The Wild Excellence: Notes from Untamed America

By Leslie Patten

The Wild Excellence provides a personal look at an extraordinary landscape. Living on the edge of Yellowstone National Park, Leslie Patten weaves myth and science with history. She vividly relates her experiences as she digs out her clogged spring system, hikes and explores, copes with weather and isolation, and grows an intimate relationship with a place that her heart recognized on first sight as home. The author's curiosity leads her to investigate ancient Shoshone Indian sheep traps, help on a local wolf study, as well as learn about her wildlife neighbors—grizzly bears, elk and deer, coyotes and badgers. Patten speaks with scientists, land managers, archeologists and ordinary folk. In the doing, Patten poses valid questions about how we inhabit this earth, about the role of big expanses of wild land with intact populations of predators and other wildlife, and about what is really important in our lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leslie Patten
• Release date: Oct 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310241611

Leslie Patten

Leslie Patten is a well-known landscape designer in the Bay Area of California. Her work has been featured in Mill Valley’s Outdoor Art Club Garden Tours, in the Marin Independent Journal, Marin Art & Garden Center tours, the Garden Conservancy, and Marin County Stormwater Pollution Prevention Program tours. She grew up in the Los Angeles area and went to college at the University of Santa Cruz. After college she spent the next thirty years living all over Northern California, in Lake, Sonoma, Marin, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz counties. She has hiked and backpacked all over the state, including desert, mountain, and coastal regions, gaining her familiarity with native plants and their habitats.Leslie’s background is in horticulture and botany, but she also has naturalist training and worked for over eight years at a museum lab preparing wildlife specimens of museum quality. She has assisted with spotted owl studies, as well as wolf and grizzly bear studies as a citizen scientist. Her knowledge of tracking, wildlife, and native plants of the West greatly enhances her ability to create successful designs and wildlife gardens. Low water gardens has been her specialty in the Bay Area for over twenty years, but she also has designed tropical, English, and Zen gardens. Her expertise is best described as a habitat specialist.She now splits her time between the wilds of northwest Wyoming and the Bay Area. Her ongoing blog can be seen at www.thehumanfootprint.wordpress.com. Her business website with photos of many jobs can be viewed at www.ecoscapes.net.

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PREFACE TO NEW EDITION

His cowboy boots are probably still sitting there.

Kirk was relating the story of J. K. Rollinson, the first Forest Service ranger in the valley where I live. Rollison helped build a government cabin in the Beartooth Mountains in 1908. My new friend Kirk, a slight man in his mid-80s yet still in excellent shape, had guided me the week before to another historic Beartooth site — a crumbling stockade from the 1860s hidden within a copse of spruce. Kirk grew up in the Big Horn basin, where he worked in an array of outdoor jobs throughout his life, including with the Forest Service. The cabin, he said, if it’s still there, was at Sparhawk Lake.

I knew the Beartooth Range pretty well, but hadn’t heard of Sparhawk. Kirk said the lake was named after Ranger Frank Sparhawk. Sparhawk, along with Rollinson, used the cabin as a summer refuge while overseeing livestock operations in this high alpine environment. The small cabin saved the rangers a ten-mile rugged horseback trip from the Crandall Ranger Station. I was curious whether any remnants were left. Poring over a map, I found the tarn not far from Sawtooth Lake, a large body of water wrapped at the base of a mountain bearing the same name. A rough dirt road off the main highway leads to Sawtooth’s lakefront. The road is in good shape for the first mile and a half, then turns into a rocky, rutted mess. I pulled off where the road loses its shape and walked the final two and a half miles to the lake.

Spruce and whitebark pine forest, interspersed with verdant meadows of high alpine wildflowers, make this scenic dirt access road a popular weekend ride for off-roaders. The course is along a ridgeline overlooking a U-shaped wetland of marsh and lakes. The adjacent eastern ridgeline, visible at times from the Sawtooth road, is also a popular route. Called the Morrison Jeep Road, it’s an historic trail used as a connector route from the 10,000-foot Beartooth Plateau down to the desert mouth of the Clark’s Fork Canyon. The local ATV club was anxious for a loop trail joining Sawtooth Lake with the Jeep trail. To accomplish that, the Forest Service would have to build a new road into and through the marsh up to the opposite ridgeline. That was another reason I wanted to walk this road: I had to see what kind of habitat damage that would create.

A few hundred yards before the final approach to Sawtooth Lake, I encountered a parked Toyota 4-Runner with Montana plates. That last stretch is too rough and eroded for even the toughest vehicle. I also heard gunshots. It was early September, not yet hunting season, but these fellows were using trees for target practice on the far side of the lake. I couldn’t see them, but sure could hear their antics. No one else was around, and thankfully the route to Sparhawk was in the opposite direction.

I found the remains of Sparhawk’s cabin — a small jewel hidden within dense tree cover — by the side of the lake, along with a Forest Service plaque commemorating his service. Only the log outline of a tiny cabin, but no cowboy boots, remained. I ate lunch, then returned by the route I came. Walking the road back up the steep hill, I found the 4-Runner still parked on the small knoll. From this point, the road opens into a meadow edged with dense tree cover on its far side. Breaking the forest’s silence, a deep sonorous barking suddenly roared through the trees. I stopped and listened. The mysterious low-pitched honk came again, then again. I looked across the meadow just in time to see a large grizzly bear running through the woods, followed by a tiny cub. The barking continued and another cub ran to catch up with her bear mother. These little cubs, born last winter, referred to as cubs of the year or COY for short, were incredibly cute.

All this raucous noise was far enough away, with me downwind, that I wasn’t afraid. Mom was headed for the lake at a quick clip. The barking continued, like an old man with a wheezy cough and a megaphone, and after a few minutes, a third cub appeared.

Mesmerized by this scene, I momentarily forgot about the men still down by the lake who were probably fishing by now. Instead, I reflected on the increasing use by grizzlies of this alpine area. The Beartooths are good habitat with intact whitebark pines — now a rarity in the rest of the ecosystem due to widespread beetle kill. Females who eat whitebark pine nuts are known to have larger litters. Here was a successful grizzly mother using these resources.

When the bears were out of sight, I remembered the men. No chance for me to let them know those bears were on their way toward them. The quartet of bears would be lakeside before I could even turn around. I hoped the men would not run into them, or at the very least would keep their cool. I assumed they had bear spray. Most people around here know to carry it while in the backcountry. And then I had one horrible thought. These men had guns, and possibly were a bit trigger-itchy for opening season. I hoped the worst didn’t happen.

As I hiked the road back to my car, I had a lot on my mind. This was not my first grizzly sighting of the summer in the Beartooth Mountains, but my third. More grizzlies were moving into these high mountains. Just a few weeks ago, I ran into a different mother with a cub while backpacking. Earlier in the summer, my dog Koda spooked a young bear napping behind a large boulder. But unlike those other encounters, Sawtooth Lake is a high human-use area. And now the ATVers were pressuring the Forest Service for an additional loop through the swamp below. That would inevitably bring more traffic, more picnickers, more trash. Studies have shown that grizzlies are disturbed by roads and vehicular traffic. Not only was I worried about the disturbance to the bears in their newly occupied summer range, but the Beartooth Range is summer habitat for elk and wolves as well. Easier access means more people deeper into the backcountry, and more disturbance to wildlife.

Later that same week, I was on a group hike accompanied by Shoshone Forest Service bear biologist Andy Pils. I told him about my bear encounter at Sawtooth and he had new information for me.

Just as that mother grizzly arrived by the lakeshore, the Montana fellows were walking around the lake to pick up the road to their car. When they saw the sow — although they reported seeing only two cubs — they completely freaked out, dropped their packs along with their fishing tackle and rods, and ran back to their car. Worse, they threw down a cooler full of food, then high-tailed it back to their home in Billings.

Once back in the city, Andy told me, the men mulled over their encounter and all the junk they’d left at the lakeshore. Instead of thinking about the food reward they’d left those bears, these guys thought that people finding their stuff strewn around might believe the bear ate them, so they called the Forest Service to report they were still alive and told me what happened.

When Andy learned they’d left their cooler there, he told them that was a huge mistake. Those young cubs got a major food reward. That would be something they’d never forget. An association with people and food had been instilled in those COY.

It was apparent the Montana fellows had little preparation for recreating in grizzly habitat. They defended their decision to drop the cooler (But it was a thousand-pound grizzly!) and asked Andy if he could retrieve their stuff for them. (We broke an axle getting out of there.)

Of course, grizzlies in the Yellowstone Ecosystem do not get up to 1,000 pounds. More likely, this mother bear was about 300 pounds. Andy also told me that these guys had no bear spray. It took Andy two trips to clean things up. The bears had demolished the cooler, ate all the food, and thrown the trash all around, but the fishing tackle and backpacks were intact.

The incident at Sawtooth Lake painted a picture of the many obstacles grizzlies, and other wildlife, face in the Greater Yellowstone area. The influx of tourists and new locals who are unfamiliar with proper protocol in bear country; pressures from interest groups for new access roads that encroach upon wildlife and bring more people deeper into pristine areas. Even as I write this, special interest groups are attempting to force legislation that downgrades a Wilderness Study Area on Wyoming’s Beartooth highway, opening it up to less protections and further habitat degradation.

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The following spring, I attend a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service meeting in Cody. This is a formal meeting to discuss whether the Service should delist the grizzly bear after over forty years of protection on the Endangered Species list. A woman greets me at the meeting room entrance and asks if I want to speak. I sign up and find a seat. The meeting begins and in short order, the roll call of public commentators commences. An older man walks to the podium, gives his name to the secretary, and has two minutes to speak his piece. He lives outside of town in an unincorporated area at the mouth of the Clark’s Fork Canyon, a sagebrush rocky terrain where the locals used to have an open dump.

My wife is afraid to take a walk down the road, he begins. We have too many bears coming in. It’s time to delist and have a hunt. What he doesn’t report is that locals are still dumping their animal carcasses behind a knoll I stumbled upon last year.

Another older man takes his turn at the microphone. I’m afraid to go horseback riding in the forest. The element of fear colors the rationale for whether to delist or not. It’s not clear whether people are seeing more grizzlies because there really are more, or if bears are descending further off the mountains seeking new food sources, having lost whitebark pine nuts as their fall larder.

It’s my turn to speak. I state that I live in a drop-off place for problem bears. My valley has one of the highest concentrations of grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone — every drainage is occupied, but with a bit of effort, we can co-exist, I say. Grizzlies are minders-of-their-own-business. I am speaking for the bear, but mostly for my own peace of mind. I know the Service is driven not just by science, but by political pressures. That tenuous line of recovery is in the eye of the beholder.

The Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team says the Great Bear has recovered and therefore we must delist. But what is their yardstick? Occupying less than 2 percent of their historic habitat, humans are essentially saying enough is enough. We will only tolerate 700 bears and they must stay confined to this tiny island that we circumscribed and call the Demographic Monitoring Area.

The bears don’t care about any of this. It’s human business. If I were to ask the bears, they’d probably tell me they’ve already greatly accommodated us humans. There are no bear representatives at this meeting. The biologists are not advocating for the bears. Their job is to count numbers, then present those statistics. The audience seems divided between those who fear a bear is lurking around every tree and those who love to admire bears from cars. It is the rare individual who deeply knows and understands grizzly bear consciousness, and those bear whisperers, if they even exist, are not here. Meanwhile, I cannot help but reflect on the incongruity that grizzlies are busy living their lives — minding their own business — while we sit in a windowless room deciding their fate.

In the end, the USF&W pushed ahead and delisted the Great Bear, adding grizzlies to the list of trophy-hunted animals in our state, along with wolves, black bears, and mountain lions.

Every year, visitation to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks is increasing, along with recreation in the surrounding mountains of Montana and Wyoming — the Beartooth, Wind River, Gallatin, Gros Ventre, and Wyoming Range. Backcountry fun brings risks to wildlife. I like to think of each species as nations unto themselves, each with equal footing. These animal nations dance elegantly with each other, yet all run and hide when a human appears. Wildlife is predictable to one another. Humans are the wild card. We are the dangerous species with the most-dangerous weapons, top predators that have lost our essential connection to the rest of Life’s web.

In the last few years since the first edition of The Wild Excellence came out, wolves have been delisted in Wyoming (they were already delisted and hunted in Idaho and Montana) and are now part of an annual trophy hunt. While the wolf hunt lasts for three months in the fall, Wyoming is the only state where wolves are listed as predators in 85 percent of the state. Predator status means an animal can be hunted or trapped year-round without a permit. Wolves join coyotes, foxes, jackrabbits, porcupines, skunks, and raccoons in Wyoming for that status. The irony is that although one can kill a wolf 365 days a year in most of the state, Wyoming still decided to hunt wolves as a trophy animal in the forests directly adjacent to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.

The question then arises: How can those people who want limits on hunting and trapping predators make their voices heard? What is the one thing a person could do that would affect the greatest change and protections for wildlife?

First, one must understand who controls the wildlife in each state and how state game agencies are influenced in their decisionmaking processes. Under United States common law, the people own the wildlife, while the states hold them in trust for citizens. The lines of jurisdictional authority are complex and highly political, but, in general, state legislatures pass wildlife laws, state game commissions interpret the laws, and state wildlife agencies implement and enforce the laws. The governor usually appoints state wildlife commissioners for a set period of time, which means they are not elected by the public, and therefore do not have to be responsive to the wide range of public opinions on predator management. The commission establishes hunting seasons, harvest quotas, and management actions. Mission and mandate statements for these state commissions are broad, allowing them to accommodate non-scientifically supported decisions, such as drastically reducing cougar numbers to enhance deer populations for recreational hunting, or increasing wolf quotas to protect livestock that graze on public lands.

These kinds of decisions fit neatly where the majority of the funding for these agencies comes from — hunting and fishing licenses, along with an excise tax on national sales of firearms and ammunition. This model, designed in the early 1900s, worked well initially to support and enhance ungulate species throughout the West, yet it evolved from a worldview that is utilitarian, viewing the natural world as something to be dominated. New approaches that are science-based, holistic, and consider our responsibility as protectors of the Earth and its wildlife have not filtered into the cultural stance of these agencies and their employees, nor their constituents (hunters). In other words, non-consumptive users — people who just like to watch wildlife and take photos — have little say in state wildlife management since they have no financial stake.

Shrinking hunter-dollar revenues, even as the number of wildlife watchers and non-consumptive users is growing, is beginning to push agencies to come to the table to find new funding sources. The intractable good ol’ boy culture within these agencies is slow to change, but this new shift will eventually push progress. New funding sources must include all users — whether through something like a tax on photographic equipment and wilderness gear, use fees, lottery proceeds, or even general tax dollars. Those changes should be worked out by consensus groups.

The very best thing that folks who cherish wildlife can do is to be involved in advocating for a diverse revenue stream that includes non-consumptive users. Attending Game & Fish Commission meetings is essential. New voices, other than hunters and trappers, must be heard at these meetings, and a push for reforms through working advisory groups that include a variety of stakeholders is a necessary first step. Conservation groups are realizing that until state game agencies include the voices of non-hunters, little reform will happen in the field of wildlife management. Thus, many conservation groups are making game agency change a priority.

As our climate changes, as more people make use of public lands in increasingly diverse ways, we need the voices of all Americans to preserve one of the world’s last, intact ecosystems. It falls on every American to be a steward of these wild lands and their voiceless inhabitants.

You are what your deep driving desire is. As your deep driving desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.

Maitri Upanishads

INTRODUCTION

Iwalked through the little woods near my cabin to retrieve my trail camera, a nifty little device that snaps photos automatically — one every second when it detects the heat and movement of an animal. I keep the camouflaged unit stationed along a trail by the springs so I can track all that ventures by. The camera, a little bigger than my hand, is fixed around a tree with a bicycle cable and a heavy lock. I opened the front, scrolled through the menu to see if I had any photos. Twenty-three.

I glanced over the Douglas fir and Englemann spruce trees that make up these little woods. Their sweet spring sap was flowing and the scent wafted on a slight breeze. In just a month, the forest will come alive, green and thick, but in today’s mid-May chill, the shrubs were still leafless, so any movement would quickly catch my eye. A few patches of late snow remained. I looked around for clues of who’d been visiting but saw only several deer tracks in the wet snow. Mostly deer on these photos, I bet.

I walked back to the cabin, a few hundred yards through forest and field, and placed the memory chip in my computer. One by one, the photos loaded in, revealing all the visitors in the last few days. A boar grizzly bear. A beautiful mother black bear with two cubs of the year. A young female cougar. Two wolves traveling through to a den on the other side of the river. A yearling moose. A small red fox and, of course, deer.

Apart from a sprinkling of human residents, these are my neighbors, along with a host of other wildlife visitors. In a real sense, they are the inhabitants of these lands and I am the temporary visitor, at best a caretaker of their home. My own house sits within the map of what’s now called the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, an area of over 27 million acres, spanning three states, five national forests, the National Elk Refuge, Grand Teton National Park, and the centerpiece: Yellowstone National Park. This enormous region of protected public and private lands is necessary to sustain the large animals now so rare in the lower 48. The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is one of the last and largest mostly intact ecosystems in the temperate world.

I first came to Wyoming in 1972. I was a teenager on a road trip with friends. We stopped in Jackson, loaded our backpacks with supplies, and spent three weeks hiking the backcountry of the nearby Tetons and Wind River ranges. I was sixteen and vowed to return someday. A stream in a forest forges new channels over time, yet ultimately works its way to the river. Twenty-five years later, I honored that promise and found my way back to Wyoming. I had fallen in love long ago and never forgot.

A raw, elemental place, Wyoming drew me in a different way. It seemed to hold the essence of what was required to be a human being: a silence of space that clears the mind of senseless chatter. A landscape demanding vigilance and clear-eyed thinking — a brilliant warm day turns into a fierce