Badgers and bobcats, burrowing owls and ferruginous hawks, and one lucky day, a mountain lion. Redband trout, specially adapted to warmer waters, sulking in canyon rivers. Walking slowly, I nearly always find something interesting: A long-tailed weasel emerging with a young ground squirrel in its jaws. Big sagebrush and bitterbrush pop up through the snow, providing nutritious feed through the cold, difficult months. Some live there year round others migrate from the mountains to spend the winter. I find large mule deer herds in the sagebrush. There are even spiders that specialize in building webs in the brush on sagebrush branches. Sage thrashers, sagebrush sparrows, pygmy rabbits and sagebrush voles all need healthy sagebrush to thrive. Sage grouse are the best known, but there are others. Wildlife species thrive in that mix, some found nowhere else. It’s a mosaic of plants, with a mix of shrubs, wildflowers and forbs (among others). Healthy sagebrush habitat is not just sage. But sagebrush country is a naturalist’s wonderland, if you only get out and walk. I know many in this part of the world favor the mountains, those classic peaks and conifer forests. The lower Boise foothills, like much of southwestern Idaho, was once sagebrush-steppe habitat. How do we approach degraded lands? What role do they play in our conservation conversations? How do we value them? And does it matter? A coyote at Idaho’s Ball Creek Preserve. It’s degraded and invaded, but I still find marvels here. It’s where I go for writing inspiration, for a quick break, when I need a critter fix. And still, it’s the natural area where I spend the most time. Much of the wildlife that would have originally been found here is long gone.
These hills have largely been taken over by cheatgrass. Not everyone can see elk before breakfast.Ī wildlife paradise? Yes and no. All this, in a wildlife management area I can access a few minutes’ walk from my southwestern Idaho home. I continue on, hoping to see the large herd of pronghorn I’ve been regularly encountering. Finally, their curiosity sated, they both trot away, a gait nothing like domestic canines. The wind ruffles their fur, making them appear like puffy dogs. I round a bend in the trail and see movement a short distance ahead.
I could turn around and walk home, but I press on, knowing rewards await. Set against the monochrome brown hills I traverse, there’s a certain bleakness. What started as a crisp fall morning is rapidly deteriorating into unpleasant cold.
The gravel crunches beneath my feet as I tuck my face down into my jacket.
0 kommentar(er)
