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Posted by Ballpark Frank (24.237.84.227) on 10:21:07 03/25/14
In Reply to: Great pics, Stick! posted by Rob
Hi Rob,
Do you know whether anyone is continuing the mountain lion study on the Northern Range? I'm thinking Carolyn would know.
There was a time when that study had been going for somewhere around 20 years, give or take a year or two. Kerry Murphy was the lead researcher for many years. Then, the study was dropped. I think it may have been an NPS budget issue, but I can't remember for certain. I know the Hornocker Institute picked up where Kerry left off, and not too long after that, the Wildlife Conservation Society took it over. Dr. Toni Ruth led that effort for a number of years.
In the mid-2000's, we would see the mountain lion researcher's vehicles on the side of the road at various pullouts across the Northern Range. Every once in a while, we would luck out, and get to converse with the researchers after they got done chasing tracks, examining kills, and lugging their telemetry gear around. They had the most amazing stories! One winter evening, I was heading back toward Mammoth and Gardiner, and passed one of the team's vehicles, parked at one of the trailheads near Floating Island Lake. After passing Hellroaring Overlook, and descending down the hill to the area where Geode Creek goes under the road, I noticed two weary-looking researchers about to reach the parking lot from the trail that was used frequently by wolf watchers. As I went up the hill, toward the divide that you descend to the Phantom Lake area, I realized it was really cold out, and those folks had quite a few miles of walking to do on a curvy, slick road, with no shoulder. I turned around, went back down the hill, and offered them a ride. They begged off initially, but one of them (MSU grad student if I remember correctly) had this look in her eyes that said "I would kill for a ride back to the truck". I offered again, reminding them that it was getting dark, and they would be hard to see as they walked down the road. They finally accepted, and I took advantage of the opportunity to solicit a mini-trip report on their day. They had been "chasing" a "big kitty" that had been working its way downriver along the steep hillside above the Yellowstone, between Floating Island Lake and Geode Creek. They never saw their quarry, but followed the relatively fresh tracks as they wandered up and down the hillside, gradually moving toward Geode Creek. Based on their familiarity of the area, they left their snowshoes off. They had to frequently negotiate steep rock slab areas where the snowshoes would have been a liability. These were active, vigorous young adults, but they looked like they had been put through the spin cycle on a washing machine. They were flat out exhausted!
The only comparable tales I have heard came from a similar demographic, back in the early 2000's, when there was a two year study to search for evidence of lynx in Yellowstone. I knew several of the researchers. They were young and very comfortable in the backcountry, but they had great war stories about having to follow tracks up and down, all around, under and through blowdowns, etc. An interp friend of mine had a boyfriend who was a wildland firefighter, but he was in his 30's. He spent two weeks with the researchers in the field, and told us they walked him into the ground (OK, snow).
So much for the war stories. If you get a chance, please ask your sister whether anyone is still studying those large cats. I know Kerry Murphy, and later, Toni Ruth, gathered so much useful information on those elusive critters. I remember a presentation Kerry gave at the Buffalo Ranch back in 1995 or 1996, where he told us their study showed that there were an estimated total of 20 cougars along the Northern Range, about half of which were permanent residents, while the other half wandered back and forth across the north boundary. I've seen the big kitties in the park on three occasions, all at night or twilight, all on or along the road. With all the on and off-trail wandering I've done on the Northern Range, I've never seen one, but I'll bet a bunch of them have seen me!
Ballpark
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