By Jessianne Castle EBS ENVIRONMENTAL & OUTDOORS EDITOR
BOZEMAN –
Israeli biologists are concerned about the impacts humans have on the genetic
structure of Nubian ibex. In Montana’s Glacier National Park, officials are
worried about the habituation of mountain goats. As researchers in northern
Mexico study the ways desert bighorn sheep use the landscape, their
contemporaries in Bozeman are monitoring the movements of Rocky Mountain
bighorns in the Madison Mountain range.
On Sept.
10-13, approximately 170 of the world’s leading wildlife biologists gathered in
Bozeman, some having traveled for 40 hours to attend the seventh World Mountain
Ungulate Conference hosted by the Wild Sheep Foundation.
With
presenters from all corners of the globe, the group discussed topics like
genetic diversity, migratory patterns and disease as it pertains to the hooved
animals that roam our world’s mountains. This includes bighorn sheep and
mountain goats, as well as chamois, goral, Sitka deer, ibex, urial, markhor and
the wooly tahr.
Kurt Alt, a
retired biologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and the current
conservation director for the Wild Sheep Foundation, oversaw the two-year
planning process that brought the international gathering to Bozeman—the first
time it’s been held in North America. Thrilled to provide a space where
scientists can interact and expand their visions, he said hunter-generated
revenue from the Wild Sheep Foundation and Safari Club International helped
provide travel stipends for many of the presenters.
Well aware
of the need for science-based decision-making, the biologists didn’t shy away
from the difficult topics over the course of the four days.
Marco
Festa-Bianchet of the Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec pointed to his
research on bighorn sheep living on Ram Mountain in Canada, arguing that when
hunting regulations allow for unlimited harvest of mountain sheep, hunting can
lead to evolutionary changes in horn size. In other words, Festa-Bianchet said
certain kinds of hunting can cause sheep to produce smaller horns over time.
On the final
day, amid a discussion of sustainable, wise use, Dr. Peregrine Wolff, a
wildlife veterinarian for the Nevada Department of Wildlife, stressed the
importance of our decisions if we are to conserve wildlife species.
“We are in a
time of unprecedented and increasing stressors for all of our wildlife,” she
said, citing examples like changes in climate, habitat loss due to
urbanization, competition with other domestic ungulate species, changes in
predator dynamics and introduced pathogens.
“We’re
expecting our wildlife to be able to [change] and they are just being
wildlife,” she said. “We need to change. We need to change a lot of our outlook
to help them be able to achieve and adapt in a world where we’re expecting them
to just do it all by themselves.”
On the final
day of presentations, and the day before attendees took a field trip through
the Northern Range of Yellowstone National Park, Manzoor Qureshi of the Gilgit
Baltistan Rural Support Program in Pakistan shared his experiences in
establishing a sport hunting industry within the community of Bunji. He
described the need for the community to take on a sense of ownership over the
wildlife in order for individuals to care about conservation and preserve
critically endangered animals like the markhor or snow leopard, ultimately
calling his country’s program “sustainable wise use.”
Shane
Mahoney, founder of Conservation Visions, had premised Qureshi’s discussion,
setting the stage for the afternoon presentations on sustainable use of
wildlife.
“We have to be concerned for conservation mostly
because how rapidly things can change,” Mahoney said. “Sustainable use as an
approach does not come in one form and it cannot be imposed in a specific place
just because some of us who may have been successful would like to see that. It
has to arise endogenously within the people, the countries, the cultures who
wish to consider it. Then, if we involve the local people, as, if we had
involved the Cree, and the Crow and the Arapaho and the Sioux and the Cheyenne,
had we involved them, the landscapes of America and the wildlife in America
would be quite different today.”
