IT’S NOT THE endless daylight that prevents sleep, but the stillness. There is no breeze, no rustling leaves, no buzzing insects or hooting owls. Instead, the emptiness amplifies everything. A small avalanche of rock and snowmelt cascades from nearby cliffs into the sea—not a danger, but loud enough to make you jump. Glaciers groan as they settle. Humpbacks spout in the channel all night long.

My sisters and I are curled in bivvy sacks on a frozen beach on the Antarctic Peninsula, surrounded by some 30 other tourists and a couple fat Weddell seals. 

Besides us and the guides, few of our companions have ever camped before. It’s an odd introduction, in part because leave-no-trace practices don’t cut it in Antarctica. In the morning all footprints must be scuffed out with our boots. Neither food nor drink except water is allowed ashore, along with any gear that hasn’t undergone biosecurity checks. The latrine lecture is similarly strict and involves a good deal of giggling from the uninitiated.

Everyone follows the rules, except the massive cruise ship that lumbers into view and kills its engines across from our campsite. Eventually it groans to life again and disappears behind an island. An elegant three-mast barque in a nearby cove weighs anchor and follows suit. They haven’t left; they’re just hiding at our group’s request.

“There are 20 ships along the Peninsula right now,” a guide confided when I’d asked about fellow tourists. “You feel alone because they make you feel alone.”

All this babysitting and sleight of hand is the catch-22 of Antarctica, a continent that is at once a fragile ecosystem and a ruthless force of nature. Without scrutinizing tourists and their negative impacts (both of which are on the rise), humans will inevitably ruin what makes this place extraordinary.

Yet micromanaging wilderness defeats its purpose. There are still opportunities for true exploration in Antarctica today, but they’re highly supervised and subject to restrictions. This is a far cry from the freedom enjoyed by the Antarctic explorers of even a century ago, whose feats of endurance in these frozen badlands gave rise to some of the world’s greatest survival stories. Today, with the inherent risk of polar exploration stripped away, we’re also robbed of its full rewards.

The Seventh Continent

The prospect of being trapped in a floating hotel with a literal boatload of people is not my family’s idea of vacation. (Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wasn’t talking about cruises when he wrote that “hell is other people,” but he might as well have been.) You can fly to Antarctica, but the traditional way to experience it is by boat. So we booked the smallest ship we could manage and sailed south from Argentina with some 90 other passengers. It’s a 330-foot 1A ice-class ship that’s nearly 50 years old and, like most Antarctic cruises, marketed as an “expedition” vessel. During a mandatory safety briefing on our first day at sea, a middle-aged woman raised her hand.

“If someone falls overboard and they’re panicking, do you knock them out first before you pull them back on board?” Our expedition leader just stared, momentarily speechless. “Because,” she added, “I don’t want to be knocked out.”

Later, our guides share other gems. A German told us about one tourist who, upon clambering out of a Zodiac onto the beach, wanted to know their altitude.

“So how high are we right now?” he had wondered, the ocean lapping at his feet.

The winner, everyone agreed, was the man who waved skyward and asked, “Is this the same moon we have in Texas?”

ANTARCTICA IS BIGGER than Europe and shaped like a hurricane, with the lone arm of the Antarctic Peninsula and its islands stretching north toward the tip of South America. It takes an average of two days to sail between the continents. Ships must navigate the notorious Drake Passage, a turbulent convergence of oceans where the waves, whipped into frenzy by furious winds, can reach 40 feet.

In the winter, the Southern Ocean freezes in a halo around the continent. The ice retreats come summer, allowing ships to maneuver close to shore—usually along the Antarctic Peninsula—and disgorge tourists. More than a few have arrived eager to see polar bears, only to discover they don’t live in the Southern Hemisphere.

Instead, the rocky shores are teeming with seabirds like petrels and albatrosses, the latter of which can spend years at sea without returning to land. Good-natured Weddell seals and humpbacks are most common along the coast, though a dozen other seal and whale species can be spotted, too. But the main attraction are the six subspecies of penguins native to the continent. You can identify penguin colonies long before you hear or smell them by the muddy game trails through the snow. 

There are no land-based predators in Antarctica, and there is no wildlife or vegetation in interior Antarctica—only snow, ice, crevasses, and rugged mountain ranges. The continent itself is covered in the largest piece of ice on Earth and contains more than half of the planet’s freshwater. The ice is so heavy that it’s actually causing the land beneath it to sink into the sea.

No single country governs Antarctica. Instead, the Antarctic Treaty of 1959 laid the foundation for global cooperation around scientific research and, later, preservation. Hunting and fishing are strictly forbidden in a place that’s designated as “a natural reserve, devoted to peace and science.”

During the 2022 to 2023 tourism season, an estimated 106,000 passengers navigated the Drake to cruise along the continent. Nearly 64,000 of those went ashore (ships carrying more than 500 passengers are not allowed to make landings). Although this number represents just 2 percent of Yellowstone’s 2021 visitations, it’s a staggering 1,225 percent increase from the early 1990s, when 8,000 tourists visited Antarctica each year. With them come invasive species, vandalism to historical artifacts, and disruption to wildlife. 

Anja Blacha Skis to the South Pole, 2020

Before the daily Zodiac cruises, our guides scout. Every morning and afternoon they scatter in all directions before collecting tourists and trolling past the critters they glassed up earlier, as if stumbling upon them for the first time.

The discretion is deliberate. They don’t tell us we’re headed to see a rare penguin in case it vanishes before we get a good look. They use code when radioing each other for the same reason. It’s a simple system—L.S. for leopard seal, E.P. for emperor penguin—but many people don’t pay enough attention to crack it.

“I’ve got an H.B. at 10 o’clock,” our guide radios after a humpback surfaces off our bow. She’s a friendly Brit with one Antarctic season under her belt, and she’s a touch nervous. I ask how she likes the work.

“Some guides carry a plastic cup so they can scoop krill out of the water and show them to guests,” she says at one point, hesitating before adding, “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

It’s clear that the idea of displacing a handful of krill, even for a moment, troubles her. Then she twists the throttle and the motor rumbles to life.

“Anyone have an iPhone?” she asks, brightening. “Want to take a time-lapse of an iceberg?”

BEFORE SHE SKIED to the South Pole, Anja Blacha was just another tourist.

In 2013 the German entrepreneur and her sister traveled to Peru, where they joined a “standard tourist trek” to Machu Picchu. That multiday hike was her first time in a sleeping bag or tent, and she had never spent so much time outdoors. 

Ten years later Blacha can’t begrudge tourists their chaperoned fun. Without it, she wouldn’t have gone on to become the youngest German woman to summit the tallest peak on every continent. That includes Mt. Everest, of course, but also Vinson Massif, the 16,050-foot peak at the base of the Antarctic Peninsula. In 2020 Blacha completed an 858 mile ski trek to the South Pole to achieve what was, at the time, the longest solo, unsupported polar expedition by any woman in history. (Her record has since been broken by Preet Chandi.) 

Although Blacha, now 32, has journeyed to the Arctic (“there’s a risk of polar bears there so I had to learn to shoot”), she says Antarctica is unique. “The sheer expanse of the continent is mind-blowing. I remember being in high camp at Vinson and just looking out around me and it looked like I was above the clouds. But everything was land mass and snow and ice. It’s so, so beautiful.”

Because of that vastness, Blacha sometimes lost a feel for judging distance on her ski trek. Snowcapped mountain ranges look like they could be 10 miles away or 100. Without referencing her GPS, it was disorienting. After just four days of skiing, conditions deteriorated into a brutal storm with gusts building to over 60 mph.

“It was just miserable and painful. My tent was taken up at night and I could barely walk up against the wind. I was crawling on my knees when I was trying to get to my sled,” Blacha says. “The fact that the storm hit me at the beginning was good because it really made me conscious of how important it is to use the moments when conditions are good.”

Moments of discovery—a wind-carved valley of blue ice, the thunder of untrodden snow settling beneath her skis—punctuated the exhausting tedium of long-distance sledging. If Blacha’s most dramatic challenge was the storm, the most insidious was simply staying her course.

“It’s the small moments,” Blacha says. “The transition times are the hardest. Like when you have to force yourself to get up and pack down your tent.… Those days where there’s no big hurdle, there’s no fighting against a big storm, just stretches that are not significant enough to give you that hero story, that boost of self-confidence. But they are enough to wear you out and slow you down significantly. You have this grinding obstacle, constantly.”

To cope, Blacha stuck to a schedule dictated by strict mileage and, to a degree, her provisions. A harness around her waist allowed her to drag camp, food, and fuel in a sled that initially weighed some 220 pounds.

“I had to remind myself that I wanted to do this because it would be hard. If it was easy, I wouldn’t have wanted to do it, so I shouldn’t complain and give up because it actually was hard.”

During her two-month expedition, Blacha was required to make a daily phone call to report her GPS location. It’s not enough to simply drop GPS waypoints. Regulators wanted to hear her voice so they could monitor her condition. This protocol was tightened after British explorer Henry Worsley died in 2016. (Thirty miles short of becoming the first person to cross Antarctica on foot, unassisted and unsupported, he called for help, writing: “My journey is at an end. I have run out of time, physical endurance and a simple sheer inability [sic] to slide one ski in front of the other to travel the distance required to reach my goal.”) 

Now there’s an elaborate personnel rotation to ensure a single operator doesn’t become acclimated to “a small deterioration in your voice day after day,” says Blacha. “This takes away from the feeling of being out there on your own and doing something self-sufficient. You feel very much remote monitored, in a way. I think that’s the one thing I don’t like. I feel like it’s micromanagement. It should be my responsibility as an expeditioner to determine what safety margins I’m willing to take.”

Despite the daily intrusion, she says the benefits of strict governance “of Antarctica—in terms of keeping it pristine and prioritizing scientific research and nature protection—outweigh the downsides.”

Blacha had chosen her route specifically because it had barely been traveled. After departing the coast, she didn’t see signs of life until reaching the final miles of her nearly 58-day trip. A century ago she would have reached what was arguably the loneliest part of the planet. In 2020, her journey ended in something like civilization.

“The area around the South Pole is [one of] the busiest, so that’s where you immediately start seeing human signs,” Blacha says, noting the U.S. research station there. About 30 countries operate some 80 bases in Antarctica. “I had to navigate around the Clean Air Sector to not pollute the air with my breath and my sweat and my body. And then the last 30 to 35 kilometers I would see ski tracks—and actually somebody’s trail mix—on the way. Which was not quite what it should be.”

Shackleton’s Endurance Expedition, 1914–1916

The shock of the saltwater is blinding, and I involuntarily gulp a mouthful as I push to the surface. I try to swim back to the Zodiac, but the guide just drags me there with a rope tethered to the harness around my waist.

It’s New Year’s Day and nearly every passenger is lined up for a polar plunge in the Southern Ocean. Shivering, I accept a warming vodka shot from a Swede in a party hat and watch more people fling themselves into the sea. Most likely the tethers are to prevent weak swimmers from drowning, or to retrieve the occasional tourist who goes into cardiac arrest once submerged in 30-degree water.

Maybe, I tell myself hopefully, it’s for when the leopard seals attack.

SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON was one of history’s greatest leaders. He was also something of a failure.

The British explorer’s fourth expedition to Antarctica collapsed at its outset. Ahead of his voyage to circumnavigate the continent, he suffered a fatal heart attack aboard his ship. Shackleton’s death in 1922 ended what historians call the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration and ushered in the Mechanical Age.

A few years before, on his third expedition to the continent, Shackleton intended to cross Antarctica. Instead his ship, Endurance, was imprisoned in pack ice after just one month. Shackleton, his crew of 27 men, one stowaway, and some 70 sled dogs drifted across the frozen Weddell Sea and through the Antarctic winter for 11 months. In the fall of 1912, the ice crushed and eventually sank the ship. For five months the men sledged across the ice floes, dragging lifeboats with them and subsisting on rations. During warmer months, they shot seals and bludgeoned penguins for meat.

“Returning from a hunting trip, [one man] traveling on skis across the rotting surface of the ice had just about reached camp when an evil, knoblike head burst out of the water just in front of him,” wrote Alfred Lansing in Endurance, arguably the best survival book ever written. “He turned and fled, pushing as hard as he could with his ski poles and shouting for Wild to bring his rifle. The animal—a sea leopard—sprang out of the water and came after him, bounding across the ice with the peculiar rocking horse gait of a seal on land. The beast looked like a small dinosaur, with a long serpentine neck … [and] an enormous array of sawlike teeth.”

The leopard seal dove and tracked the man’s shadow from beneath the thin ice, then burst through again to cut him off, corralling the man. Shackleton’s second in command, Frank Wild, arrived just in time. “Wild dropped to one knee and fired again and again at the onrushing beast. It was less than 30 feet away when it finally dropped. Two dog teams were required to bring the carcass into camp. It measured 12 feet long, and they estimated its weight at about 1,000 pounds.”

In his diary, skipper Frank Worsley described the leopard seal’s effectiveness as a predator. (His descendant is Henry Worsley, the Antarctic explorer who died in 2016.)

“A man on foot in soft, deep snow and unarmed would not have a chance against such an animal as they almost bound along with a rearing, undulating motion at least five miles an hour. They attack without provocation, looking on man as a penguin or seal.”

The crew leveraged this observation, and tried to decoy the next leopard seal.

“…When a sea leopard’s head appeared at the edge of the floe [Thomas] McLeod, who was a small but stocky man, went over and stood flapping his arms to imitate a penguin,” wrote Lansing. “…He sprang out of the water at McLeod, who turned and dashed for safety. The sea leopard humped forward once or twice, then stopped, apparently to take stock of the other strange creatures on the floe. The delay was fatal. Wild had reached into his tent for his rifle. He took deliberate aim and fired, and another thousand pounds of meat was added to the larder.”

Once Shackleton’s crew made it to open water, the men managed to sail three lifeboats to an uninhabited island, where they survived on penguins, seals, and their sled dogs. From there, Shackleton took five men and the sturdiest lifeboat and sailed 800 miles across the stormy Drake Passage to South Georgia Island. To reach the whaling station, Shackleton navigated crevasses and glaciers on a journey that wasn’t replicated until 40 years later by a team of expert climbers with appropriate gear. By the time Shackleton reached help and was able to rescue his marooned crew, two years had passed since the Endurance set sail. Not a single man died.

The second time Shackleton journeyed to Antarctica, he and his men sledged to within 97 miles to the South Pole before being forced to turn back. At the time it was the farthest south anyone had ever traveled. 

Shackleton’s first expedition to Antarctica was under the command of Robert Falcon Scott. Scott would later lose the race for the South Pole against Norwegian Roald Amundsen, reaching it weeks after Amundsen and dying of starvation and exposure on his return journey.

“For a joint scientific and geographical piece of organization, give me Scott,” one of Scott’s men, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, wrote in The Worst Journey in the World. “…For a dash to the Pole and nothing else, Amundsen; and if I am in the devil of a hole and want to get out of it, give me Shackleton every time.”

Roald Amundsen’s Belgica Expedition, 1897–1899

If I don’t give the Southern Ocean my full attention, I might actually flip. My kayak lurches in the rollers as I juggle my paddle and gear for a few tricky minutes, stowing cameras in a dry bag then reattaching the spray skirt. We’re navigating an iceberg field and the surf is plunging and slapping against the bergs, revealing their eroded undersides.

I fall behind as I drift, and two middle-aged women in a tandem kayak wobble by. Despite days of paddling together, their strokes are still comically out of sync. They’re dawdling, clearly hoping we’ll return to calm water.

“Where the hell is she going?” one woman demands. She’s staring after our guide, who is vanishing and reappearing between each wave.

“Out to open ocean, apparently,” the other grumbles.

This is the first time we’ve approached anything close to real risk all week. I dig my paddle into the chop and glide past the irritable tourists, letting the swell pull me out to sea.

THE NORWEGIAN EXPLORER Roald Amundsen was often referred to as “the last of the Vikings.” Although he later became the first person to reach the South Pole, he initially ventured to Antarctica in 1897 to chart much of the Antarctic Peninsula. (Pack ice also trapped the ship on that expedition, forcing the crew of the Belgica to overwinter in 24-hour darkness and temperatures that plunged as low as -45 degrees F. There were cold-weather clothes for just four men aboard. “Mentally,” an American crewmate wrote later, “the outlook was that of a madhouse.”)

To learn to survive in the frozen South, Amundsen looked to the North. While successfully navigating the Northwest Passage—the first man to do so—Amundsen’s ship again became trapped in ice. His crew met Inuit tribes, including the Netsilik, and spent two years learning to build igloos and dress properly. Instead of constricting wool, the Netsilik gifted Amundsen sewn caribou hides, whose hollow hairs trap heat for insulation. Their loose fit also allowed better circulation. 

“I find it excellent,” Amundsen wrote after testing them. “Now I can move as I want to. Am always warm, without sweating.”

He also noted certain tricks that made overland travel infinitely easier, from using and handling dogs to maneuvering sledges through variable snow conditions.

“One can’t do better in these matters than copy the [Inuit], and let the runners get a fine covering of ice,” he wrote. “Then they slide like butter.”

Amundsen was successful in completing his polar expeditions—the Northwest Passage and the South Pole—because of his thoroughness. He approached all things—his gear, his ship, the selection of his crew—with the rigor of any outdoorsman who wished to be prepared for whatever he might face. He also recognized the importance of calculated risk. All the great Antarctic explorers did—including those who did not achieve their goals, or lost their lives in their pursuit of them.

“Generally the risks were taken, for, on the whole, it is better to be a little over-bold than a little overcautious,” wrote Cherry-Garrard. “Always there was something inside urging you to do it just because there was a certain risk, and you hardly liked not to do it. It is so easy to be afraid of being afraid!”

Read more OL+ stories.

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Timelapse videography can make nature look especially cool. It’s easy to fall down a rabbit hole on YouTube watching mushrooms sprout or weeds grow. The videos are beautiful because they make us think about what’s happening in the world around us, the little things we move too fast to see.  But can you really call a video of millions of maggots reducing a fresh fawn carcass to bone and hair “beautiful?” Well, that’s for you to decide. 

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A post shared by Owen Reiser (@owen_reiser)

Timelapse videographer Owen Reiser originally posted the footage two years ago, but popular Instagram page Nature Is Metal reposted it Thursday. The video, shot in southern Illinois just east of St. Louis, starts with a grim sight: a whitetail fawn whose lower half has been mangled by a vehicle collision. Almost instantly, things start changing. Bugs swarm the whole carcass, from the face to the gut pile and open wound where the fawn was clearly struck. Roughly four seconds in, the eyeball bursts. Nature’s custodians start working overtime at this point, completely transforming the entire body from an intact specimen to a pile of fur, bone, and…er…maggot excrement.

“I was mostly surprised at how quick the process was—only five days in the humid Midwest summer,” Reiser tells Outdoor Life, explaining that he saw the carcass on the side of the road and decided to build a timelapse set-up around it to document the process. “I believe the majority of the work was done by blowfly larvae, with several species of carrion beetles pitching in as well.” 

Blowflies look very similar to common black flies, but with a blue-green or bronze tint. They lay their eggs in rotting meat and other organic matter, making dead flesh an inextricable part of their life cycle. For that reason, they are often one of the first species to come in contact with animal carcasses. The bugs worked so voraciously that they even overtook some of Reiser’s equipment. 

Read Next: Those White Grubs in Your Deer’s Nose Are Just Botfly Larvae. Don’t Panic

“The maggots got everywhere,” he says. “[They] crawled up the tripods and eventually ruined one of my cameras completely, and partially ruined the other one.”

As you could imagine, the comments on the videos ranged from green-faced sick emojis to philosophical musings on death to remarks on the efficiency of nature. (If something eventually eats the animal, is it really wasted?) Some pondered what the whole scene must have smelled like. Reiser can answer that one.

“It’s hard to describe how bad it smelled—like a piece of shit had diarrhea.”

Watch the extended timelapse in 4k above.

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An American crocodile living alone in captivity had a “virgin birth” in a Costa Rican wildlife park. Scientists are now saying it’s the first time this strange type of asexual reproduction has been documented in crocodiles, according to LiveScience. The first-of-its kind event is detailed in a study that was published Wednesday in Biology Letters.

According to the study, the female crocodile was captured in 2002, when it was two years old, and brought to a public exhibit at Parque Reptilandia in Costa Rica. The captive female was then isolated from all other crocodiles for the next 16 years … which is why park employees were so surprised when, in 2018, the 18-year-old crocodile laid a clutch of 14 eggs in its enclosure.

Read Next: Angler Catches Pending World-Record Catfish

“Of the 14 eggs laid, seven appeared to be fertile and were artificially incubated,” the study’s authors write. And although none of the eggs hatched after three months of incubation, one of them contained “a fully formed non-viable fetus” that was determined to be a female with the same genetics as its mother.

“While it is disappointing that the crocodile [fetus] produced here failed to hatch it is not uncommon,” the authors added, pointing to other examples of virgin births throughout history.

What Is a “Virgin Birth” and How Often Do They Occur?

Known as “facultative parthenogenesis” in scientific terms, a virgin birth is when a sexually reproducing female gives birth without having her eggs fertilized by a male. This phenomenon was long considered a miracle of sorts, but in recent decades, scientists have advanced their understanding as they’ve documented a long list of virgin births in several different species.

“Once considered rare, the ability of sexually reproducing species to generate offspring without genetic contributions of males has been documented across multiple vertebrate lineages, including both avian and non-avian reptiles (specifically snakes and lizards),” the study authors write.

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Over the last century, virgin births have been recorded in pigeons, chickens, quail, turkeys, and other birds. They’ve also been seen in several reptilian species, including Komodo dragons and rattlesnakes, as well as in sharks, rays, and other fish. The authors note the phenomenon is thought to be more common in species that are either on the verge of extinction or kept in captivity. And the more recent example of the two virgin-born California condors that were discovered at the San Diego Zoo would support this hypothesis.   

The one thing that all these species have in common with crocodiles, according to the study, is their ancestral lineage. In evolutionary terms, every one of them descended from dinosaurs. This could imply that the “virgin birth” ability was passed down from these now-extinct species.

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Burmese pythons have been flourishing in the Florida Everglades for more than 40 years, during which time the invasive snakes have upended the native food web and decimated small mammal populations. And new research from the University of Florida shows how this chink in the food chain has led to another unwanted effect: a marked increase in cotton rat populations.

In a study that was published last month in the Journal of Mammalogy, researchers found that as pythons eliminate bobcats, foxes, and other rat predators, they leave a hole in the ecosystem that allows the rats to thrive. (Wildlife biologists refer to this cause-and-effect as a “trophic cascade.”)

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“Mammal communities in python-invaded portions of the Greater Everglades Ecosystem are increasingly dominated by cotton rats and other rodents,” the study’s authors concluded.

In order to gauge the effects that Burmese pythons have on cotton rat populations, researchers caught 115 of the rats and fitted them with GPS transmitters. They released 34 of the rats into an area with a low population of pythons, while the remaining 81 were released into an area with high python numbers. Researchers found that the rat death rates were similar in both areas. Pythons in the high-population area only killed six of the rats, which had no real impact on the overall rat population.

Growing rat populations could present a problem for humans in the region, the authors point out, since cotton rats act as reservoirs for diseases like hantavirus and the Everglades Virus. These viruses are then spread by mosquitos, which bite the infected rats and then bite humans.

Read Next: Rats Are One of Alaska’s Worst Invasive Species. Centuries Later, Wildlife Managers Are Working to Eradicate Them

And as rat populations increase while other mammal populations plummet, mosquitos in the Everglades are forced to feed primarily on the disease-carrying rodents. This was the takeaway from a separate study, published in 2017, according to LiveScience.

Accordingly, the uptick in cotton rat populations in the Everglades could lead to “increased risk of arbovirus [viruses spread by insect vectors] infections for people living in south Florida,” Nathan Burkett-Cadena, lead author of the 2017 study, told LiveScience.

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Minnesota has a minnow problem. As winter loosens its icy grip and anglers count down the days until the celebrated fishing opener on May 13, the state’s bait dealers are concerned there won’t be enough minnows to go around this year.

There are multiple factors driving the state’s minnow shortage, which has gotten worse in recent years, according to some of the bait suppliers who feed the state’s multi-billion-dollar sportfishing economy. The driving factors behind the ongoing minnow shortage are both environmental and human-caused, including a federal crackdown on bait bootlegging. Potential solutions could be on the way, though it’s doubtful they’ll arrive in time for this year’s fishing season.

“There’s no question in my mind that there is a shortage,” Minnesota Department of Natural Resources division director Dave Ofelt said during a minnow resource meeting in Brainerd earlier this year.

What’s Driving Minnesota’s Minnow Shortage?

The minnow shortage that Minnesota is currently experiencing can be explained by the simple laws of supply and demand. The demand side of the equation is simple enough: Minnesotans love to fish. The Gopher State ranks No. 2 nationally in resident fishing participation, with an average of 1.4 million residents purchasing fishing licenses each year, according to the Minnesota Sportfishing Foundation and Coalition. The state’s abundance of lakes and streams also make it one of the most popular fishing destinations in America for visiting anglers. All told, the sportfishing industry generates more than $4 billion in economic impact annually.

The supply side is more complex, with a host of factors driving the number of minnows available in any given year. Between 2017 and 2021, the statewide minnow harvest decreased by roughly 25 percent, according to the DNR. And while we don’t have enough data to estimate what’s happened since then, there’s enough anecdotal evidence to paint a grim picture for the upcoming season.

“It’s been a concern for probably the last three to four years, but the last two years have been really bad,” says Craig Keuten, a third-generation bait dealer and the owner of Keuten’s Wholesale Bait in Duluth. “And [this year] is gonna be way worse than last year.”

Other bait dealers in Minnesota are echoing Keuten’s concerns. Marshall Koep, who operates one of the largest wholesale operations in the state, tells reporters he’s grown more worried with each passing year.

“Every year our harvest declines,” Koep told the Star Tribune earlier this month. “The bait business needs help. A lot of us are saying we might not be there in a year or two.”

Winterkill

Keuten, 68, has lived through plenty of hard winters, and he tells Outdoor Life that winterkill is the most obvious environmental factor behind recent declines in the statewide minnow harvest. Fathead minnows and spottail shiners are the two of the most important native species used for bait in Minnesota, and these fish experience natural die-offs every year.

During especially harsh winters, these die-offs get worse. Thick ice coverage and deep snow might be good for ice-fishing, but it also prevents sunlight penetration, which in turn, lowers the amount of oxygen in the water and kills baitfish. A few years of mild winters could help alleviate this, but it wouldn’t be enough to actually fix Minnesota’s minnow problem.

Loss of Fishable Water

“We’re also losing a lot of water,” says Keuten, who started live-trapping minnows with his father when he was nine.

Minnow trappers in the state get a large chunk of their bait from small water bodies on agricultural land, he explains. Many public lakes and streams are also fair game, but these smaller private ponds are important bait sources because they don’t hold as many walleyes, bass, and other predatory fish. Trappers have traditionally accessed these ponds through lease agreements with farmers, but when farmers sell their land, these prime spots often fall by the wayside. 

“A lot of [these farmers] want to retire, and a developer will come in and say, ‘I’ll give you X amount of dollars,’ which is more than they ever made farming,” he says. “So, the farmer sells, and then they start developing the property around that water. And as soon you see one dock going in, that pond is shot for minnows. Once they start putting crappies, sunfish, and bullhead in there, it destroys it.”  

Meanwhile, concerns about invasive species like milfoil and zebra mussels have led the DNR to close many of the state’s public lakes and ponds to minnow trapping. The agency views the nets and pens used by trappers as potential vectors for the spread of these species. Unfortunately, some of the state’s best spottail shiner lakes have been labeled “infested” by the DNR, which leads the agency to close them to minnow trapping.

“The restrictions are getting really bad on those lakes,” Keuten says, noting that the problem also affects their access to fathead and chub fisheries. “There are spots where some guys used to trap and seine and get a lot of minnows, but because of milfoil and that stuff, they can’t go in ‘em no more.”

Sucker minnows, which are one of the only species raised in hatcheries in Minnesota, help offset the decreasing supply of minnows in the state. While not as valuable to sportfishermen as fatheads and shiners, they make a decent substitute. But even these hatcheries can’t keep up with the overall demand.

Curiously, a significant chunk of that demand comes from the DNR itself. The agency needs sucker minnows to support its own hatcheries, which help supply the state’s lakes with gamefish. Take two of the state’s most popular gamefish as examples: The agency churns out between 2 to 5 million walleye fry each year, along with more than 20,000 muskie fingerlings. And those hatchery fish have to eat, too.

Stricter Regulations

All these factors help explain why Minnesota’s supply of minnows can’t keep up with demand. But the way Keuten sees it, they still don’t address the single biggest issue hamstringing the state’s bait dealers: regulations.

Minnesota and Maine are the only two states in the country that prohibit the importation of live baitfish from other states. (The exportation of these fish is allowed, which further compounds the supply dilemma.) Importing minnows is a common practice elsewhere, Keuten explains, and wholesalers in neighboring Wisconsin and Iowa rely heavily on imported shiners and other baitfish. A lot of these come from Arkansas, which is home to the largest minnow farm in the world. 

Minnesota’s imported minnow statute has been around since the 1960s, Keuten says. But for decades, bait dealers there circumvented it the same way whiskey dealers kept their businesses going during Prohibition: by bootlegging.

“Ever since the ’60s, my dad and a lot of other wholesalers would buy live shiners from Wisconsin,” he explains. “A lot of us—both the generations before and mine—would bootleg those shiners in.”

Keuten says that for a long time, the DNR would turn a blind eye to bootlegging bait dealers so long as they didn’t get carried away. That changed roughly 10 years ago, he says, as growing concerns about invasive species and imported diseases forced the agency to crack down on the activity.

“The same month they did that, I had 10 federal and state wardens show up on my property one morning. By 12 o’ clock that afternoon, I was getting calls from guys across the state. It was like I was the Tony Soprano of the bait business.”

Keuten got away a stern warning, which was enough to keep him and other bait dealers from skirting the law. But he says that until those regulations change, the future of fishing with live bait in Minnesota hangs in the balance.

“Without importation, the bait business is gonna die in Minnesota.”

Are Solutions to Minnesota’s Minnow Shortage on the Way?

Last year, state Senator Carrie Rudd (R-Breezy Point) re-introduced a minnow importation bill that would modify Minnesota regulations and allow permitted bait dealers to import shiners from Arkansas and other states. Rudd introduced a similar bill in 2017 that failed after it was met with resistance from the DNR.

“I’ve carried this bill for many years but wanted to bring it forward again this year because of how important this issue is for our bait industry,” Rudd said in 2022 “When I first introduced the bill in 2017, the industry was in a semi-crisis and there wasn’t enough bait to meet fishing demands. Now we find ourselves in an even worse situation.”

If passed, the legislation would require all imported shiners to be certified as healthy according to standards set by the World Health Organization for Animal Health. Those minnows would also have to come from biosecure facilities that have tested negative for invasive species for at least 12 months. The re-introduced bill is currently awaiting hearings in the legislature.

In the meantime, the DNR has floated a short-term solution that should help alleviate some of the pressures facing Minnesota’s bait industry, according to the Star Tribune. The agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Read Next: How to Catch Nightcrawlers for Bait

During the meeting in Brainerd last month, the DNR announced it would enact an emergency measure on multiple lakes where minnow trapping has either been closed or curtailed due to zebra mussel infestations. The emergency measure would expand the trapping season on some of these lakes, while re-opening others to minnow trappers with special permits. A similar measure would also give these trappers increased access to ponds on state-owned lands.

With summer fishing season just around the corner, the DNR has told the state’s bait dealers that it will continue to assess the impediments facing minnow trappers and consider how they might be removed.

The post A Massive Minnow Shortage Is Looming for Minnesota’s Bait Shops appeared first on Outdoor Life.

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With Wyoming’s big game still reeling from a devastating winter, some of the state’s hunters are thinking about not buying tags and forgoing this year’s hunting season altogether. But Zachary Key, a hunter in LaBarge, has an even better idea for how to give hard-hit herds rest while supporting the state’s wildlife conservation efforts. He still thinks resident hunters should buy their annual tags, but instead of filling them, they should use them as raffle tickets.

“I’ve probably talked to more than 200 people already. Everybody’s saying, ‘I’m not even going to buy a deer tag, I’m just not going to to buy one,’” Key told Cowboy State Daily. “And I’m saying, go ahead and still buy one.”

As the president of the Upper Green River chapter of the Muley Fanatic Foundation, Key recognizes the toll that the unusually harsh winter has taken on Wyoming’s elk, mule deer, and pronghorn. Winterkill has been exceedingly high in portions of the Cowboy State, with mortality rates as high as 50 percent in some of the states pronghorn herds. As a result, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission announced drastic cuts to pronghorn and mule deer tags earlier this month. Roughly 10,000 fewer pronghorn tags and 4,000 fewer mule deer tags will be available statewide compared to last year.

But Key believes that no matter how many tags get cut this year, hunters should still purchase whatever tags are available. That’s because money from these sales directly fund wildlife conservation efforts in the state, and struggling mule deer herds need all the help they can get with recovery.

“I know herd management is generally done by preserving does, because they’re the ones that produce fawns,” Key said. “But why not leave a few more bucks out on the landscape too?”

Key is still working out the details for the raffle program, but his general idea is to partner with private businesses that would donate high-dollar goods as raffle prizes. He estimates having at least $50,000 in prizes. Basecamp and Evanston motorsports have already donated a Polaris ATV, and Weatherby has offered up a brand-new hunting rifle that isn’t on the market yet.

Wyoming Game and Fish Commissioner Rusty Bell, a taxidermist in Gillette, is also donating his 2024 commissioner’s hunting tag for the raffle. Such tags in past charitable auctions have sold for as much as $30,000. General Wyoming or quota deer tags can be used to enter the drawing. Key is working on details of where licenses should be sent.

“[Ensuring] stable wildlife populations into the future for Wyoming is a priority,” Bell said about his easy decision to donate his hunting license. “Who better to work with than our resident hunters?”

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Wildlife officials in South Texas want to assure the public that a mystery critter photographed in the Rio Grande Valley was definitely not a Chupacabra. They’re pretty confident it wasn’t a black bear, a jaguarundi, a coatimundi, or a javelina, either.

To be fair, officials with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department can’t positively identify the mysterious animal in the trail cam photograph that was shared on social media last week. TPWD spokesperson Stephanie Garcia says that because the animal was photographed years ago somewhere in either Hidalgo or Cameron County, it’s impossible to identify it with 100 percent certainty. The blurry trail cam photo was also taken at night, which makes identifying the species even more difficult. However, Garcia says they’re pretty sure it was just a badger.

“The staff at Bentsen [State Park] said in the Facebook post that it’s most likely a badger. But honestly, we’ll never know,” Garcia tells Outdoor Life. “The image was actually taken about four years ago, and it wasn’t taken at the park.”

The wildlife I.D. mystery is rooted in a Facebook post shared on the Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park page on April 6. At first, state park officials offered more questions than answers regarding the “mystery animal” that was photographed on private land somewhere in the Rio Grande Valley—a region spanning the Texas-Mexico border in the southernmost tip of the state.

“We’re scratching our heads trying to identify this elusive creature,” reads the April 6 Facebook post. “Is it a new species? An escapee from a nearby zoo? Or just a park ranger in disguise?”

The post generated plenty of local news coverage, along with a torrent of comments from Facebook users. Of the thousand-plus comments that were received as of April 10, most were educated guesses about the animal’s identity. Some speculated that it was a capybara, a large rodent native to South America. Other, more “innovative” hypotheses included wolverine, Andean bear, raccoon-possum hybrid, and, of course, the notorious Chupacabra—a mythical, red-eyed monster that drinks goat blood and terrorizes rural communities throughout Latin America, according to legend.

Read Next: Wolverine Spotted in Western Oregon for the First Time in Over 30 Years

But it was the least exciting and most popular guess that turned out to be the most likely answer: American badger.

“We agree with most of the comments this is very likely an American badger,” state park officials explained in an update to the post. They clarified that the southernmost tip of Texas is well within the species’ native range, even though badgers are rarely seen there because of their nocturnal tendencies.

Badgers in Texas

“[Badgers] are most common in portions of West and South Texas,” TPWD explains on its website, ”although they occasionally are sighted in the eastern part of the state.”

The agency describes the American badger as “robust and stocky animal” that “has a comical walk since it has to swagger or waddle because of its short legs and broad body.”

Badgers are known for their ability to dig faster than any other mammal, “including a man with a shovel,” TPWD explains. They’re typically found in open prairies and plains, where they hunt for rabbits, prairie dogs, pocket gophers, and other small mammals. They also eat small reptiles, insects, birds, and occasionally carrion.  

“Badgers have few natural predators other than humans,” reads a description from The Mammals of Texas. “They are notoriously aggressive and are ferocious fighters. Typically, they are more than a match for dogs and large carnivores. In one recorded instance, a badger successfully defended itself in a fight with two coyotes.”

The post Mystery Critter Photographed Near Texas Border Turns Out to Be … a Badger? appeared first on Outdoor Life.

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READING ABOUT WILDLIFE in the West can feel, at times, like reading an extended obituary for species headed to hospice. Much of the West Coast banned ocean fishing for king salmon this season because of low stocks. Mule deer numbers suffer from drought and fragmented range. Pronghorn are dropping dead from deep snow and disease. Whitebark pine—a main food source for grizzly bears—just landed on the endangered species list.

Released in mid-March, the newest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says wildlife struggles will only continue, and could worsen, if we don’t take more action. Of the planet’s roughly 8 million species, scientists estimate at least 15,000 are currently threatened with extinction.  

But even with that picture, it’s not actually all doom and gloom. The planet will continue spinning, many of us will continue wandering over it, and even some of our most beloved wild game species will likely, at least in the near term, be OK. Some may even do well.

Exactly how well, or how badly, is one of the toughest ecological questions to answer right now, says Matthew Kauffman, leader of the U.S. Geological Survey Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at the University of Wyoming.

“It’s been really hard for researchers to pinpoint the effects of climate change because environmental variability in general is hard to really quantify,” he says. And finding those answers requires long-term studies that show how wildlife responds to droughts, hard winters, floods, fires, and other big changes.

Which animals survive will also likely vary from one place to another. Black bears in Arkansas, for instance, may well have a very different future than black bears in New Mexico. But one thing is for certain, according to researchers: No matter what happens with climate change, if wildlife doesn’t have habitat to survive—if we’ve fenced across, drained, ditched, subdivided, and developed all our lands and waters—many of the planet’s wild critters won’t survive regardless of whether we curb carbon emissions or not.

So what does this mean for the animals we hunt and fish? The ones we rely on for our food and lifestyle? Which ones are most likely to survive and adapt or go the way of the dodo? We break down the latest research and best guesses about the species you care about most.

Ruffed Grouse

Outlook: Declining

Ruffed grouse have declined between 50 and 70 percent across their entire range in the last few decades, says Benjamin Jones, CEO of the Ruffed Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society. They’re listed as a species of greatest conservation need in 19 state wildlife action plans.

To survive, ruffed grouse need access to high-elevation forests of varied ages—everything from relatively new, young forests where they can spend time in fall and winter to old forests where they can nest in spring. Much of their range across the country’s eastern and midwestern forests is now single-age forests. Those can be fixed, Jones says. It’s hard work, but active forest management can bring back mixed ages.

Warming temperatures are also a big concern, creating a welcome environment for the Culex mosquito, which carries the deadly West Nile virus, which ruffed grouse are particularly susceptible to. As warming increases, so do Culex populations, and they head deeper into grouse range and higher into the mountains until ultimately, Jones fears, there will be nowhere else for ruffed grouse to retreat to.

“There’s hope that grouse can persist where there’s good habitat and that habitat is well-connected,” Jones says. “But it’s for naught if the current climate projections go as they are.”

Mule Deer

Outlook: Declining

Mule deer across the West aren’t doing well. Herds are languishing well below historic highs in states like Wyoming, Colorado, and California. Their winter and transition ranges are being drilled, roaded, fenced, and subdivided. Invasive species like cheatgrass are outcompeting more nutrient-rich food and creating bigger, more frequent fires. Add in drought and diseases like chronic wasting disease, and researchers are more than a little worried about their future.

Climate change, unfortunately, is yet one more challenge, says Kauffman. Drier summers lead to shorter growing seasons, which leads to less food available for deer.

“The big unknown here is what is going to happen with winter conditions,” Kauffman says, adding that even heavy-snow winters like the one portions of the West are experiencing right now won’t likely be enough to make up for less food in the summers.

But Kaufmann also says it’s not too late for mule deer, at least not in the near term.

“There’s an idea out there [called] the ‘portfolio effect,’ like the stock market,” he says. “You want to have your funds in a lot of accounts because you don’t know which ones will win or lose.”

Many mule deer migrate long distances to take advantage of what researchers call the “green wave” of plants growing in the spring and summer. Some mule deer migrate shorter distances and others don’t migrate at all. Maintaining those connected corridors may be their best hope for a sustainable future in a changing world.

Elk

Outlook: Stable for now

Even as some of the West’s most iconic mule deer herds are suffering, North America’s elk are thriving. Most populations in states like Wyoming exceed the herd target numbers. Colorado has more than 280,000 elk, and Montana has more than 140,000 which, according to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, is over the state’s objective too. Even reintroduced elk populations in the eastern U.S. are thriving.

Why? Largely because of their adaptability, says Bob Lanka, president-elect of The Wildlife Society. Elk can eat—and process—a wide variety of foods. Their big bodies also help them weather bad winters better than mule deer or pronghorn.

But they’re not out of the woods when it comes to climate change, Kauffman cautions. As varied as their gut biome may be, which allows them to eat anything from grass to shrubs, they will also be susceptible to the same drought and poor growing conditions as mule deer and pronghorn. A 2013 study near Yellowstone National Park showed that when food is limited by drought, elk don’t reproduce as frequently. They may hang in longer than mule deer or pronghorn, but if the West continues to warm up and dry out, even elk won’t escape the negative impacts.

Waterfowl

Outlook: Stable for now

Ducks and geese need water, and right now, many of them have just what they need. In fact, the 2022 State of the Birds Report by the North American Bird Conservation Initiative showed that “birds are declining overall in every habitat except wetlands.” That means waterfowl are, for now, in pretty good shape.

But the future of ducks and geese is still in peril. So much so, in fact, that the country’s largest waterfowl advocacy group is raising the alarm.

According to the Ducks Unlimited website, “Most major waterfowl habitats in North America face potentially significant, detrimental impacts from the effects of climate change.”

The Prairie Pothole Region and Western boreal forests, where much of the nation’s migratory waterfowl breeds, could face drought and other unpredictable weather cycles that will hurt or even stop reproduction.

Sea level rises threaten wintering grounds on coastal marshes. California’s Central Valley, where Pacific Flyway birds overwinter, could continue to dry.

Even snow geese, one of North America’s most abundant waterfowl, could see its breeding range cut by 53 percent if temperatures rise by 1.5 degrees C; by 73 percent with a 2 degree change, and up to 97 percent with a 3 degree change, according to the American Bird Conservancy.

But this isn’t a foregone conclusion. As with many other species, habitat work and wetlands restoration can help soften these blows.

And there are always Canada geese.

“If you want a species that will probably be OK, it is Canada geese,” says Joe Genzel, communications coordinator for DU’s Great Lakes and Atlantic region. “They really are the most adaptive species out of all waterfowl.”

Wild Turkeys

Outlook: Varies by location

Wild turkeys are struggling. Many of their issues stem largely from habitat changes like loss of hardwood and a lack of active forest management; these hurt reproduction and create better conditions for predators (including humans).

What climate change means for turkeys is a little hard to know right now, says Michael Chamberlain, the Terrell Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Management at the University of Georgia and a national turkey expert. But some recent work shows climate change could actually benefit wild turkeys.

“It may allow them to nest earlier in the spring as conditions warm, and earlier nests are more successful than later nests,” he wrote in an email to Outdoor Life.

Exactly how this will play out, and if it will work this way everywhere, is still unclear, but researchers are looking for answers.

“I suspect the effects will vary from one part of the species’ range to another,” he continued.

Black Bears

Outlook: Stable

For decades, grizzly bears have been making headlines in the fight over their need for federal protections. Meanwhile, the American black bear has been slowly—and in some cases not so slowly—expanding its range. Arkansas wildlife officials reintroduced the bears in the ’50s and ’60s and the state now has thousands of bears spilling into neighboring Missouri. North Carolina hunters killed 3,748 in 2020 and 3,659 in 2021. Hunters in Maine harvested 3,779 bears in 2021.

“Black bears are highly, highly adaptable,” says Mark Ditmer, a research ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station who spent years studying black bears in northern Minnesota. “When they had natural food shortages, they moved into more anthropogenic areas with food crops.”

In other words, when bears couldn’t find wild foods, they ate crops—lots of them. They ate so much corn in some areas that black bear reproduction rates went up.

They will, however, likely struggle in portions of the West and Southwest as drought makes food scarcer. Hungry bears tend to move closer to humans to look for food, which will likely cause more interactions with humans that don’t end well for bears. A paper published in Nature Climate Change in February details the increase in conflict among species like black bears as drought continues to worsen because of climate change.

But even with less food and more conflict in some areas, black bears won’t disappear, Ditmer says. They’ll likely just rely more on orchards and irrigated areas, places where diverted water creates artificial food sources. And in those parts of the country where habitat exists and plenty of rain falls? They’ll be just fine.

Whitetail Deer

Outlook: Increasing

For big-game species facing climate change, it’s good to be a whitetail deer. The species already dominates many of its native ranges and has been expanding into new ones. They’re expanding so far into Canada, in fact, that biologists are worried about “ecological consequences for entire biotic communities,” according to a 2020 paper published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Whitetails do well in mild winters, in dense areas, and in places where humans live. They are also able to take advantage of longer growing seasons in areas like the Midwest, East, and portions of Canada.

In a PLOS ONE paper published on the future of whitetails in the Adirondacks, authors argue that climate change will create such favorable winters for deer that managers need to mitigate the impact of disease and increased competition with moose. Fewer severe winters also means more surviving whitetails, since more of them die during hard winters, particularly in northern latitudes.

Coyotes

Outlook: Increasing

Say what you want about coyotes, but whatever the climate throws at them, they’ll probably be just fine. Coyotes have expanded their range across most of North America, often occupying areas formerly guarded by wolves. They range everywhere from the Mexican desert to the Alaskan tundra to urban areas like Chicago and New York, says Joey Hinton, a senior research scientist at the Wolf Conservation Center in New York.

“They’re the right size. They’re not too big or too small,” Hinton says. “So they can feed on deer or other large ungulates, and when those are not available, coyotes will switch to small prey and, if needed, even feed on fruit.”

Larger carnivores like wolves can eat smaller prey, but they end up expending unsustainable amounts of energy to do that.

“It’s like driving an 8-cylinder truck and stopping every 10 miles to put a little gas in the tank,” Hinton says.

And because coyotes require less food, they occupy smaller territories, which means more coyotes can live in one place. A 500-square-kilometer area, for example, could fit about 20 to 30 coyote packs but perhaps only five wolf packs. If you go in and kill a third of those predators, the wolves would suffer more than the coyotes. Coyotes would readjust, sending juveniles out into newly unoccupied spots to reestablish populations.

“Collectively, we kill the hell out of coyotes,” Hinton says. “They are better adjusted to human-caused mortality than wolves are.”

Read more OL+ stories.

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On March 30, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced a proposal to reshuffle the priorities of the Bureau of Land Management in a way that would put conservation on equal footing with other land uses like grazing and natural resource extraction. Hunters in BLM-rich states have long watched wildlife interests take a backseat to the national demand for energy production, natural resource extraction, and grazing on BLM lands. This proposal stands to change that by balancing those interests, experts say.

The new regulations would require the BLM to “protect intact landscapes, restore degraded habitat, and make wise management decisions based on science and data,” the proposal reads.

Once published in the Federal Register, the proposal will be open for a 75-day public comment period. If passed, balancing conservation with other established land uses would allow the BLM to continue serving America’s wildlife and the broader outdoor community, BLM director Tracy Stone-Manning tells Outdoor Life in an emailed statement.

“The BLM has welcomed record numbers of hunters, anglers and recreationists to our nation’s remarkable public lands in recent years,” says Stone-Manning, who repurposed some of the proposal’s language. “By better conserving intact landscapes, restoring degraded habitat and balancing responsible development, the proposed Public Lands Rule will help us ensure future generations of Americans will have these very same opportunities. We look forward to hearing from the public on this proposal.”

Conservation as a BLM Land Use

Under this proposal, conservation would be clarified as an official “use” of BLM lands, a potential change that has perked up hunters’ ears.

“This proposal clearly says that conservation is not some passive thing the BLM does by denying [other] uses or inaction,” Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Nevada chapter chair Nicholas Maus tells Outdoor Life. “[It’s] elevating conservation to a legitimate, equally valid use of the land. That’s profound.”

This would give the federal agency the ability to lease BLM land specifically for conservation work. Under the proposed rules, entities could apply to lease a chunk of BLM land for a conservation project involving habitat restoration or mitigation. This is similar to how a rancher might apply for a grazing permit or a mining company might apply for a mineral lease. And just as a grazing permit doesn’t prevent public access on that land, BLM lands under conservation leases would still be open to any public use that doesn’t interfere with restoration work, according to the current proposal.

This opportunity could support a variety of wildlife management initiatives that impact game animals in the West. Among them are stopping the annual bleeding of sagebrush acreage, mitigating wildfire and drought, and keeping habitat and migratory corridors intact. Fragmentation has been an especially big issue in BLM-heavy states with major renewable energy value, says Nevada Wildlife Federation executive director and hunter Russell Kuhlman.

“When a wind or solar energy company leases BLM land, a lot of times the first thing they do is build a big fence around it and block it off, and put roads in there so employees can access the [infrastructure],” Kuhlman tells Outdoor Life. “And that obviously has been detrimental to bighorn sheep and mule deer migrations in that range.”

Balancing Wildlife with Clean Energy Demands

But Kuhlman also points out that the death-grip climate change has on the ecosystem is proof that a renewable energy transition is still critical to wildlife health and the future of sustainable hunting in these places.

“Nevada hunters are really starting to see the effects of this major drought. Around the water cooler, mule deer hunters and upland game hunters alike are talking about how it’s getting harder to find quality habitat and quality animals,” Kuhlman says. “On top of the drought, wildfire is another big issue. In Nevada, deer archery season starts in August. I’ve had to ask myself if the wildfire smoke is going to push me out of my area, because it’s hard to glass for mule deer when you can’t see past 100 yards. There’s going to have to be this balance of responsible renewable energy development and protecting these priority habitat areas.”

Read More: BLM Unlocks 75,000 Acres of Private and Public Land With Major Purchase in Wyoming

In addition to emphasizing conservation work on BLM lands, the new regulations would also require that BLM officials consider a specific set of land health standards when signing off on any land use. (As it stands now, agency officials only consider those standards when authorizing grazing permits.) Additionally, the BLM would be encouraged to establish more Areas of Critical Environmental Concern. These are sections of land with “important natural, cultural, and scenic resources.” The ACEC designation is attractive because those areas would still be open to hunting, as well as hands-on restoration and mitigation projects, Maus notes. This makes them a “powerful conservation tool.”

The post The BLM Wants to Make Conservation a Bigger Land-Use Priority appeared first on Outdoor Life.

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It’s technically spring, and Colton Heward is starting to think about turkey hunting. He’s been taking his spotting scope out to glass the hillsides of sage and cedar trees near his home in southeastern Idaho, 10 minutes from the Utah border and 40 minutes from Wyoming. But instead of watching turkeys scratch their way across the snow, Heward sees dead deer picked apart by scavengers. Sometimes he sees four or five carcasses in one quick scan of the landscape. The obsessive big game hunter and guide is getting nervous. 

“Deer and elk are hardy. They’re made to withstand some brutally cold temperatures. But this winter is just never-ending,” Heward tells Outdoor Life. “I’m hearing people in the core area of western Wyoming, southeast Idaho, and northern Utah talk about up to 70 percent mortality in adult deer and near-100 percent mortality in fawns. That is devastating.”

Read Next: Here’s Why Biologists Aren’t Usually Too Concerned About Winterkill

Those numbers might sound hyperbolic. But it’s what wildlife managers are predicting for one unit in the northern region of the Beehive State, according to Utah Department of Wildlife Resources outreach manager Mark Hadley.

“We’re projecting about 70 percent adult loss and about 90 percent fawn loss in the Morgan-South Rich unit. It’s pretty bad. That unit has gotten hit really hard this year,” Hadley says. He notes that the agency predicts an adult loss of about 30 percent and a fawn loss of about 80 percent across the other six units in the northern region. 

“But the winter’s not over yet,” he cautions. “I’m looking out my window here in Ogden and the snow is coming down still.”

A Western Winter for the Ages

As snowpack in northwestern Colorado creeps past 143 percent of the 30-year average, Wyoming breaks a 129-year-old temperature record in its capital city, and Utah ski resorts hit record cumulative snowfalls, wildlife mortality events in all three states are stacking up. 

“I keep hearing people refer to the winter of ‘82 to ‘83, and the decimation that occurred on the Utah mule deer herd in particular. I wasn’t alive then, but my dad and grandpa talked about it decades later. To hear people comparing this winter to [that] is concerning,” says Heward, who guides in the Morgan-South Rich unit. “I go out and look at deer around my house once or twice a week and I keep seeing dead deer on the side of the hill, and more deer just laying there, and you can tell they’re on their last legs.”

Deer, elk, pronghorn, sheep, birds, and other animals typically pack on the pounds during the fall. This is how they get through the snowy months with low-quality forage. Then, spring green-up is supposed to come in and save the day when species health is at its worst. One of the biggest threats to wildlife is when snowpack keeps growing and cold temperatures continue to grip the landscape late in the season. In other words, parts of Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado are facing the worst-case scenario right now. (With that said, experts are quick to note how this precipitation will provide some relief from drought conditions.)

Recently, two Colorado Parks & Wildlife employees, public information officer Rachael Gonzales and district wildlife manager Jeffrey Goncalves, had to euthanize a mature bull elk near Maybell. They did so after watching the starving elk fail to stand up multiple times, according to a CPW press release.

“It’s tough,” CPW assistant wildlife manager Mike Swaro said. “There’s no other way to describe it. We typically see some mortality from starvation every winter. That’s just nature, not every animal survives. This year it feels like all we’re seeing is starving or dying animals.”

Wildlife Deaths by the Numbers

In northwestern Wyoming, over half of the collared mule deer fawns in the Wyoming Range herd are dead. Near Lander in the Red Desert, 14 of 33 collared adult pronghorn does have also perished since December, according to WGFD. The Red Desert pronghorn numbers lead managers to estimate that 50 percent of the herd won’t make it.

The Utah Department of Wildlife Resources already delayed the 2023 shed hunting season statewide after tests on wintering mule deer showed poor body condition and concerns about fawn survival. Utah DWR also instituted an emergency deer feeding program in the Northern region in January. Hadley confirms that feeding is still ongoing, with 51 feed sites operating across four northern counties. 

But it’s not just malnutrition that wildlife managers are worried about. Vehicle collisions are another concern, and these tend to increase when the snow piles up. As traditional travel routes and migration corridors get clogged with snow, swarms of animals move to paved roads where they have a much easier time walking. The result? In Colorado, four vehicles have collided with herds of 10 or more pronghorn in the last three months. (Two of those four collisions occurred within five days of each other and involved a total of 53 pronghorn.)

Will Agencies Cut Big Game Tags?

The winterkill we’re currently witnessing could affect big game seasons this fall, Heward cautions. Officials in northwestern Colorado are already considering slashing big game tags by over 40 percent. Similar measures might be necessary in Utah as well, depending on what the agency decides after a series of public meetings, Hadley says. These reductions might frustrate ranchers in the region who have dealt with wildlife trying to eat their livestock feed all winter. Hunting outfitters and rural areas that depend on tourism dollars could also take a hit.   

But if this response helps populations recover from one of the worst winters in history, Heward says, so be it.

Read Next: As Snow Piles Up in Northern Utah, Hungry Mule Deer Are Getting Extra Food from the State

“In the regions that have been hit hard, my hope is that fish and game organizations take a very active role in cutting tag numbers and doing what they can to preserve the herd that’s left to bolster what’s there,” he says. “Are people going to be upset that there aren’t deer to hunt? Yes, absolutely. But we need to look at what’s best for the herd and the future of hunting them down the road. The best thing in a lot of these places is to cut tag numbers drastically so that less animals are taken off the landscape.” 

The post Brutal Winter Causing Huge Losses in Western Big Game Herds appeared first on Outdoor Life.

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