3:00 - 3:40 pm
Northern Range Moose Update
Dan Tyers
U.S.Forest Service (Gallatin N.F.)

Transcript

Female Voice:  Moving in the ungulate theme...Dan Tyers is with the Gallatin National Forest. He’s with the Gardiner district and Dan’s going to be presenting on the moose of the northern range, both the Gallatin National Forest and in Yellowstone. So, Dan....

Dan Tyers:  This is a slide projector that this man is examining over here. (Laughter) Some of you have perhaps never seen one before.  It isn’t that I have a sentimental predilection for arcane equipment; it’s that I literally don’t have access to a power point projector.  All the rumors you’ve heard are true. We did get electric lights there at the Gardiner district about five years ago. I don’t have a power point projector. So I’m sorry.  You’ll have to make due with me with antiquated technology.

And this is an auspicious moment for me.  We started this project in 1986 and concluded it in 2003. That’s a long stretch. And although I have made presentations to some of our other partners, this is the first chance that I’ve had to address a Park Service audience and represent to you some of the findings from the project. So I appreciate it.  After that tenure with this study I guess I’m predicting that I’ll have more enthusiasm during the next forty minutes than you’ll have endurance, but regardless...

Thanks Tom.

In 1986 a consortium of agencies initiated a study of moose on the northern Yellowstone winter range.  The project was sponsored by the Northern Yellowstone Cooperative Wildlife Working Group, membership including Yellowstone National Park, Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, and Gallatin National Forest, with some significant collaborators, Safari Club International as a funding partner and Montana State University.

Each participating agency had its own agenda. The state wanted to know if the hunting quotas in the five districts north of the park were at all commensurate with the actual population size.  At the time of project initiation there were 55 either sex quota opportunities to harvest moose north of the park. And that was based on their best projection of the population size but they had no empirical data to support those hunting quota numbers.  The Gallatin National Forest wanted to know what the effects were of our various vegetation management practices on moose winter range. Yellowstone National Park wanted to establish a population baseline prior to wolf reintroduction. For better or for worse, it also became a fire effects study. This was very good, in that it gave us a chance to compare a pre and post fire condition at a landscape level, accessing the effects of a major stochastic event on the moose population. It was very bad because it broke the continuity of the data, affected my life in a profound way by extending the study for multiple years beyond its targeted completion date.

The objectives were stereotypic for a big game study: population description and especially accessing various monitoring techniques for moose on the northern range, home range characteristics and survival, diet foraging patterns and cover type use. And all this was done within the matrix of investigating some theories on optimal foraging, the energetics, how moose make a living on this landscape, how they balance energy, or calorie intake versus energy expenditure.

There are some things that we know about moose, and we need to discuss these to understand the rest of the investigation. They are browsers, that is they feed on woody material. They have a digestive system that allows them to digest and process lignin so they can eat twigs. They are concentrate selectors, that is, they will go after large biomass concentrations on the landscape to balance their energetics.  They are selective generalists.  They will eat a wide variety of different types of foods, but they are selective within that.

Especially important that we bring forward, that across North America and the northern latitudes moose are associated with post-disturbance shrub fields. With very few exceptions moose are found in areas that have been recently disturbed, either by timber harvesting or by fire. Some management schemes even call for breaking forest canopies to improve moose habitat.

Another significant factor, snow is a primary determinant of habitat use. All these points will be discussed more succinctly as we move forward.

In historical context, there are 4 subspecies of moose in North America.  That subspeciation may have been generated during the last ice age, when moose were caught in respective refugia within the ice sheet.  As the ice receded and those refugia were broken down the moose dispersed, and consequently moose were not in this area until about the 1850s roughly, arriving very late then on the northern range and it’s the Shiras moose that we have in this area.

No work had preceded this study on the northern range of significance; however some enlightened individuals had brought forward several hypotheses, which proved to be telling as we generated this study and went forward with it. That hypothesis was echoed by two groups, McDowell and Moy in ‘42, Forest Service individuals and Jim Peek in 1974. Simply stated, they predicted that moose in this area are associated with limited willow stands, followed by a movement to adjacent conifer types as snow depth increases. Simple enough, but very important in our inquiry of moose habitat use on the northern range.

We had four sub units to this study.  Roughly, the project area echoed the northern range, which is defined by elk distribution. But we also went into the upper reaches of some of the drainages, the better moose habitat.

We can pause, reflect.  That’s you, Sam.

One study unit, Slough Creek, was in effect a control, a wilderness area across the boundary between the park and the forest. Extensive willow stands in an important population of moose. In addition one which was entirely in Yellowstone National Park, the Blacktail area, an area with a large over wintering population of elk.  Soda Butte, in the Cooke City area, again significant willow stands, an important moose population and a lot of projected Forest Service management activities that we wanted to get some insights towards. And last the Bear Creek Drainage above Jardine which has been intensely managed by the Forest Service, a network of roads, a lot of silver cultural practices.

One of our study objectives if you recall, was to address the demographics of the moose and especially to look at some monitoring techniques. So I went through the historic documents that I could find, mostly bringing up boxes from down by the furnace in the basement at the district office.  We do have electric lights, did I mention that? (Laughter) We don’t have the wonderful archive opportunities that you folks have. I also looked at several different indices...a moose horseback transect index, a road transect index, over-flights over willow stands, and some more discreet and labor intensive observations of moose in those willow stands.

Moose are very difficult to count. It’s hard to come up with a number. I’m repeatedly asked how many moose there are on the northern range, and after lo these many years I still don’t know.  They are not an easy animal to count.  They are dark, usually solitary, often under a forest canopy, hard to access them from fixed winged aircraft, which is how we survey for most animals. To try to reflect that, there are three moose in this picture, and it’s hard enough to see them at the same plane of sight as the moose are standing.

One technique we used was to resurrect some date accumulated by a state employee Joe ?(Gobb)? during the 1940’s. We picked that up again in 1985 and have continued it to the present. It involves a route through the Absorka portion of the Absorka Beartooth Wilderness, using about 110 miles of trail. Jardine here, Hellroaring, Buffalo Fork and Slough Creek. We used that same trail route one to four times from August to September. A very simple index, it’s no more than that, an index. But it has interesting insights for us.

Beginning with Joe  ?(Gobb’s)?  effort in 1947 this followed immediately the initiation of quota hunting in that area. So we have a population high followed by a decline, reflected I think by the influence of the quota hunting, 45 permits at that time.  Then a break in the use of this technique. We started to get in ‘85 this huge spike, which is commensurate with 1989. Anyone want to speculate on what occurred right there?  Spontaneous generation of moose on the northern range? (Laughter)  Or perhaps enhanced sight ability because the forest canopies were opened up and also the moose were congregating down in the riparian systems, which happens to correspond with where our trails are. So you can tell that there are problems to using indices, aren’t there. That means that these counts were low, certainly. However, look at this trend as it drops, recedes, and this ends in 2001, this slide needs to be updated to 2004. This essentially flatlines out here in these latter years. As one index it shows a significant decrease in moose on the northern range after the 1988 fires.

We also used another very simple index, counting moose along the roadway between Mammoth and Cooke City. Breaking that into five different segments, let’s see, Gardiner to Mammoth, Mammoth to Tower-Roosevelt, out to Lamar, from there to Round Prarie, Warm Creek and then out past Cooke City.  And we have in spite of this also extended that up to present. So what we’re doing is attempting to corroborate indices. And similarly it has shown a decline post 88 fires, with this same spike occurring in the year of the fires. If also we were to carry this out, it would just like the last data set it would flat line.

The opportunity to see moose along those five segments varied. We didn’t see any between Mammoth and Gardiner. And this also reflects our probability pre and post fire. A significant decrease in probability in Section 2 which is from Mammoth out to Tower-Roosevelt, and similarly through the Lamar country, but interestingly in Section 4, which is out in the Warm Creek area very little difference, and a slight drop in the Cooke City area. This is important because I think that what we’re seeing is an overall decrease, a significant decrease in moose numbers post ‘88 fires. It’s a true population decrease, not just a redistribution. If it was redistribution we wouldn’t see these data.

The probability of seeing a moose along that road transect varied by season of the year. If you want to see moose driving that road you would look for them in May and June, November- December.

So, to refine our indices a little bit further, we picked two of the most important willow stands within the entire study area, one in Slough Creek, and the second one between Cooke City and Silvergate, and we flew these willow stands 82 times, about 2 –3  times a month, looking to see how many moose we found. Another simple index. It corroborated our earlier data. There’s lot of noise to this, and I’ll cut through it for you. The best time to see moose using this technique was similar to the others, which is May and June, November- December. Some very distinct patterns. This is important information if you’re going to try to survey for moose in the future.

And, almost verging on neurosis, I think, but that’s half the fun of science in some occasions, we selected one of those willow stands, the one between Silvergate and Cooke City, and made observations there every half hour every day for 64 weeks. Fairly labor intensive. I feel confident in these data. (Laughter) And, also to cut through all the busyness of this graph, it shows us once more that if you’re going look for moose in willow stands, which appears to be the best opportunity across the northern range, you would look November-December, May and June. May and June. If you care we ran some  ?(??)?  tests against these various indices and there was a high correlation..

And if you want to bring it down to discreet time of day, you would look in the morning, or late evening. That’s predictable, isn’t it?  But these patterns are wonderful.  It’s nice when data work out like this. What does that tell us? Best time to see a moose on the northern range is between 6 in the morning and 9:30, November- December, May and June in willow stands. If you want to look any other time of the year it’s a waste of time. (Laughter)  And if I were Yellowstone National Park and I wanted to start some moose survey work I think I’d be very attentive to these data.

And because we felt obligated we also tried some standard grid transects using fixed wing aircraft. This is what has worked through most of the rest of North America. It is a tried and true standard effort. Bill ?(Gassoway)? developed the methods for it and we employed his methodology. We did eight of these. We flew north of the Yellowstone River, the north side of the northern range, the south side of the northern range. We found far more moose north, fewer south, and to make this obvious, a decline again post ‘88 fire. So a standard survey method then corroborating our various weak indices. 

We looked at home range. I had a series of instrumented animals divided among the study units.  This is not reflective of all the instrumented animals. Not every one of them did we get sufficient numbers to run the appropriate tests.  So I’ve ?(high-graded)? this just for the number of animals where we had sufficient radio locations, and they are again in the Jardine area, Blacktail country, Slough Creek and the Soda Butte-Cooke City area. And the stippled or mottled colored areas are reflective of fire intensity on the northern range.

Size of home range can be indicative of home range quality.  And if that is the case there is a dramatic story that is told by these data. That to me would demonstrate that the highest quality habitat is right here, which corresponds with those willow stands in combination with those wonderful old boreal forests at Cooke City, relatively unaffected by fire. And similarly, in the Cooke City area, or excuse me, the Gardiner, above that Jardine-Bear Creek area, in spite of the intense silver cultural activities that have occurred there.  Much larger home range here in Slough Creek, intensely affected by the fire, and also down here on Blacktail.

Two of the study animals here expanded their home range size even beyond what we see reflected here post fire, and they starved the year following the fire in spite of the fact that they were healthy individuals preceding the fire. I think these are very telling data that show the effects of the 1988 fire, and also give us an insight into the habitat quality among these respective study units.

This was intriguing.  We used another home range model called adaptive kernel. ?( 95% points and led to)?  the point fallout in patterns.  What it reflected, I’ve taken just radio telemetry for 4 of those animals. It shows two discreet areas of activity for each of these animals. Laying these over vegetation cover maps these correspond exactly with the pattern of a willow stand in proximity to a forested hillside with late successional stage coniferous forests. That way in each case. That’s a strong habitat link

We also used tract intercept transects as a sampling method, with transects through Slough Creek, the Bear Creek unit, and at Cooke City.  The way that these worked is we would travel these predetermined routes 24 hours after a snowfall starting above the best moose winter range and proceeding below the best moose winter range.  We would do these four times a month. We did that for six years... November through April.

 Also, with our instrumented animals, we backtracked.  We would find them out in the forests, cut their fresh tracks, and I’m sorry that this has a cartoon character to it...that’s the best you can do when you don’t have power point projectors like you folks that have entered the next century. So with great sincerity and labor we draw cartoons to help is with our illustrations. I wish this could be better represented for you but this is actually Melanie ?(Weeks)? and this is Marie ?(Newcomb)?, if you know those characters. Yes, in cartoon version. So we would cut their tracks and move backward on the tracks. Of course if we were to follow them what we would be obtaining is information from a moose that is running away from us, which is counterproductive.

Working moose this way was especially successful. The animals are usually solitary, they’re in areas with deep snow, often fresh snowfall, so getting on their tracks and following them is like following a road map.  What we would do is record the cover types that they were using but also feeding behavior, feeding data. This for example is a subalpine fir sapling that has been browsed. Each one of these little truncated stems is a data point for us. So we would count these, per plant, the height of the plant, snow depth adjacent, etc., 500 bites per sampling effort so that we could standardize it.  By the end of the project we had collected over 150,000 bites.  That didn’t fully sink in, did it?  (Laughter) I feel confident in those data, also. (Laughter)

What it reflected for us is a diet anomalous with what is found across the rest of North America. Willow is predictable.  That is a common diet item in North America, 24% for the moose that we were tracking. Buffaloberry 4%, lodgepole pine 10%, although all of this was after the fires, not before. There’s an interesting story there as well. Gooseberry 9%, and here’s the most intriguing part of this detective story... subalpine fir was 38% of the diet.  What do we know about subalpine fir? It’s a shade tolerant species that comes in fairly late in the successional trajectory. So, you’re already anticipating where this story will conclude, aren’t you?

This is wonderful moose winter range in the early part of the winter. This is an old, cold boreal spruce fir forest with a high water table, a ?(perch)? water table.  This is the kind of place that you’ll find them in November. Here they’re browsing predominantly on gooseberry, which is energetically not particularly efficient because those plants are so scattered.  Except this has a very high nutritional content to it and so they’ll use it. However gooseberry is buried on average at 33.3 centimeters of snow. So, it’s available only in the early winter. That forces moose to abandon that food type and you find them then in the willow stands. That occurs in November and December, which what, correlates with the earlier data that I showed you.  So the habitat and the feeding behavior are now matching up to our indices population and distribution.

Here obviously they’re feeding on willow.  Then as the winter progresses, snows accumulate, they retreat from these willow stands, move upslope to the adjacent coniferous forests, where they feed primarily on what was 34% of the diet, subalpine fir and the understory, that shade tolerant tree that comes in late in the successional trajectory. And, a curiosity for late winter, you might find moose in mid-age lodgepole pine forests feeding on Shepherdia canadensis, or buffaloberry.

A couple of explanations for this feeding pattern I just described. We ran some nutritional analysis against the major food items in the diet, and found that gooseberry, Ribes, has a high winter long nutrient content, although it is buried early ‘cause it’s so short statured, and they can’t use it all winter long. But, it was the most nutritious plant of all those that they used in their diet. And buffaloberry, the one that comes in late in March, they’ll walk past it through all the other winter months but they will eat it in March, and we found that it has a very late, high late winter crude protein content, and is relatively energy deficient or depauperate through the rest of the winter months. Moose seem to know what they’re doing, don’t they?

Snow is a primary determinant of moose distribution and habitat selection, as we discussed earlier. To dramatize this...this is a willow stand above Cooke City where moose are operative during the early months of the winter, but by the end of December, early January it looks like this. It is unavailable to moose as a foraging opportunity. Snow drives moose distribution.

To add some empirical data to that, we collected the average heights of the primary browse species of moose on the northern range, shrub height represented here, the species here, and then snow depth here, and matched that against the average early, mid-late winter snow depth with the average heights. I won’t bother you with how many plants we took the average height from. What it shows us is that in general, even by average early winter snow packs, the browse species that moose would want are buried, the deciduous browse species...that’s the kicker. And by mid and late winter almost all of them are under the snowpack. They’re not available for moose to browse upon. So, fitting back into our story as we’re letting this be disclosed, remember how I started out by saying that through most of North America moose are associated with post disturbance shrub fields, where they browse on deciduous vegetation that is available because you’ve broken the forest canopy, removed the competition, all these shrubs proliferate and that’s wonderful for moose as they’re attempting to balance their energetics.  This doesn’t fit.

 Moose here instead are associated with these old forests as I’ve mentioned several times now. A further advantage to these forests is that they tend to be double canopied. As lodgepole pine forests mature into their latest succesional stages three and four hundred years, they develop an understory of these shade tolerant spruce and fir trees, which is useful in ameliorating snow conditions. Incoming snow is caught on the branches, the latticework of the branches, sublimated back into the atmosphere, and that happens twice, the overstory and then that second canopy. And, because the forest floor is shaded, the snow conditions are easier to travel through. So, to use some descriptives, out in the open you have snow conditions that are like peanut brittle or cement, and under the forest it’s like powdered sugar, and there’s twice as much out in the meadow, and half as much here. So how can moose best balance their energetics?

Moose were savvy also in picking their travel routes using this pattern that I’ve just described of the double-canopy forests.  So, in the oldest lodgepole forests, in the oldest spruce-fir forests we took depths of snow that was on average in the early, mid, and late parts of the winter, and then where moose traveled, and consistently in both of these old forest types throughout the winter they were able to find routes through the snow less than what was available to them. So they’re following under the tree wells, under forest canopies, under the branches to find the easiest route to travel... that’s intuitive. But we have empirical date to support that. It is energetically efficient for moose to travel in these forests using them the way that they are.

Again I mentioned earlier that moose are associated with large masses of vegetation in the landscape, that post disturbance shrub field paradigm. We don’t have that here. But moose are still patch oriented on this landscape, and they do that in two ways: with the willow stands, which you know from your experience here are fairly limited in their biomass on the northern range, but also, and more curiously, with patches of subalpine fir. 

To cut to the chase with this one, it shows us that not all willow stands are created equal, that they have different biomass available of willow.  It is the tall willow communities not the short ones, it’s the Drummonds, Geyers, Booths willow stands not the Eastwoods and Wolf willow communities if you care about such things, that are better for moose. And those that are pure stands rather than mixed with conifers.

But, back to the subalpine fir theme, they look for patches of subalpine fir, and especially they’re looking for low statured subalpine fir. This is the distribution of bites; remember those 150,000 bites that we counted. This is how they are arrayed, that proportion that was browsing on subalpine fir, by height class. So, the majority of subalpine fur that were browsed are down here in this lower height class, fifty to about two hundred centimeters in height. And where are those found?  Aggregate these data instead of breaking it out as I have, in browsed, unbrowsed, and less than 1 meter, more than 5 meters, just aggregate this. Here are LP0 forests, this is 0 - 40 years post disturbance, 40 – 100, 100 - 200, 200+. Preponderance of subalpine fir is found in these oldest forests.

And more curiously, subalpine fir has the ability to form patches on the landscape which ties excellently within the concept of moose being patch oriented and balancing their energetics by looking at accumulations of biomass in the landscape to browse on. Subalpine fir forms layers around the central parent tree. This is a curiosity of this species. You’ve got the patriarch, the adult, the lower branches drop, and as they touch the ground they root, and it layers progressively outward, forming this large patch on the landscape. We went into the forests of different ages; here they are arrayed again from zero to three hundred year old forests. We counted how many of these patches exist and what their footprint was, how big they were. And, the oldest forest had the largest number of patches, and the biggest patches. So where can moose make a living in this old forest where they stand next to these patches, in that deep snow and they just eat around that and they have to move as little as possible? They just belly up to the counter, use the cafeteria, and move as little as they can. Patch orientation for balancing energetics.

The effects of the 1988 Yellowstone Fires. We lost a lot of late successional stage lodgepole pine forests, which fits exactly into the story that we’re telling here. That I think is the reason for the significant post- fire decline in population.  You could argue that there was a flush of biomass production following the 1988 fires, but that is primarily something that’s available to the moose during the summer, not the winter. Summer is not limiting for moose populations here, summer browse.

We made an effort to try to actually measure some of the effects.  So we looked at the number of browsed twigs per plant as we followed moose pre and post fire. We found that they increased the number of twigs that they took per plant, post- fire from 8.5 to 13.2 in their desperate effort to balance energetics as they had less food available to them. This has an impact then on the plants as you take away more biomass. It can have long term deleterious effects to the browse available.

We also measured the routes that the moose took through the snow to get their 500 bites within our sampling scheme...we just laid a tape measure out on top of the snow.  We were serious about collecting data with this project. So we measured the distance from the 1st bites to the 500th bite, and used that as a measure of foraging efficiency. We found that in the unburned forest they took 2.9 twigs browsed per meter traveled, and 0.7 twigs browsed per meter traveled in the burned forests. So where is it more energetically efficient to browse? In the unburned forests...you get more return for your traveling investment.

Willow is significantly affected. We have 265 permanent willow transects that we put out, fortunately a couple years before the fire, and we have continued to sample those every year since.

This happens to be a willow stand in Frenchy’s Meadow.  I never thought that something like this would burn, but it did in 1988.  They’ve gone back in and monitored, and these data hold true to the present. 46 of those permanent plots burned, but only 15 have reestablished, which is a bit anomalous with what the literature would tell you in regards to the stimulating effect of fire on willow. 12 died from environmental stress that year with drought, and only 1 has reestablished. That is a net biomass decrease in available browse of an important species.

We mapped this out with some data that Roy Rankin helped us with for the Yellowstone Park, Slough Creek, Soda Butte and Bear Creek study units.  And the biggest effects, hectares of unburned willow, hectares of burned willow. Looks like the most burned here in the Yellowstone Park unit, which is mostly the Blacktail out to the Lamar area.

And we looked at utilization within these, and I think some of you might be interested in this because of all the talk that’s going on recently on about trophic cascades.  We’ve seen a decline in the amount of browsed twigs, simply the browsing rate in these 265 plots that are north of the park boundary. And continuing past ’97 - 2004 this continues to drop.  I think it’s because of decreased moose numbers.

Moose employed various foraging strategies after the fire. Some of them that were in the Blacktail unit expanded their home range size to almost twice what it was pre-fire, and all of those animals died.  They were animals six to eight years old, but they did not recover from tipping the energetics scale. Some moose that were in the Slough Creek unit that burned with a comparable intensity shifted their diet, from what had been pre-fire to eating burned lodgepole twigs. No other moose that we studied did that, but the ones that ate the burnt twigs survived, and then later pioneered new habitats. So, why one moose or even a drainage of mooses would have different foraging patterns like that immediately post- fire I can’t answer. One strategy was successful, one was fatal.

In conclusion, the only thing else, the winter range moose are anomalous across North America, which makes it more fun. It’s far more enjoyable for me to invest 15 or 20 years of my life in something that’s anomalous than something that is same ole, same ole. Here moose are associated with double-canopy late successional stage lodgepole pine forests, not post disturbance shrub fields the way it is across the rest of North America.  Jim Peek found a similar occurrence in northern Idaho, but otherwise I have found nothing comparable in the literature. So congratulations, your moose are anomalous. 

We found no use of early successional stages, that is post- fire areas as evidenced by all the different techniques that we used. And that is primarily because of a lack of available browse in those early successional stages, as evidenced by the methods we used.

Our management recommendations:

Continue to monitor population trends using a suite of indices. I don’t know what else you can do because standard survey techniques probably won’t be successful.

The state of Montana has responded to these data, and has reduced the hunting quota from 55 either sex in those five units north of the park to 13, bulls only, which is a reasonable management strategy. However, we are still discussing, or arguing, whether that is an appropriate hunting quota level. 

Reduce incidental mortality...roadkill.  What I have in mind is a Forest Service issue, and that is improving the standard of the road starting at the north entrance to the park out to the state line through Cooke City, going from, what is it, a 28 foot road width to a 32 or 34 and commensurate speed increase. The highest density of moose that we have on the northern range is in the Cooke City area, and if you have those snow tunnel corridors and you increase the speed of traffic on the road there’s some obvious implications to that. It seems simple but it’s something that we should consider, and I don’t know how we’ll consider it. 

Retain willow stands. That’s an obvious one for you folks in the park.

Retain late successional stage lodgepole pine and spruce-fir forests, especially if they’re adjacent to willow stands. This ties very nicely into our silver cultural practices on the national forest.

Maximum forest interiors and minimize edge...that’s the take home lesson if you want moose in this area. Moose are forest interior obligate species, that is they want the middle of big pieces of uncut, unburned old forests, not edges, and not early successional stages.

This is good moose winter range in this area.  Questions?

I tried to move with alacrity. There is some more information in this document, and there is a copy of this in the research library. Otherwise, I have eight publications prepared, but I have no money to pay for publication costs, so I wouldn’t expect those to be in the literature anytime soon. So if you are looking for more than the Readers Digest Condensed version it’s here in your research library.

Female Voice:  Questions?

Audience Member:  Dan, what are you going to propose to help with the road mortality issue in the Cooke City area...on roads?  Did you know 191 ??(???)?? some different tests and unfortunately the electronics didn’t work out.

Dan Tyers:  In discussions with the Federal Highway Administration I asked that they go, that they retain a reduced road width from the park line to Cooke City and then they go to an expanded road width. And originally they had wanted it to be the largest prism possible all the way from the park line out to the improved road surface in Crandall-Sunlight. And I think that that’s the plan they have ultimately adopted, although there was discussion on whether that was appropriate. They had concerns in regard to safety. But the highest densities of moose are in the area that I just described, from Yellowstone’s north entrance to Cooke City.  So, if they can keep it at a reduced road width then they should also keep a reduced speed commensurate with that abbreviated prism.   That’s all that I know to do.

Female Voice:  Any other questions for Dan?  Yeah, Craig...

Audience Member: Dan, do you have any information on roadkills up in that section?  What’s the (unclear)...?

Dan Tyers:  We don’t...we don’t keep records as well as you folks do. We get constant reports of them, and we find them dead, but we don’t have numbers tabulated the way the park has done. I’ve seen your end of the year reports and those are very well done. We have nothing similar. But I can personally think of say, 3 or 4 killed last year. With a limited population that’s a significant impact, especially if it’s cows.

Female Voice:   With that let’s thank Dan  (Applause)