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Overlapping Interests Here’s how it works:
Holly Copeland, a scientist on Kiesecker’s team who created the maps, says, “The real thing will be much more detailed, but we needed to put the idea out there.”
“We don’t have a lot of energy potential out here, but what we do have is a lot of wildlife potential.”— Freddie Botur, manager of Cottonwood Ranches |
Laptop Science and Fancy Math
The Conservancy’s Joe Kiesecker is as likely to be dialing in mathematical models on his laptop as he is to be collecting biological specimens from the field. The former disease ecologist once traveled the globe, collecting and documenting dead animals, recording species declines. That work was intellectually stimulating, he says, but it did nothing to reverse the downward-spiraling trends he documented.
Then, in 2006, just over a year into his post as a scientist for the Conservancy in Wyoming, BP approached the Conservancy about the mitigation work at Jonah, and Kiesecker got his opportunity to do something to turn things around.
The organization had been compiling data on biodiversity in Wyoming for more than a decade and setting priorities for conserving high-value lands. Now, with the blessing of the BLM and the Jonah interagency office, Kiesecker could use his computer to bring those inventories of key species and habitats to bear in creating offsets for Jonah.
Predictive modeling, or “fancy math,” as Kiesecker describes it, lets him run multiple scenarios for conservation based on multiple variables. He plugs in the agreed-upon goals — such as restoring and preserving pronghorn migration corridors — and the predictive model pinpoints lands that could be candidates for offsets. The model searches for corridors that are sizable and still intact, close to Jonah but not suitable for future drilling. This approach takes an entire landscape into account, Kiesecker says, and “allows you to plan and forecast away some of the uncertainty that normally exists around mitigation” efforts. That is new. In the past, when it came to mitigation, all offsets were considered equal.
Ultimately, Kiesecker and his team, including computer-modeling guru Holly Copeland, identified nine species that would be hurt by Jonah. The team set goals for conserving the species and plugged the goals into the modeling program.
When the Conservancy took mitigation recommendations to the Jonah interagency office, Kiesecker pulled out a map. The optimum sites showed up as green zones.
In the Zone
Twenty-some miles as the crow flies northwest of Jonah lie the Cottonwood Ranches. There, Dan Stroud, the Jonah interagency office’s habitat mitigation biologist from the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, and a crew crisscross the sagebrush counting birds. The men are here to “ground truth” Kiesecker’s model, to make sure that what’s on the ground lives up to the model’s broad predictions — in this case, that the ranches serve as prime brood-rearing habitat for grouse, where hens raise chicks on a diet of insects.
Just after sunrise, the mosquitoes are fierce as Stroud and the other game and fish biologists set out — two on horseback, a third leading on foot with his two setters. As grouse burst toward the sky in flashes of gray or white, the men count 120-some birds, down from 265 last year. The drop may be due to a cold, wet spring resulting in poor nesting conditions. Still, that’s a big number for this 4-mile stretch.
“We don’t have a lot of energy potential out here, but what we do have is a lot of wildlife potential,” says Freddie Botur, who manages the ranches for his family.
As if on cue, a golden eagle circles above the bluff where Botur stands surveying this 1,042-acre parcel, now protected by a conservation easement. The easement is the first permanent land-preservation project paid for with Jonah mitigation money. The deal was brokered by the Conservation Fund and completed after the Conservancy’s mapping flagged the spot.
“You get good stewardship on the ground, you’re going to have wildlife,” says Stroud, who talks enthusiastically about five additional conservation easements his office now has in the works.
The easements, which prevent subdivision and development of family ranches, counter the other big threat to Western wildlife: housing development. The U.S. Census Bureau projects double-digit population growth for Western states through 2030, making Wyoming’s lonesome sage just that much more valuable as a refuge for sage-dependent species.
Looking out at the vast plain of sage, Botur acknowledges, “It’s not one of those pretty areas of forest and mountains and creeks.” The landscape is broken only by faint two-track roads fading into the distance and a ribbon of green where Muddy Creek snakes through the high-desert hills, streaked red and white from shale and clay soils too young, geologically speaking, to have mixed into a more uniform hue.
But some people would look at this spot and see a perfect place to build a home, says Stroud. Dropping down from the bluff, a grassy meadow stretches out, covered with pale purple wild irises. Indeed, the spot gets its name, Gabe Place, from one of the historic cabins that still stand as remnants of the ranch’s homesteading era.
The easement means the only home builders here will be grouse, moose, antelope, red-tailed hawks and other wildlife.
Nature picture credits: Maps © Holley Copeland/TNC
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