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11. Wildlife: Habitat Relationships
- University of Nevada Press
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11 Wildlife Habitat Relationships 102 The discovery of gold in California brought large numbers of Euro-Americans through Nevada on their way to the gold fields. The discovery of silver and gold on the Comstock a decade later began a century and a half of extensive changes to Nevada’s cold desert. The shift in landscape vegetation from a high incidence of grasses to dominance by woody shrubs would bring dramatic changes in wildlife populations. Unregulated hunting would also become a factor . Some species were extirpated, others became scarce or rare, and still others responded favorably to habitat change. Black bear and wolverine had essentially disappeared from northern Nevada by the turn of the century. Rocky Mountain and California bighorn sheep had disappeared north of Nevada Highway 50 by the early 1920s. The last reliable sighting of a sharp-tailed grouse was made in 1960. The plight of the sage grouse and mule deer has received particular attention in recent years. Both species responded favorably to habitat change in the years immediately following Euro-American settlement, apparently for reasons directly related to livestock grazing and absence of fire. As their name implies, sage grouse are closely associated with sagebrush. They feed almost exclusively on sagebrush leaves during the fall, winter, and early spring. In late spring their diet shifts to herbaceous plants.After nesting, and after upland forbs dry out, they frequent meadows and moist sites critical to the growth of their young. These environments provide insects and succulent forbs high in the protein essential for chick survival during early stages of development. Sage grouse depend more on wet meadows in the western Great Basin than in the eastern part of their range, where higher summer rainfall makes upland forbs more available and keeps them green later in the summer. Considerable controversy has developed as sage grouse populations have declined.1 Historical observations indicate both scarcity and abundance, Wildlife | 103 depending on location. Immigrants’ journals report their presence along the Humboldt River. On the other hand, the journals of Hudson’s Bay Company leaders make no mention of sage grouse in northern Nevada. In certain western Nevada localities sage grouse were locally abundant. These contrasting accounts have led to differing conclusions about sage grouse populations during presettlement and settlement periods. Though scientific documentation is lacking, eyewitness accounts from the late 1800s and early 1900s indicate that sage grouse were indeed often abundant . Syd Tremewan reported that sage grouse were so plentiful on the Evans Ranch meadows north of Elko in the 1890s that they clouded the sky when they took to the air.While mowing hay, he “would just reach out and rap them over the head with a stick. Oh, they were thick.” He added,“Parties would come out in wagons from Elko. They would camp for weeks at a time just hunting and fishing.When they were ready to go home, they usually had one last shoot. . . . They would just leave them on the ground in big piles to rot. It was a contest to see who could kill the most.”2 In the 1890s George Nelson was living on a homestead on Gance Creek, to the south of the Evans Ranch, where he saw “lots of sage hens. I would see them when they would fly up from the mountain right in back of the house.An eagle or something would scare them and they sounded like thunder. I’m not exaggerating, there were thousands.”3 As a young boy in 1907, Walt Wilhelm accompanied his family on an extended wagon trip that took them from Washoe Lake south of Reno to the Quinn River; the Santa Rosa range; and the Bull Run, Independence, and Tuscarora mountains. On the Carson River above Dayton they saw “sage hens at every turn in the road.” In the Quinn River country they “found sage hens at every water.” In the Santa Rosas “there was fish in the creeks and the meadows were full of sage hens evenings and mornings.” While the family was camping on the north fork of the Humboldt River southwest of today’s Wildhorse Reservoir ,“sage hens were so thick we killed them with rocks.” On McCann Creek above the town of Tuscarora “the whole country was alive with sage hens. We had better hunting there than anywhere we’d traveled.”4 William Kent had the opportunity to observe and hunt sage grouse between 1895 and 1915 on ranches north of Winnemucca, where they “thrived greatly on...