Scholarship & Research
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Item Nature unbound: what gray wolves, monarch butterflies, and giant sequoias tell us about large landscape conservation(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2021) Wright, Will Michael; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Mark FiegeThis dissertation examines how and why people of different nationalities across North America cooperate, or not, in conserving transborder ecologies. This project is important because many species of wildlife have been moving across administrative and national borders to cope with a warming world. Out of four thousand species recently tracked, scientists documented that almost three-quarters of them had shifted their ranges, mostly to cooler lands and waters. Terrestrial species, on average, were moving 12 miles (20 kilometers) toward the poles every decade. As the world heats up, threatened biota need more freedom of movement, greater flexibility with borders, to adapt and adjust. My research objective became to recover a useable past about three focal species--gray wolves, monarch butterflies, and giant sequoias--reflecting how these lifeforms were pivotal to the making, unmaking, and remaking of borders for a layering process, a thick cartography, in written word. Conserving large landscapes for each species takes us outside the international lines of modern maps, from the U.S.-Canada border, to the U.S.- Mexico border, to the treaty borders of Indigenous nations subsumed within the United States. My argument is that state-centered conservation followed the possessive logic of nation-building, creating borders and bounding space to protect habitats. New scientific practices such as radio-collaring wolves, tagging monarchs, and tree-ring dating sequoias rendered visible non-human geographies that did not fit the shape or size of traditional protected areas. Civil society in Canada, Mexico, and United States then rallied behind alternative ways of organizing space, building transnational connections for biological well-being. In short, I investigate how non-state actors on the community level reconciled legal, administrative, and national borders with biocentric borders over the long twentieth century (1850s to present). Civic groups like the binational Yellowstone-to-Yukon Initiative, trinational Insect Migration Association, and multinational Indigenous Fire Collective arrived at a political imaginary in-the-making that I call 'ecological internationalism.' Once recognized, its strategy becomes obvious: forge solidarity across borders or face extinction of shared species. Ecological internationalism offers us both a version of the past and a vision of the future.Item Humans and howls: wolves and the future of animal communication(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2021) Narotzky, Emma May; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Mark FiegeWolf howls have seldom been subjected to studies focusing on their semantic content, especially in wild populations where the context is natural but the availability of contextual clues for researchers is limited. The meaning of wolf howls as interpreted by humans depends on the human's position in ecological, cultural, and scientific context. I describe human interpretations of wolf howling from the perspective of amateur observers, historians, and biologists; the historical context of wolf howl research within ethology and questions about semantics in animal communication research; and the possibility of semantic differences in wolf howls from different contexts recorded in the wild. Wolf howls were recorded in Yellowstone National Park in 2017 and howls from territorial borders were compared with howls from territory interiors. Howls from the two groups were not discriminable. There may be no structural differences containing semantic information about territorial content, or the location relative to a border may not be a useful proxy for territorial message. Questions about intended meaning as opposed to observed function in animal communication are difficult to answer and often collide with humans' desire to be unique in their communication systems. Questions about wolves run into political and cultural baggage arising from humans' and wolves' history as ecological competitors. As semantic research in animal communication develops, wolves may become a coveted subject species because of their social living, strong individual/personal characters, and group coordination. These studies and their results will always be filtered through a thick barrier of human biases and reflections--possibly more so than any other non-primate in the world--but information about wolf communication can be disentangled from human culture in both scientific and vernacular accounts with enough historical information about the sources of the humans' biases. Future research on this topic will require simultaneous approaches from different angles, including ethological, historical, neurological, perceptual, and socioecological.Item Stress hormones and social behavior of wolves in Yellowstone National Park(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2001) Sands, Jennifer LeighItem Assessment of prey vulnerability through analysis of wolf movements and kill sites(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2003) Bergman, Eric JamesItem Wolf behavior: a history of its study in North America(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 1980) Fischer, Karen AnnItem Winter wolf predation in an elk-bison system in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2001) Jaffe, RosemaryItem Behavioral responses of elk (Cervus elaphus) to the threat of wolf (Canus lupus) predation(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2006) Winnie, John Arthur, Jr.; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Scott CreelWe studied individual and herd level behavioral responses of elk to spatial and temporal variation in the risk of predation by wolves over three winters in the Upper Gallatin drainage, Montana. Within a given drainage, elk of both sexes moved into or closer to protective cover (timber) in response to wolf presence. Cow elk responded to elevated risk by increasing vigilance in exchange for foraging, and large mixed (cow, calf, spike) herds substantially decreased in size. In contrast, when wolves were present, bulls did not increase vigilance levels, nor decrease feeding, and small bull-only groups slightly increased in size. As a consequence, small bull-only herds and large mixed sex herds converged on a similar size when wolves were present.Item Animal viewing in postmodern America : a case study of the Yellowstone wolf watchers(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2007) Young, Jo Anne; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Dennis AigThe purpose of this thesis is to examine the American relationship with wildlife by way of a case study of the Yellowstone wolf watchers. The American relationship with nature and animals changed at a never before seen rate during the modern era because of capitalism and industrialization. Our relationship with animals is now idealized and distorted, and we constantly mourn their loss from our everyday lives. Although we keep the animal in a state of perpetual dying by representations in mass media globally, zoos, parks and pets, these actions are more to further enforce their marginalization and subjugation to human authority. The Yellowstone wolf watchers seek out their contact in the more authentic setting of Yellowstone National Park, even though this is not the definition of wilderness they believe it to be. Even though the wolf watchers are under the same cultural influences that occur throughout society and result in their scopophilic fascination with wolves, this voyeurism also facilitates a contribution to a unique scientific study of this historically mythologized and only recently reintroduced animal.Item The impact of wolves on the 'market' for elk hunting in Montana : hunter adjustment and game agency response(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Agriculture, 2005) Batastini, John Walter; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: David E. Buschena.The gray wolf has become a symbol of controversy in the American West. Hunters, however, are one group that has diverse attitudes toward wolf recovery stemming from the conflicting impacts the presence of wolves creates. Impacts on hunters and big-game populations also affect state game agencies. As of 2005, wolves are still managed by the federal government, so the impact of wolves is exogenous to state game agencies. However, state game agencies can exert control over how wolves affect hunters by adjusting management of big-game hunting. The purpose of this thesis is to develop a method to analyze the impacts wolves have on the big-game hunting βmarketγ in the NRMRA, and to use this method to estimate the short-run impacts of wolves on elk hunting in Montana. A hunter choice model and a game agency model were used to form the basis of the empirical models. The dependent variables developed assess the impacts of wolves on the quality, quantity, and demand for limited elk hunting permits, and the quality of general license elk hunting in Montana. The wolf variables included in the models capture the initial elk distributional effects of wolves, the intensity at which wolves inhabit a hunting district, the level of wolves, and the longevity of wolves within a hunting district. The time period considered was limited by hunting and harvest data availability to 1999 to 2002. The results from the empirical estimations suggest that the state game agency and elk hunters are effectively adjusting to wolves in areas of Montana where wolves prey primarily on deer. In other portions of Montana where naturally occurring wolves prey primarily on elk, the results suggest that the state game agency and hunters are not adjusting to wolf predation as to maintain hunter harvest rates in these areas. Finally, in portions of Montana where reintroduced, high-profile wolves prey primarily on elk, the model results suggest that hunters and the state game agency is adjusting to wolf predation. However, despite the adjustment of the game agency hunter harvest is being affected in these districts.Item Evaluating aspen responses to changes in elk abundance, distribution and behavior following wolf reestablishment in West-Central Yellowstone National Park(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2011) Shafer, Timothy Lee; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: David RobertsThe reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park (YNP) in the mid-1990's has created a unique natural experiment for the investigation of trophic cascades operating at large spatial scales and involving large terrestrial mammals. Wolves have been directly linked to changes in elk density/behavior and have been hypothesized to be the driving force behind observed changes in woody plant growth in the system. The primary objectives of this study were to investigate the occurrence of a trophic cascade among wolves, elk and aspen in an area of YNP where elk abundance and distribution changed dramatically as a direct result of wolf reestablishment in the system. In Chapter 2, I determined the distribution and demographic characteristics of aspen in the Madison headwaters study area (MHSA) and identified the environmental attributes associated with its distribution on the landscape. Additionally, I evaluated the morphology, productivity, and persistence of aspen in both clonal and seedling-established. In Chapter 3, I established a climate-growth relationship for aspen to investigate the occurrence of a shift in productivity related to climate coincident with the timing of wolf reestablishment. I used standard dendrochronology techniques to investigate growth trends and identified which climate variables are most important to aspen productivity in this region. Additionally, I established the timing of historic aspen recruitment in the MHSA using age of mature trees. In Chapter 4, I investigated a trophic cascade among wolves, elk and aspen. I reconstructed historical browse conditions for aspen to look for a shift in browse regimes that occurred concurrently with the changes in elk abundance/distribution by performing a dendrochronological analysis of aspen architectural morphology. I also evaluated plant height, productivity, and longevity of aspen where elk densities had declined dramatically in order to capture the expected growth response. I used ANOVA's and multiple comparison procedures to evaluate browse conditions and aspen growth among sites where elk densities have declined dramatically and those where elk densities have remained relatively constant.