We woke up at 7:00 after a night of lots of rain, but it thankfully cleared up as we started eating breakfast.
At 8:30, we divided into three stations to discuss different aspects of bison tracking. The first was the HOTR(Home on The Range) project, a program created by the National Park Service and Brown University. It focuses on tracking three aspects of bison herds: movement/migration, diet overlaps between the bison and other two toed mammals known as ungulates, and current location of the herd. We discussed types of data we must collect, specifically fecal matter and demographics/location of the bison. Fecal matter is used to determine diet and create a genome library of the bison, and the demographics we collect are age and sex. The next aspect of bison tracking we discovered was telemetry. This involves tracking radio collars given to some female bison using an antenna and receiver. This helps us track the migration patterns of the herd. We practiced by tracking another member of our group using the telemetry equipment. Our camera is currently on low battery and we can't access the photos we took of our work at the different stations, but check back later because we might be able to upload the photos then!
For the last station, we hopped into an EPI van and Mak helped us identify certain characteristics between different ungulates, ages, and different sexes. Male bison tended to have more hair, especially around their bonnet and beard. They also tended to have horns in an L shape while females had more curved horns, having an S or C shape. Even younger bison, also called red dogs, had a reddish color to them and only had little nubbed horns. Mule deers could be differentiated from other ungulates by their big ears, bright white behinds, and long, black-tipped tails. Males could be distinguished by their antlers, and females by their longer snouts, longer bodies, smaller size and absent antlers. Young mule deers are usually dotted with white spots along their back. Elk, probably our most spotted ungulates on this trip, have tan tushes and little nubs for tails. The males have antlers, and are usually larger, while females sometimes have little nubs, but they usually end up being antler-less. Young elk, similar to mule deer, have little white speckles and are much smaller than the adults. Pronghorn antelope males have horns, while the females don't, and juveniles are generally smaller. Bighorn sheep males have giant, curved horns and are generally heftier while females have little short horns.
We went to Lamar Valley and saw many beautiful hills. We saw a large pack of bison along the way, but we were searching for a specific spot in the valley. Looking over a riverbank, we saw multiple groups on both sides, some containing 6 or 7 individuals and some that were large troupes. We set up our scopes and began inching towards a small group. We reached a safe distance and used our identification skills to determine that there were 7 individuals, 3 male and 4 female. We saw no red dogs in the small herd, but there were some in the larger groups across the river. We attempted to use telemetry to see if they were collared, but they were not. We were unable to collect fecal samples, but we were able to spot 3 black bears on the way back! 2 of them had black fur, and one of them was a cinnamon bear, which is rare on the East Coast.
After driving back from Lamar Valley, we stopped at the park in Gardiner to talk about the history of bison in the United States. We talked about how, before colonization, bison covered almost all of the continental United States, as well as parts of Canada and Alaska, and numbered between 300 and 600 million. By the early 1840s, that number had dropped to between 30 and 60 million and only covered area to the west of the Mississippi River, as well as Alaska and southern Canada. By 1901, as a result of industrialization and genocide, only 23 genetically wild bison still existed in the United States at Yellowstone. The remaining 23 bison were carefully guarded and ranched and a small section of bison that had been taken care of by a Native American tribe were reintroduced to the Yellowstone herd. The herd continued to be carefully guarded and ranched until the late 1950s when they were fully released back into the wild. We will continue to learn about modern day bison conservation tomorrow.
After the bison history talk, we drove back to camp and started making dinner!
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