Why have elk declined in the Bitterroot River area?

There have been many large scale changes to the land in recent years, including wolf restoration , but not just wolves-

Predator puzzle. Study raises questions over what’s killing Bitterroot elk. By Alex Sakariassen. Missoula Independent.

People tend to approach these questions with their minds made up.  What I see when I visit compared to 20 years ago is the effects of vast forest fires.

Grousing at windmills

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Grousing at windmills | Need to Know | PBS

Kathie Lynch: Mid-summer 2010 Yellowstone wolf report

Kathie says mid-summer watching is better than she expected-

Here is Kathie Lynch’s latest wolf update.

Ralph Maughan

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Copyright © Kathie Lynch

Watchers must rise very early on the long summer days in Yellowstone to try to see wolves before they bed down in the shade to escape the heat of the day. Sometimes all of the action ends by 8-9 a.m. Watching generally picks up again in the evening, if an afternoon thunderstorm or the mosquitoes don’t chase you away. The up side is that the park is still quite green, and wildflowers abound–I counted 22 different kinds in the first half mile of a hike up Mt. Washburn!

Mid-days are best filled with hiking or watching other wildlife, like the badger and coyote who worked together to hunt Uinta ground squirrels (which, incidentally, had the badger and coyote surrounded!) or the pronghorn buck who galloped to the rescue, emphatically ending two coyotes’ tackle of a tiny pronghorn fawn.

Bear sightings at lower elevations have decreased, but the grizzly sow with two cubs of the year (COY) still delights visitors on Dunraven Pass almost daily, and the sow with three COY is still being seen a long way off in Hayden Valley.

The bison are preparing for their big August rut. Things got off to a rousing start recently with a never-before-seen parade of several hundred bison past the Northeast entrance station and along Highway 212 through Silver Gate and Cooke City, destination unknown. Apparently not finding greener pastures, they returned to the Park the next day, causing massive traffic jams.