In Effigy

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I was pleased to see the fall issue of Human–Wildlife Interactions (a peer-reviewed journal focused on human/wildlife conflicts, published by the Jack Berryman Institute of the University of Utah) included a paper by our local USDA Wildlife Services Supervisor Rod Merrell. Rod’s paper outlined some successful methods to mitigate conflicts with ravens in industrial areas.

Here’s a picture of Rod setting a snare for a bear that was killing our sheep a few years ago.

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Common ravens are federally protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, so when ravens cause problems, solutions generally involve federal wildlife officials. As an ag producer, I’ve had to call on Rod for help with ravens on my lambing grounds, but industrial companies have unique challenges when it comes to ravens at their facilities (including coal and trona mines, gas facilities, and power plants) since shooting, harassment and destruction of nests are not allowed without a special permit from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

Nesting ravens can be very aggressive towards workers coming near their nests, which can be built on catwalks, stairwells, derricks and smoke stacks, but most raven complaints at industrial facilities involve roosting ravens. While a few ravens aren’t often much of an issue, Rod is called to respond to cases involving 150-300 roosting birds and the health and safety issues caused by their fecal material deposited on equipment, handrails, stairs, and other surfaces that workers routinely contact.

Rod’s excellent five-page paper only discusses methods he has personally used to mitigate raven conflicts, from the use of lasers, hazing, scarecrows, sirens, propane cannons, avicides, shooting, and –my favorite– effigies. The paper acknowledges that ravens are intelligent birds with remarkable eyesight, and an acute sense of smell.

Rod reports, “Based on my experience, effigies are the most effective means to keep ravens from roosting on towers, tanks, cable trays, and other elevated structures.” After experimenting with a variety of effigies (including fake ravens used as movie props, which were quickly “torn to pieces” by ravens), Rod recommends the use of actual dead ravens, hung upside down where the wind will create some movement. His paper goes into specifics about the placement of effigies (and how they must be properly disposed of according to federal permit guidelines when no longer needed), but I won’t go into detail here.

Rod also acknowledges that breaking up a roost is a process, “often time- consuming, frustrating, and requiring follow-up,” and no single technique will resolve the problem.

“One must reinforce danger with other tools and techniques or the ravens will habituate to the natural effigies with time,” he wrote.

But what I love about this paper is the endorsement of the value of effigies – a practice used by traditional agrarians around the globe. Sometimes ancient methods are proven to be the most effective. I would include the use of effigies, livestock guardian dogs, and spiked collars as ancient tools that are still proven in value today.

Here’s a scene from rural Turkey in October 2010. Turkish guardian dogs tethered, with a dead wild boar, chickens scratching nearby, and an effigy of a Eurasian Magpie hanging from a piece of farm equipment.

 

Addendum:
Steve provided these shots from our late friend Aralbai's place in Mongolia. These images were taken during Steve's first hunts with Aralbai in 1997 (adventures that involved fox, feasts & drinking). The scare magpie hung adjacent to Aralbai's corrals during the lambing season.

Fall in Yellowstone

Jim and I spent part of the week sorting sheep and doing most of our fall shipping, so we rewarded ourselves with a quick trip to Yellowstone National Park. After a breakfast in Jackson Hole, we headed north toward Moran Junction in Grand Teton National Park, and a black wolf crossed the road in front of us along the way. I wasn't fast enough at getting the truck pulled off the side of the highway to get a photo.

The highlight of the day was the raven that followed us around near Fishing Bridge, inside the park. It's hard to get decent photos of ravens, so I was pleased to have such an opportunity to try to capture the beauty of this bird, with its beautiful black feathers in its textured pattern.


It was a beautiful day, with the changing fall colors providing for brilliant yellows, reds and oranges across the landscape. There were still a lot of tourists in the park, and we laughed that the biggest traffic jams we saw were not "wolf jams" or "bear jams" but bison jams!


This is what the large population of bison and elk have done to Alum Creek, turning it into a mud flat (although the elk population has crashed in recent years). Alum Creek actually looks better now than it did 20 years ago, with some grass species starting to work their way back along the edges. It is still the most degraded riparian area I've ever seen in Wyoming. The nearest lodgepole pine trees to the creek (which are up on the hillsides, out of the picture) have been girdled - bison stripped all the bark off the trees for forage in the winter. If our livestock range looked like this, we'd be out of business.


We dug around in a few piles of bison dung and found it was rich with insect life, with a large variety of species represented. That's one advantage of bison protection inside the park – the use of pesticides outside protected areas results in less insect life in dung. Dung can be an important food source for a variety of bird life, including everything from burrowing owls to sage grouse. We debated bootlegging dung out of the park to perform our own reintroduction process, but didn't do it. Yes, it would have been illegal. Heck, it was probably illegal for us to be digging around in the dung with sticks!

We were also rather irritated about how much of the park was closed due to grizzly bear danger. Seems that the current thinking is that if grizzlies are present, that's reason enough to close an area.


There's certainly no shortage of grizzlies, and no shortage of people who are willing to get way too close. We saw a young grizzly (wearing a radio collar) working his way down a hillside. When we visit the park, we usually see a bear within about a mile of this location, so it's somewhat of a regular bear crossing.


Unfortunately, people aren't very willing to give bears much room to cross the highway. The red color on the left edge of the photo below is the car I kept between my body and the bear.


The last images I'm sharing today are of a new outhouse in the park - part of our economic recovery dollars at work. Notice the sign, and a slight alteration that had been added to the sign by a visitor. I know that guy, and drank a beer with him a few minutes later. (He took his handiwork down before we left). He suggested I call this post "A mature couple visits Yellowstone," but our behavior suggests we're lacking in the maturity department.



Yellowstone really is a fabulous place to visit, and hopefully we can squeeze in another trip to the park later this fall. It's a magical place when there is snow falling and most of the humans have left for the season.