animals that already have adapted to an arid landscape.

In addition, the guzzlers will promote mule deer, a non-native species, said Daniel Patterson, desert ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group in Joshua Tree.

"You're just messing with the whole web of life out there," he said.

A lawsuit from Patterson's group filed this year prompted the National Park Service to back off from approving the guzzlers until an environmental assessment was completed. The lawsuit alleged that the federal agency, under orders from a Bush administration official -- Paul Hoffman, deputy assistant secretary of Interior for fish, wildlife and parks -- violated environmental laws by approving the man-made watering holes.

During his tenure, Schramm said, he would like to draw more attention to the preserve, sandwiched between the better-known Joshua Tree and Death Valley national parks, and to expose more young children to the desert environment.

"They're involved with too many video games," he said. But children "are important for the future of the parks, so it helps if they know they have a connection to the land."

The park's new visitors' center at the Kelso Depot, a railroad station built more than 80 years ago and refurbished, will help in promoting the park, Schramm said.

But the preserve also has threats, he said, including a proposed airport for cargo and charter flights six miles from the preserve's border in Nevada.

In addition, the preserve is dotted with hundreds of old mines, mostly gold mines, where the precious metal was leached from the ore with cyanide in large, open pits.

"We have no active mines," he said, "but we have a lot of cleanup issues."

Wildlife Guzzlers

The Mojave National Preserve is seeking public comment on a proposal to convert ranching wells into wildlife guzzlers:

Deadline: Jan. 31

By e-Mail: MOJA_Superintendent@nps.gov

By letter: Superintendent, Mojave National Preserve, 2701 Barstow Road, Barstow, CA 92311

To get the report: www.nps.gov/moja