Yellowstone Wildlife: Ecology and Natural History of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem

Preface and Acknowledgments

M y conception of a book on Teton natural history occurred in the summer of 1974, when I took a camping trip through the Rocky Mountains and spent about a week in Jackson Hole. It soon became apparent that the area around the Jackson Hole Biological Station would be ideal for making extended observations on sandhill cranes and trumpeter swans, two species of special interest to me. Dr. Oscar Paris, the station’s director, later encouraged me to apply for research space there the following summer. As a result, I spent parts of the summers of 1975 and 1976 at the biological station and greatly appreciated the opportunities thus provided me by the station’s sponsors , the University of Wyoming and the New York Zoological Society. Additionally, the great kindness shown me by Dr. Paris and all the other researchers occupying the station during those two years helped Preface and Acknowledgments me enormously. I am especially grateful to Dr. Thomas Collins, Dr. Alita Pinter, and Dr. Margaret Altmann for their advice and help. “Locals” such as Franz Camenzind, Charles McCurdy, Morna MacLeod, Cindy Nielsen, and many others helped in diverse ways, while Tom Mangelsen and Paul Geraghty both made enthusiastic field companions. The resulting book, Teton Wildlife: Observations by a Naturalist, was published in 1982 by the Colorado Associated University Press. In 2009 I had the book scanned and placed online through the University of Nebraska’s DigitalCommons website (http:// digitalcommons.unl.edu/), and realized that it had “aged” appreciably. About that time I suggested to my ex-student and longtime friend Tom Mangelsen that we should collaborate on a book, using his wonderful photos and my text. He suggested that a book on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem would provide an attractive topic. I soon decided that, by updating the Teton-related text and adding materials on Yellowstone Park and nearby areas, I could provide an enlarged and updated text and some associated drawings, around which Tom could select an array of his color photographs. As in my earlier book, the resulting text is a mixture of my own observations and those of others; referring to the Bibliographic Notes and References will allow the reader to determine which is which. The drawings are my own. I returned to the area again in the summer of 2010 to renew my memories of the Yellowstone-Teton region and especially to observe the effects of the massive fires of the late 1980s. While revisiting the Yellowstone region, fond memories of many now-departed friendssuchasMargaret(Mardy)Muriewerestirred,andsomenewfriendshipswereformed. Preface and acknowledgments xiv I had helpful conversations with many of these people, among the most valuable of them with Henry and Mary Ann Harlow, Terry McEneaney, Bert Raynes, and Benj Sinclair. I was also able to spend many wonderful days in the field with longtime friends and ex-students Linda Brown and Jackie Canterbury, as well as with Benj Sinclair. Benj provided me with many insights on current wildlife conditions in the Jackson Hole–Yellowstone region, Jackie was an ever-enthusiastic field companion, and Linda additionally helped in all stages of manuscript editing and book-related decisions. Bird-related materials were helpfully scrutinized by Bert Raynes, and the geological contents were critically reviewed by Scott Johnsgard and Robert B. Smith. Shalese Hill, photo editor at Mangelsen: Images of Nature, was a tremendous help in getting the photographs selected, properly placed, and reviewed. Having decided to write essays covering the entire Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, I realizeditwasimportanttodefineit.In1983theGreaterYellowstoneCoalitionwasformed from many conservation groups such as the Audubon Society, Defenders of Wildlife, National Wildlife Federation, Northern Rockies Action Group, and Sierra Club. In 1985 the coalition estimated the ecosystem’s total area at six million acres. Later increasingly larger definitions raised the total to eighteen million acres. As defined by the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service, the Greater Yellowstone Area encompasses eighteen million acres (7.3 million hectares) in three states and includes two national parks, three wildlife refuges, parts of six national forests, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands, plus state and private landholdings. About six million acres of the total consist of national park and Forest Service wilderness areas, and another six million acres are represented by nonwilderness Forest Service lands (Keiter and Boyce, 1991). To all the people just mentioned, and to the countless others who have maintained a watchful vigilance over two of our greatest national parks and adjoining areas...