While there is abundant wildlife in Rich County, UT, it’s always a special day when our crew sees creatures that aren’t a cow or a bug! On a typical day we usually see various songbirds and maybe a frog, fish or a mouse. On special days, we see the rarer wildlife - sage-grouse, badgers, deer, and antelope. Those may be our favorite days because we put so much work into collecting data in hopes of seeing improvements in range conditions that equate to habitat quality.

One focus of our work centers on managing rangeland habitat for the Greater Sage-grouse. Most of Rich County is considered a sage-grouse hot spot. We are researching how this habitat is affected by different grazing systems, and thinking about how the timing and duration of grazing can be used as tools to manage cows and grouse together. It is one thing for the data to tell us that the habitat is suitable for sage-grouse, it’s something totally different to see sage-grouse thriving in that habitat. Our seasonal sage-grouse count is hovering around 35 birds, possibly the most we’ve seen in one season over the past 5 years.

An animal that we see plenty of signs of, but rarely see, is the badger. Our study area is COVERED in badger holes — to the point where it can be dangerous to not watch where you walk. In our years of working in this area, we’ve seen three or four badgers. While they look cute and curious, they can be aggressive when threatened and we want nothing to do with their long claws! We keep our distance from the safety of the truck.

Every once in a while, we will spot a coyote. These creatures are elusive and wary. In this rangeland, and many across the West, coyotes get a bad rep for preying on lambs. They also, however, serve as an important meso-predator in the rangeland ecosystem, preying on rodents.

When camping during fieldwork, we often see deer in the farmer’s field beneath the campground. Does with fawns seem to prefer these areas, and it has been fun to watch these babies grow! While it hasn’t been common to see deer on our study sites, this all changed in September, when deer, particularly young bucks with velvet antlers seem to be everywhere.

A more common visitor to our plots are pronghorn antelope. Pronghorn are one of the fastest land animals on the planet — and can run at speeds of ~55 miles/hour over short distances. Another unique thing about these animals is that they do not jump fences, they crawl underneath them - an important consideration for rangelands that use fences to separate pastures for cattle. Part of the wildlife friendly strategy that ranchers in our area are implementing includes pasture fences with barb-less bottom strands to allow pronghorn to cross safely.

Pronghorn antelope checking out the field crew.

Wildlife watching is an extra perk to spending summers monitoring workinglands. Seeing this array of uniquely Western wildlife also fuels our passion at Working Lands Conservation to work with and help tell the story of stakeholders who manage these landscapes in innovative ways to benefit people and nature.

Wildlife Watch