Leslie Patten Books: Wild Places, Sacred Spaces

How Moving and Handling Grizzlies might Affect their Temperament

Posted on March 8, 2026 by Leslie

This is a post about something I regularly and randomly think about: What is the impact on grizzly bears when they are captured and moved? Or even captured and tagged for research?

Obviously a capture is a very close encounter with humans. Some captures are used solely for research where the grizzly is ear tagged, collared, or tattooed or both. Then there are captures that move problem bears (grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone area are moved usually for killing livestock) to more remote areas of the GYE that the bear isn’t familiar with. How does that affect a bears’ perception of humans? I also wonder how moving a grizzly in the fall affects their ability to find food sources in an unknown territory.

**Grizzly family on a cow that was sick and put down by rancher**

When I first moved to Wyoming, our local landowners association’s yearly meeting had a speaker from the Wyoming Game & Fish Department who specialized in bear management. I live in an area where problem bears are dropped off. The hope is that they’ll roam into Yellowstone or adjacent wilderness areas. This bear biologist told the crowd “You don’t have to worry about the bears that are dropped off here. They’ll just ‘home back’ to where they came from.”

**Craighead brothers in Yellowstone Park with a captured bar. The first study using radio collared bears**

One story sticks in my mind that illustrates all my questions. In the fall of 2017 our local game warden Chris Queen, was off-duty and hunting elk up a remote drainage. It was dusk and he was walking out, back to his truck, without any success. On the way he encountered a female grizzly with three cubs. Queen later told me that he knew this bear. She was aggressive and hornery. The wind wasn’t with him, she charged, and he shot her to protect himself.

“I didn’t want my kids to be fatherless,” he told me. I knew Chris had used bear spray previously in a grizzly encounter. And when we discussed the incident he was on his way to help with some spring bear captures. I didn’t blame Chris. You never know what you’ll do in an encounter and he had a lot of experience with bears and using bear spray. The incident was thoroughly investigated by the Department and Chris was cleared. The three cubs were 2 year olds and the WGFD felt they had a good chance of making it on their own so they didn’t try and capture them. Winter was near and the cubs would be denning.

What stuck with me was the story of grizzly bear No. 423, the bear Queen killed. She was known to WGFD because she had a tattoo on her inner lip. 423 was born in Sunlight basin around 1996. When she was 5 or 6 she broke into an unsecured building, probably in one of the ranches in the valley, and received a grain reward. She was captured and moved to the East Fork of the Wind River. From there she ‘homed’ back to Sunlight, a distance of about 80 miles as the crow flies over rugged terrain and scoured treeless peaks. In 2011 at fifteen years old, 423 was trapped again in Sunlight Basin after she was found eating a cow calf. Although it wasn’t clear if she had actually killed the calf (cattle die from many things), she was moved again, this time to the Idaho/Wyoming border near Jackson. Again 423 homed back to Sunlight, this time venturing over 100 miles through several mountain ranges. (WGFD documented her in 2013 in Sunlight up Trail Creek drainage). When Chris encountered 423 six years later, 423 had three cubs, making her more dangerous as grizzly sows will protect their cubs if they feel threatened.

Besides the obvious question of how these bears are able to find their way back to their natal range, I have to wonder the impact these long distance moves had on 423’s temperament. Now she was an much older bear, 21 years old, with three cubs and a series of unpleasant experiences with humans. Was she thinking “No way you’re gonna move me again, and separate me from my cubs.”

Two female grizzlies attack a trail cam. The first has a blue ear tag. I’ve seen her with cubs many times. The second has one cub and she is wearing a collar.

I’ve been using trail cameras for over fifteen years. I regularly get captures of grizzly bears. My personal experience is that grizzly bears rarely mess with my cameras. Sometimes cubs will explore them but adult males or females hardly ever do. On the other hand, male black bears (and sometimes female black bears) regularly disturb my cameras. I think of grizzlies as the top of the food chain. They have nothing to prove. Black bears though, as subordinate predators in an environment where an encounter with a grizzly can mean death, have to act tough. They stomp around the area, leaving their scent, and bite the cameras to prove their dominance. Yet I have had a few incidents where grizzlies pawed my camera. One was set up on a freshly dead deer. The grizzly bit the camera up, then dragged the deer far up the hillside. That’s typical protective behavior on a large meal. But the other grizzlies that chewed the cameras all had been ear tagged or collared. Two were females with cubs.

I’d love to see a study on the effect of handling and/or moving grizzlies. I’d like to know if grizzlies that are moved in the fall have time to home back, or how they find enough food in an unknown area to make it through the winter.

Bears are smart and they also have individual personalities. I once read a book by a retired Montana warden who helped out on captures. He commented that some bears repeatedly went into cage traps for the free meal (usually road-killed deer are the bait in the trap). Grizzlies are one of the most studied mammals. But I’ve yet to see a study answering these questions.

Two young grizzlies travel together in early spring

Filed under: Grizzlies, New ideas | Tagged: Grizzly bears, hiking, nature, travel, Wildlife, yellowstone, Yellowstone National Park | Leave a comment »

Do Wolves Change Rivers or Do Men Change Wolves?

Posted on December 12, 2025 by Leslie

I’m thrilled today because for the first time in a long time I followed wolf tracks, three wolves who were on a mission. Why so excited? In the past on this blog I’ve written about following wolf tracks, about watching wolves in our valley in the winter, and encountering them on hikes. But since Wyoming began yearly hunts starting in 2016, wolves quickly became very elusive. They were no longer curious who these 2-legged creatures were. They now knew.

I’ve written about how I no longer hear wolves howling in winter in the valley. Some of these changes go along with habitat changes in our elk herds that dovetails with less snow cover and a quickly changing climate. But overall the change in how wolves are using the landscape coincides with human hunts.

I live in the regulated area of Wyoming where there is a season and a quota on wolf hunting, mid-September to December 31. But in 85% of the state, wolves are classified as “predators”. That’s not a biological designation. Here in Wyoming a “predatory animal”is defined by our state legislature and under the control of Wyoming Animal Damage Management Board and USDA Wildlife Services. All other wildlife falls under management by Wyoming Game and Fish (WGF). Predator status comprises a weird group—coyote, jackrabbit, porcupine, raccoon, red fox, skunk, stray cat and of course wolves (in 85% of our state.)

But in the managed hunting zone, called the Trophy Zone, basically in the Northwest corner of the state, wolves are tightly managed. A bit of background as to how Wyoming sets their quota limit year to year and on what basis the WGF determine what their target number of wolves is.

When U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service began their long process of input from the public regarding bringing wolves back to the states, transplanting and moving wolves had never been done before. They knew they’d be bringing them in from Canada (just an aside, there is no such thing as a “Canadian wolf”. Wolves don’t have countries. These are all Canis lupus who occupied almost the entire range of North America. Only the red wolf is a different species Canis rufus, now almost extinct.) because the lower 48 no longer had any wolves. Since this was a novel experiment, many biologists thought the transplanted wolves would just “home” back to their natal range. They also had no idea what constituted a “minimum” number of wolves that would be viable for genetic diversity, and what number an area could support. So they literally just made up a minimum number of wolves per state and noted in the supporting documents that if the number of wolves, and the number of breeding pairs, fell below those numbers in any one state wolves would be automatically relisted. That number is 150 wolves and 10 breeding pairs. Wyoming was allowed to use Yellowstone Park to help support their numbers. The breakdown is 100 wolves and 10 breeding pairs outside the Park; 50 wolves and 5 breeding pairs inside the Park.

What surprised biologists is that the wolves didn’t return to Canada, but adapted quickly to their new environs. And very soon it became obvious that 150 wolves per state (especially states like Idaho and Montana with a lot of high quality habitat and prey versus Wyoming which has a lot of high desert with isolated mountain ranges) is a ridiculously low number, a made up number that should never have been used as a base metric. Yet the states hold that number up like religion, overjoyed at how low they can go in their hunt quotas.

One other thing to note in the original agreement with the states is something called the 10J rule. Although wolves were protected under the ESA, they were returned as an experimental population which limited some of their protections. The 10J rule was the compromise that got ranchers on board. Basically it said that wolves that predated on livestock could be dispatched by the USFWS. The Service took a while to figure it out. In the beginning they indiscriminately took out wolves, many times the entire pack. But over time they learned how to remove wolves surgically without disrupting entire packs or creating areas devoid of wolves. When delisting occurred, the culling of wolves and all the management was handed over to the states.

Back to Wyoming hunt quotas in our trophy zone…Wyoming Game & Fish manages wolves as a tight science. They want to keep our wolves at around 150, hedging their bets with an excess of 50 wolves outside Yellowstone. They know anything can happen like disease that can quickly decimate a population. One year we only had 11 breeding pairs, dangerously close to an automatic relist. The one good thing about their tight management is that WGF GPS collars wolves every winter, attempting to get at least one collar in every identified pack. Thus they have an exact count of wolves in the trophy zone.

Montana and Idaho, on the other hand, don’t collar, but use either game cameras and hunter success forms or include a sketchy method of habitat suitability with approximate number of wolves. Both states assume high numbers of wolves in the state, set their seasons and quotas long and high. They allow guns, trapping, baiting, night goggles, bounty payments and all sorts of dubious types of kill methods that would never pass for ethical hunting.

Why then has it been so hard to see or track wolves in my area for the last several years. Wolves, like bears, are notorious for using roads for passage. That makes perfect sense as roads are easy navigation through difficult terrain. With wolves wary of humans, that isn’t the case in winter anymore, making tracking or seeing them more difficult.

This coyote ran right over three wolf tracks on the main dirt road

But there’s another element. More wolves are killed in “controls” for livestock damage then in the annual hunt. For instance, in the 2024 annual hunt report 31 wolves were killed in legal hunts in the managed area versus 43 wolves killed in controls (8 of those in the predator zone by the Agency. That doesn’t include the 51 wolves killed in exclusively the Predator Zone). The main pack in my area, the Beartooth Pack, had 7 wolves killed in a pack of 9 for predation on 3 cows. Basically, almost the entire pack was eliminated. There are thousands of cattle on our public lands during the summer, almost all of them belong to one producer. Cattle die from many things. During that same summer, Game & Fish hauled off the highway 5 dead cows that were struck by cars so bears and other wildlife wouldn’t feed on them. One year over 50 cows were killed by Larkspur, a plant that can be poisonous to cattle. Plus the state of Wyoming pays the producer 7 times the market price of a cow killed by wolves (3x killed by grizzly bears).

Wyoming Game and Fish collaring a young sedated wolf

All this history, living in the same area for twenty years, living through ten years of wolf protections and 10 years of hunting has given me perspective plus a lot of time to think about what might be a better way of managing wolves. I don’t have the answers, but I have some thoughts as to a start.

What we are lacking is overall federal management guidelines based on good science. These would be binding for all states that have wolves that are delisted and under state management. This would include:

Humane methods of hunting only (NO baiting, trapping, night goggles, night hunting, limited seasons, no hunting when pups are too young to travel with their pack, no hunting during breeding and pup season, so generally this means Oct-December or January)
New minimums based on updated science tailored to each state that would trigger relisting
Areas with large tracts of public suitable lands for wolves such as around Yellowstone Park need to be treated differently than areas with private and public lands mixture. Landscapes with an expanse of wilderness, wolves will self-regulate and there is little need for hunting. [I call them Science Zones]. In addition these areas are critical for genetic exchange. My area used to provide support for wolf packs in the Lamar Valley and vice versa. With annual hunt culling of wolves in this valley, we no longer have that kind of exchange.
Proven methods and support for livestock producers. Instead of paying producers for losses, pay them for equipment and training for non-lethal methods of protection. Encourage and provide help for Co-ops to buy equipment such as fladry or horns cheaper in bulk. Those methods must be in place before there is any legal take tag given. California has a 2 and 3 strikes rule for a depredation tag for mountain lions, based on where in the state it occurs. That should be mandatory for producers and wolf protections.
Public education as to the value of wolves. This is a critical piece. There is an unbridled hatred of wolves, leftover from our European background and Manifest Destiny doctrine. Thousands of people come to Yellowstone to get an opportunity of a lifetime to view wolves. Education needs to go hand-in-hand with that opportunity. I still hear people talk about “Canadian wolves killing all our elk” while they watch wolves.

There was a time in my valley, pre Wyoming hunts, when our area had the most wolves in the Northern Range, about 40 wolves in 3 packs. During that winter I watched the packs vie for the best territory. The Hoodoo pack killed off the Sunlight Pack’s pregnant Alpha female. I was seeing these wolves self-regulate, confirming that they didn’t need hunting to control their numbers.

That said, I’m not completely decided on some limited hunting versus no hunting at all. I thought the USFWS did a good job when they were in charge of the 10J Rule with surgical culls. Packs that focus on livestock predation after a producer has honestly tried non-lethal methods can certainly be warranted.

It’s past time for an honest, open discussion about humane and science-based management for wolves, with the vitriol and lies turned off.

My children’s book on wolves told from the point of view of a dog. True stories

Coda: I had the opportunity to measure skulls in the Draper Natural History Lab for a study. I also went to Yellowstone and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science to measure skulls. A few photos below.

Control kill by USFWS during 10J rule. This was a wolf pup. You can see molars and pre-molars still emerging

Another control kill by USFWS. This is an old wolf. Worn teeth and broken canines

This is one of the last wolves (a female) killed by USDA Biological Survey (now Wildlife Services) in Colorado November 1921. Held in the archives at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science by W. Caymond, a hired hunter who killed off the last wolves in the state. Caymond’s story is told in full in *Wild New World* by Dan Flores

Filed under: New ideas | Tagged: animals, nature, travel, Wildlife, Wolves, yellowstone | 1 Comment »

How to Think about Climate Change and Grizzly Bears —A Thought Experiment

Posted on December 11, 2025 by Leslie

Today, December 11, there is no snow on the ground at 6500 feet, a warm wind blows hard in 50 degree temperatures. I’m wondering what the future might hold for our grizzly bears as climate change marches forward. No one really knows. The sensible prescription is to make sure we provide corridors for passage to alternative foods as ecosystems change. That’s the best planning we can do.

Grizzly family foraging a cow carcass that died of Larkspur poisoning

But I thought I’d indulge in visualizing what it could be like for bears, and especially for grizzlies since so few of them remain in the lower 48–only around 2000 in the Yellowstone ecosystem and the Northern Continental Divide, just a fraction of their historic range.

Probably the best place to look to is California where grizzlies once roamed but were extirpated by the early 1900s. Tracy Storer was a zoologist at University of California Davis. He spent years collecting every historical scrap on California grizzlies ever put on paper—in magazines, books, journals, newspaper clippings, Spanish logs, or Mission records. In 1955 he published California Grizzly. We now have better grizzly biology than what’s noted in his book, but the book records the fascinating story of grizzly habits along with Spanish and white men encounters. No one knows how many grizzlies California had. Joseph Grinnell, using suitable habitat and assuming one bear every 20 square miles (at one point the Interagency Grizzly Bear Team was using females with cubs every 19 square miles for population estimates) he estimated 2595 pre-1830.

Other sources estimate 10,000 bears because people met “herds” of bears, or bears in groups. Seeing 16 bears in “one drove…and that grizzly bears were almost an hourly sight, in the vicinity of the streams, and it was not uncommon to see thirty or forty a day.”(1841 Sacramento Valley). Although sightings of grizzlies in groups were common, that’s probably not that different from today where dozens of bears can be seen on moth sights or Alaska bears at salmon runs. Where food is plentiful, bears are tolerant of each other. California acorn season in the fall drew lots of grizzlies, beached whale carcasses, or large fields of clover.

Although there were probably a few grizzlies that denned in the Sierras, those environs were left to black bears, while most of the grizzlies were resident in the lower elevations and along the coast. Storer writes: “We think that, of the grizzlies living at lower elevations, the females with their young cubs were sequestered for a time, but the others were active through much or all the year…”

As our climate warms and conifer forests succumb to beetles and other pests, shrubs and grasses will dominate the landscape. Our National Forests will turn into National Shrublands. This favors grizzlies who are usually 80% meatless in their diet. Grizzlies are opportunists. They’ll find new foods. A warden who spent a lot of time helping biologists tag bears once told me grizzlies were following streams out of the mountains into the lower elevations in fall, feasting on Russian Olive fruits, an invasive species planted here several decades ago which has taken over native cottonwood habitat.

Lack of food is the main driver of bears denning. With warming weather, there might be many types of food year round. Insects will be out year round, rodents that usually hibernate won’t, shrubs will keep their foliage longer, grasses will grow year round.

Grizzlies might do alright, but don’t expect them to hibernate, except for females who need to give birth to their helpless young in the den. Of course, I am being optimistic here. No one knows what the future brings as our climate seems to be warming at a rapid rate. Ensuring protected habitat through partnership with private lands and our federal and state lands, is the best we can do at this point.

Filed under: Bears, Grizzlies, New ideas | Tagged: california, California grizzly bears, chao-2, Climate Change, Grizzly bears, nature, Wildlife, yellowstone | Leave a comment »

Winter, climate, and wildlife

Posted on December 7, 2025 by Leslie

Winter is slowly creeping in. Our temps are above normal for December ( daytime 30s and some 40s) but the wind has been arctic fierce. So different than when I first moved here in 2006. December wasn’t always our snowiest month, but definitely our coldest. Back in December fifteen years ago was when I first experienced a -35 degree night. I learned the trick of throwing a cup of boiling water in the air and watching it quickly vaporize.

Cold temperatures aren’t as tough on the wildlife as deep deep snow is. Deer aren’t very equipped to handle six foot or more snow that doesn’t get windblown. They can’t paw through it. In places like Jackson WY with tremendous amounts of snow, as winter arrives elk move in but deer migrate south. Even that pattern is an anomaly. Elk that summered in the Jackson area used to head to southern Wyoming and as far south as the Red Desert for winter. But as the town grew in the early 1900s, elk abandoned their annual migration and fed on the stored hay of cattle ranchers. To mitigate this, the federal government set up the National Elk Refuge. The Refuge began artificial feeding of elk in winter, luring them away from local ranches. Over time these elk lost their traditional migration memory and they now stay in Jackson, fed on the Refuge and several other sites.

Deer don’t usually like to hang with elk. I’m not sure why. Yet in tough winters, I’ve watched deer stick near the outside of large herds of elk. Hundreds of elk in wind blown areas not only tamp down the snow but can use their long powerful legs to scrape areas clear, helping deer out.

Winter of 2016-17 was epic. Many deer died from starvation

Deer struggling in deep snow

Moose on the other hand are built for deep snow. The winter of 2016 was a doozy, with epic amounts of snow. With 6 feet on the level in my front yard, I once watched a moose and her calf easily plow through. No other wildlife could manage. That winter was hard on our migratory mule deer herd. Deer are faithful to their home ranges. They were starving, and when the first grasses poked through the snow, they ate voraciously. The game warden told me those first shoots have little nutrition, so although they were filling up they died quickly. Hiking around the valley in April, I kept finding dead deer that no predator had touched, only their eyes pecked out. In contrast, elk are not so faithful and most of the herd descended into the lower elevations to escape the deep snows. Where we once had 2000 elk in winter, the last count was about half that. I suspect a lot of those elk kept that different migratory pattern finding how it benefitted them .

Wolves seem very fit for cold and snow. I can remember watching my dog sink in snow while following tracks of wolves that were gliding on top. Even at 100+ pounds and large paws, they are built to cover long distances and deep snow.

Our climate is changing, and fast. In the 18 years I’ve lived here full time, I’ve watched dramatic changes in winter. Our winters are compressed and milder. Instead of a deeply frigid December, we have mild Decembers, usually with little snow. For the last 4 to 5 years, now February is our coldest month. One February a few years ago the temperatures didn’t crack zero all month. Snows are late. There’s still snow accumulation in the high country (8000-10,000 feet), but lower elevations 6000-8000 feet have droughty conditions. That means come spring and summer, smaller creeks and drainages that used to supply wildlife with water dry up quickly. Sustained cold temperatures (negative 30s for several weeks) that used to kill beetle larvae in winter are no longer. Instead, between drought, beetles, and budworm moths, our forests are full of dead trees with a ground cover maze of downed logs, impassable for wildlife and humans.

Changing climate means we have to account for changes that wildlife will need to sustain themselves. That means protected landscapes and corridors for passage.

Filed under: New ideas | Tagged: adventure, hiking, nature, travel, Wildlife, winter, yellowstone | Leave a comment »

HOW TO TRACK A MOUNTAIN LION

Posted on August 13, 2025 by Leslie

“She’s close.”

Mountain lion biologist Quinton Martins holds up an antenna while listening to a series of beeps from his hand-held receiver. Martins is searching for a female mountain lion wearing a failing GPS collar that needs replacing. As he leads us across a stream towards the oak and bay hillside, these locator pings indicate she’s alternating between two areas on either side of the creek. Martins thinks she may have a kill, which would be great news. If she does, then he can place a cage trap to recollar her.

Sharon Negri of the Mountain Lion Foundation and I are tagging along, hoping to catch a glimpse of this elusive animal. The hillside is steep with no clear trail as we trudge through tight brush and poison oak, occasionally stopping as Martins rechecks the lion’s location.

“She’s very close. On the other side now, maybe forty meters away in those trees.”

This particular cat, Martins tells us, had at least one kitten who would be eight months old. But the resident male recently died of bacterial bronchial pneumonia linked to Feline Leukemia Virus, opening the territory for a new male. If that’s the case, it could mean this new male might kill the kitten in order to entice the female to breed again.

Martins unique trap system. It triggers by weight avoiding triggering non-target animals

Martins has been running a mountain lion study in partnership with the Audubon Canyon Ranch in Sonoma County since 2016. True Wild, his company with his wife, focuses on coexistence with wildlife and offers customized African safaris as part of their conservation efforts, connecting people to nature in a profound way and working with participants to become more involved in conservation initiatives where possible.

We stop again for another location check. Now Martins’ receiver displays a significantly stronger signal, indicating the cat is on the opposite bank exactly where the second ping showed up on his computer yesterday. Sharon and I carefully navigate the streambed around an enormous jumble of jagged boulders, possibly dumped from soil preparations for the vineyard whose private lands we have permissions to be on. At the ping site there is no indication of a kill while the cat has disappeared through thick bush and over a rise. Knowing this female was so close, yet we never saw her, leaves us frustrated. It is a repeat of a common scenario: cougars watch people yet we humans never see them.

Heading back to the car, Martins points out fresh tracks in the soft dirt. “She’s been here, going back and forth. This cat has been incredibly difficult to find.”

Luckily, Martins has one other lion he wants to sleuth out. P49 has a good working collar that indicates she might have a kill. Martins’ goal with this cat is to find out if she has kittens. As we drive 45 minutes west to the opposite end of Sonoma County, Martins lays out the unique difficulty of doing a wildlife study in a highly populated rural area.

Martins getting data from a sedated lion he is collaring

“The males we have collared—P5 has 17,000 private properties in his territory. P31 has 11,000 private properties. How do you contact that many people and access all those properties to inspect fences or signs of prey? This dilemma is confounded by an increase in weekend private property owners. When you overlap a land parcel map it is as if you are looking at 50,000 or 100,000 mini ecosystems, so you can’t just throw a vegetation layer over it and say ‘OK, this is what the cats are doing.’ As their primary prey is deer, it might look like great deer habitat on a map, but in many cases these properties are fenced to keep deer out. So there might be no deer in areas where you expect deer, but cannot tell because you can’t access the properties very easily. And walking each individual land parcel, one finds different plant and animal resources, a variety of fence types that block or allow animals to move through, and each parcel managed differently to some degree.”

Martins tell us lions are using fences of any type to strategically block or corner and kill deer. In fact, when we approached the previous property, Martins pointed out a cougar-killed deer carcass hanging against the fence that enclosed the vineyard.

Our second property owner is an animal lover excited to discover there’s a lion hanging around his property. He has a large piece of wooded land, over 200 acres, nestled in the hills of Sebastopol. He greets us at his main house and we follow him down the road to where Martins recorded a series of GPS fixes the night before. The dense cluster of pings is a hopeful sign this cat has made a kill and is still hanging around. Cougars can spend up to three days or more consuming an adult deer. They will cover their kill to preserve its freshness as well as deter scavengers while they rest nearby.

The GPS telemetry data indicates the cat traveled along a hillside where an overgrown two-track is still visible. A short hike leads us to her kill—a yearling deer. Cougars kill with a bite to the neck, then consume the internal organs first. Big cats, along with their small domestic cousins, lost the ability somewhere in evolutionary time to convert carotenoids like beta carotene into Vitamin A, so they have to obtain it directly from these nutritious organ meats. That’s exactly what this cat has done. I also see she has begun to pull the fur away with her incisors. Although this is a small deer, Martins thinks there’s enough meat on the carcass that the cat will return, and if she does we’ll find out if she has kittens. The VHF radio signal from her collar indicates she is resting on the opposite hillside only a few hundred yards away.

“She’ll return under cover of night,” Martins tells us as he sets up three trail cameras focused on the carcass.

Even though we never did see a mountain lion, the day was exciting as well as instructive. Conducting a mountain lion study in an urban/rural area has tremendous challenges and complexities that studies in vast wilderness areas like where I live in Wyoming do not. First there is no snow, so finding tracks is as elusive as the animal itself. Second, most mountain lion studies rely on dogs to do the tracking and treeing of the animal. Once treed, biologists can easily dart the lion and lower him to the ground to be collared and released. Obviously dogs can’t be utilized in areas where there are so many people on small private land parcels. In addition, while there are some public lands in Sonoma County—mostly small county parks dotted throughout his study area—Martins’ lions live in territories encompassed by thousands of private properties, meaning he has to obtain permissions from each owner before visiting. Most, but not all owners are happy to help, but even when he has their cooperation, each visit requires one or several phone calls to gain access. It’s a lot of human PR work.

A few days later, Martins relays the good news. P49 has two healthy cubs with her and sends us a photo of the family dining on the carcass. I realize that instead of one lion, there were three nearby, none of whom we saw. But to be fair, mountain lion mothers sometimes stash their kittens while they hunt, then bring them to the kill site afterwards.

P49 with her two kittens on the kill we found.

These kittens are highly dependent upon their mother’s hunting skills throughout their first year. The span between six and eighteen months is especially important for the cubs because they are learning the art of hunting and killing prey. In addition they are exploring their natal range and learning how to deal with potential enemies. Dispersal occurs usually between 12 and 24 months. Lion dispersal is critically important for genetic diversity, as well as for geographic expansion. Females tend to stay close to their birth mother’s range, while males need to find an empty slot devoid of a dominant male. The odds are tough for dispersing males, who roam much farther than females and have to contend with other territorial males. In an urban/rural landscape, these kittens will need to learn to avoic livestock plus they have a higher chance of contacting diseases from domestic cats like Feline Leukemia Virus and the H5N1 virus, commonly referred to as bird flu which cats have a higher than 70% chance of dying from.

Through Martins work we hope to have a better understanding of mountain lions living in a unique situation sharing their territories with a high density of people in a complex urban/rural landscape. Plus, this coexistence with California’s communities work will hopefully give these iconic cats increased odds of survival, ensuring their vital role in helping ecosystem integrity is maintained.

More info on Martins work and California mountain lions can be found in my book Ghostwalker

If you want to follow updates of Martins’ Sonoma study…

True Wild’s work stems from our love for wild places. We are driven to find ways for people to appreciate and make an effort to protect wild places and the wildlife that shares the world with us. We believe that people can coexist with wildlife through practical and achievable methods and in doing so, serve people, domestic animals, wildlife and the environment we are all living in.

True Wild (www.truewild.org) and Audubon Canyon Ranch in partnership with Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue , are spearheading an essential mountain lion research and education project in California’s San Francisco North Bay Region. We are a key community resource for people to be able to coexist with wildlife, particularly mountain lions. In Africa, we support high impact, coexistence-focused projects that will protect large wild places while benefitting local communities.

We want to maximize impact with minimum overhead, seeking to achieve win-win situations for everyone involved. Donations become investments, involvement leads to tangible returns. We encourage and actively seek both intellectual and financial support to offer solutions to the growing ecological issues our world is facing.

We offer impactful and extraordinary safari opportunities, connecting people to nature in the most profound way in some of the most beautiful places in the world. We view our safaris as a platform for providing a valuable life experience as well as highlighting the significance of wild places that need protection. Each safari is tailor-made to maximize the personal experience.

Filed under: New ideas | Tagged: animals, conservation, Cougars, mountain lions, mountain-lions-in-california, nature, sonoma-county-mountain-lions, Wildlife, writing | Leave a comment »

Hiking Northwest Wyoming – Dream Lake Wind River Mountains

Posted on July 4, 2025 by Leslie

THIS IS THE FIRST OF A SERIES OF SHORT STORIES AND MEMORIES FROM MY YEARS LIVING IN NORTHWEST WYOMING.

IN 2012 I hiked to Dream Lake. Dream Lake is an access point to the central Continental Divide in the Wind Rivers. I planned a 7 day backpack loop with a side trip up to Europe Canyon. The Europe Canyon trail access wasn’t marked. Instead a cryptic sign said “trail abandoned” and there was no map indication of where to turn. But using some map navigating, this was the correct route to the lake.

Cryptic Sign to Europe Lake. “Trail Abandoned. Not Maintained”

Taking the abandoned trail, I arrived at Europe Lake, a beautiful gem that sits at the base of the crest of the Continental Divide. A fire on the east side made for a smokey view. Two backpackers from London were camped there. Experienced hikers, they’d cross-countried to the lake. They shared some stories with me of their travels. Because in England they received six weeks work vacation every summer, they had some great adventures. One story they relayed stood out of when they’d rescued inexperienced and unprepared hikers from severe altitude sickness in the Himalayas.

Two young men were hiking with a woman. All three were huddling in a rest cabin at over 15,000 feet. The woman had severe altitude sickness, yet the fellows were planning on continuing without her. This woman would die if she couldn’t get to a lower elevation immediately. These British backpackers changed their itinerary and assisted her down the mountain for medical care.

British hikers who rescued a woman in the Himalayas

That night I returned towards the main trail and camped among the rocks near timberline. I awakened in the middle of the night to a strange loud animal sound which I couldn’t place. Come morning I checked the tracks on the trail and felt it must have been a single domestic sheep looking for the rest of its herd. Domestic sheep have since been removed from the Winds Wilderness areas.

On my final evening I camped with a group of retired Air Force. They’d hiked along the Divide from the south end, probably starting at Sweetwater Gap entrance. One fellow had joined the crew from Ohio and didn’t take the time to acclimate. He had terrible altitude sickness, throwing up and splitting headaches. I suppose it ruined his trip. By the time I camped with them, he’d pretty much acclimated. He’s not the first person I’ve encountered in the Winds that had altitude sickness. Taking time to acclimate can be essential.

A lake not far from Dream Lake. Lone horseback rider

But the real story here is when I made it to the take-out where my car was waiting. We all hiked down together. As the Air Force guys were meeting their ride and I too was packing up, a backpacker who was loaded up with heavy gear came down the trail followed by a Labrador Retriever. That poor dog looked half crippled limping slowly all the way to the vehicle.

I asked this hiker where he’d come from. Most backpackers only do a few days and their dogs do just fine as long as their feet are protected when necessary.

“I’ve been out a month. It’s been fantastic. I’ve hike the entire Winds,” he answered. I asked how old his dog was. “Eleven”, he said. And when I told him his dog looked in very poor shape, he just replied “He’s fine.”

I felt angry. Eleven years is old for a Lab and that dog was not fine. He was suffering. His feet and joints hurt, and his owner was being completely insensitive to his dog’s needs, thinking only of himself.

There’s a few lessons here. People tend to be worried about grizzly bears in Northwest Wyoming. But they’re not the worry. Mosquitos, insufficient preparation, overdoing it yourself or to your pets are more to the point. Be safe and enjoy out there.

My dog and I at Europe Lake in the Wind River Mountains

Filed under: New ideas | Tagged: adventure, altitude-sickness, backpacking, Bears, hiking, hiking-with-dogs, nature, travel | 1 Comment »

Foraging with Bears

Posted on May 30, 2025 by Leslie

Today I took a hike along a high reef, or what they call here in NW Wyoming a “reef”, probably because at one time this limestone plateau was under one of the oceans that covered this area. It’s a flat mesa with cliffs to one side and forested ridges on the other. The soil as you can image is very thin, but allows a sparse forest of lodgepole pines and open meadows. It’s a great place to see wildflowers right now, especially before the cattle come in to free range the area.

A known place for grizzlies in the spring and fall, Wyoming Game and Fish even use this area every 4 or 5 years to set traps to collar the bears. The hike begins on a closed dirt road (not open for vehicles until mid-July to protect the bears). Elk and grizzly tracks are easily visible.

Along the way I’m tasting the tips of young fireweed. Great crunchy texture, mild flavor until the very last then there’s a bitterness. Emerging Indian Paintbrush is also edible but pretty bitter all the way through. Vast carpets of my favorite, Spring Beauties, make a great salad addition.

We’ve had a cool and rainy May, inhibiting the emergence of a lot of spring flowers. But with the recent warm days, it seems everything is out all at once. Shooting stars, usually almost gone by now, are everywhere. Their flowers are delicious along with mountain bluebell flowers, both in the borage family and have that similar taste. White flowered onions and biscuit root (lomatian) are out. Larkspur, not edible but poisonous, is emerging. Larkspur is fatal to cattle. I’ve seen some years dozens of cattle die from eating larkspur on the national forests.

Some Pasque flowers (not edible), usually done by now, are still around, some even just opening. Even Phlox is still blooming. And my favorite shrub, Buffalo berries, are just leafing out. Buffalo berries are dioecious, meaning male and female reproductive structures are on separate individual plants, not a common thing in the plant world. I also spy some American Bistort just starting to bloom. Although I’ve never tried them, their roots can be dug and eaten raw. Arrowleaf balsamroot (supposedly starvation food for Natives), strawberries and fritallaria are all blooming. Non-edibles like woodland star are blooming and elephant’s head has sent its spike up, ready to open.

Lots of Woodland star mixed with larkspur

While I forage, a bear has been busy. I’m trying to figure out what’s going on here. I think mama grizzly is clawing the bark on this tree to get at the sweet spring sap that’s flowing while her cub climbs up the tree. I’d normally say a black bear as adult grizzlies don’t climb, but this is a grizzly area and on the way up I ran into a black bear archery hunter with four llamas. He’s been camping on the reef for a few nights. He saw several grizzlies but no black bears. Black bears don’t hang around areas where there’s a lot of grizzlies.

On the plateau, a bear has been busy foraging for biscuit roots. I uses my knife to dig one up. Luckily the soil is soft since its been raining as these roots grow in tight dry soils. I have to dig pretty carefully and deep.

You can see how deep these bears have to dig in order to extract the whole root. Of course, with their long claws, that’s easy for them. Bears will till up an area with biscuit roots, a favorite treat. But they always leave some. That ensures more will come back next year.

So while we humans are foraging, bears are too. In past times, humans watched bears to see what foods were good to eat. 80% of a bear’s diet is edible for humans, The other 20% are grasses, which we cannot digest. Co-existence isn’t hard. We just have to take a cue from the bears and always make sure to leave some plants for next year’s harvest.

Filed under: New ideas | Tagged: bear-diet, Bears, edible-wildflowers, flowers, grizzlies, hiking, nature | Leave a comment »

If you must hunt, how to better manage mountain lion populations

Posted on March 27, 2025 by Leslie

Last week I attended The Mountain Lion Conference which is held every 3 years. This is the first in-person conference since 2017 because of covid. The Conference agenda is divided between presentations from biologists discussing findings from their recent studies, and state wildlife managers giving a summary of any particular aspect of their management they might choose to present.

Most of the science presented wasn’t new to me. It’s all in my book Ghostwalker: Tracking a Mountain Lion’s Soul through Science and Story. For instance, Kyle Dougherty presented studies done on California connectivity issues, discussing how the Tehachapis are critical for genetic diversity for lions there. I did extensive interviews on connectivity and the challenges in my California chapter. One interesting note was that mountain lions in that critical corridor (where there is no highway crossing yet) spent 19.8 hours on average observing, trying to decide if and where they might cross. None of their collared cats attempted crossing the highway.

Some of the most promising studies are taking place in Texas, the only western state that still lists mountain lions as “predator” status, meaning they have no seasons and no protections. Chloe Nouzille and her crew are studying the impacts of the border wall on mountain lions and other large mammals. So far they’ve found no lions crossing the wall in places where contractors place small pass throughs. These breaks are not placed in known wildlife corridors, but randomly placed about every mile. Not all contractors are doing this. Usually it’s at the request of the landowner. What the team has found is more minimal barriers such as fences were being used by lions, although these fences are too high for deer to jump over. Another Texas study was presented by Lisanne Petracca. Her team is trying to understand the genetics of western Texas lions. Are most of these lions coming from Mexico, New Mexico, or in-breed? There haven’t been studies in Texas since 2008. This renewed attention to mountain lions is very positive and hopefully will push their state legislature to make changes in lion status.

I personally had a few takeaways from Mark Vieira’s presentation on Colorado’s mountain lion female harvest presentation. Colorado doesn’t have limits for females but like most hunting states groups together their quota for both sexes for each zone. Let’s be clear: mountain lion hunting is absolutely a choice and not necessary for lion management. Lion hunting is all about hunting opportunity, not about food. But in all our Western states except California (which outlawed lion hunting through a 1990 ballot initiative. Colorado last year rejected a similar ballot initiative which would have outlawed lion hunting) that’s a fight that is a long time out.

In the meanwhile, I strongly feel good management means a female quota. And if hunting is part of the mix, then ideally the female quota should be 0 or 1 ( where there is boot hunting). Once that limited female quota is met, the zone is shut down to female take. Mountain lions are notoriously impossible to sex unless they are treed. Even then it can be difficult but a person needs to look for a black spot below the anus indicating the lion is a male.

So what has Colorado done since they have no separate quotas? First they have included discussions with houndsmen asking them to voluntarily reduce the female harvest. Second they are now reporting the amount of females taken in live time on their quota page. Third, they require a class to learn how to identify male from a female. (try taking the I.D. exam yourself) Studies have found the difference with an identification class is 10% less killing of females and with these extra minimal efforts, Colorado has reduced their female take another 10% to 39%. Most seasoned houndsmen can distinguish male from female once a cat is treed, along with recognition of track size. States like Wyoming where I live have no required class for new or out-of-state lion hunters, and don’t have a female quota.

One other note on why mountain lion trophy states should have a female quota along with classes on lion biology—mountain lion females are either pregnant, with kittens, or in estrus. If kittens lose their mother before one year old, they almost certainly will not survive. Many states, including Wyoming, do not allow hunters to kill lions traveling with other lions (which most of the time would mean they are kittens even though kittens can be as big or bigger than mom). But females frequently stash their kittens, especially ones under six months old and many times up to one year old when they go hunting.

Filed under: New ideas | Tagged: animals, Cougars, history, mountain lion conference, mountain lions, nature, travel, Wildlife | Leave a comment »

The Infamous Ben Lily

Posted on March 3, 2025 by Leslie

I’m in the Silver City area for a few weeks waiting until March 15th when I am speaking at the Tucson Book Fair. Hiking around the Gila National Forest (our first Wilderness thanks to Aldo Leopold), I can’t help but contemplate Ben Lilly.

Ben Lily features prominently in the second chapter of my latest book Ghostwalker: Tracking a Mountain Lion’s Souls through Science and Story. Lily was single-handedly responsible for the deaths of 500 mountain lions, over 600 bears, and the last grizzlies in the Southwest. He was a predator-killing machine epitomizing the hatred for predators in the early 20th century.

Today I took a short hike to what locals call Ben Lilly Pond, a 1/2 mile turn-off from Highway 15 before the Ben Lily Memorial.

The Ben Lilly Memorial plaque in the Gila National Forest against a large boulder overlook. See the lion and bear on either side

At the age of forty-five, in 1901, Lilly called his second wife and three children together, kissed them goodbye, and left them everything he owned except five dollars. Leaving his home state of Louisiana, he headed west for a land where the big predators remained. His life philosophy was now well formed. He regarded himself as the policeman of the wild, “a self-appointed leavener of nature.” Bears and lions specifically were, by their very nature, evil. Lilly considered it his biblical duty to set things straight by killing these “devil” animals. He had evolved into a religious fanatic, mixed with a special kind of mysticism. As Lilly traveled west, he left behind a wake of wildlife destruction. But his folk-hero status was growing. While hunting in Texas in 1907, Lilly received a telegram summoning him to a presidential camp on Tensas Bayou for a bear hunt with President Theodore Roosevelt.

1908 *Scribner’s* article: Theodore Roosevelt “In the Louisiana Canebrakes,” *Scribner’s* XLIII (January 1908) Courtesy Avery Island Archives, Avery Island, La.

In 1908, Lilly hunted grizzlies, mountain lions, and black bears in Mexico for three years, sending skeletons and skins back to the Smithsonian Institution. He returned to the United States, entering through the boot heel of New Mexico. Now in his mid-fifties, his predator killing career was waxing as a new era of government eradication programs for predators began. His reputation was widespread, his services were in high demand among ranchers, and he was finally well paid for a passion previously pursued only as a personal vendetta.

On the road to Ben Lilly Pond. An old ranch entrance now shot full of bullet holes

When trailing with his dogs, Lilly would forget to eat and drink, sometimes for days on end. Then he’d gorge himself on his kill and the bit of corn meal he carried with him. He never kept the skins of the animals he killed for himself, considering them a worthless piece of clothing. He was on a mission, and that intensity of focus molded him into an expert woodsman. He had no coat, but piled on layers of shirts. If he was cold, he’d build a fire, push aside the coals, and sleep on the warm ground. At least once a week he bathed in a stream, sometimes breaking away the ice, then rolling in snow to dry off. The air in a town was toxic to him, and when offered a bed, he preferred to sleep outside on the ground with his dogs.

To the men who knew him, Lilly was a man of complete honesty and character. He never swore, drank, or smoked, and famously rested on Sunday, his holy day. If his dogs treed a cougar on Saturday night, the animal had a stay until Monday morning. But his religious beliefs extended to the supernatural. Lilly’s favorite meats were bear and especially lion, which he felt would endow him with exceptional instinct, prowess, and agility to pursue his quarry. He expected no less of his dogs than he did of himself—running them for days without food. He would go out of his way to make sure they had water before he did, took great pleasure in watching them work, and valued a dog’s intelligence rather than a specific breed. Yet ultimately, they were simply tools of his trade. If a dog began running trash or quit the trail, he had no need for him, and the dog was beaten or shot to death.

Ben Lilly was unquestionably one of the most destructive figures in North American wildlife history, contributing to the demise of the grizzly bear and the wholesale reduction of mountain lions and black bears in the Southwest. The plaque above was erected by friends who knew him, back in the 1930s. But there are some folks today that revere Lily as the ultimate hunter, apparently ignorant of the havoc and destruction he left behind in the Southwest.

Walking the jeep road to the pond (which was completely dry), I did have to marvel at how this strange man maneuvered these mountains. The scrubby oaks, pines and junipers are so thick they are almost impossible to pass through. The ground is rocky and the going rough. But I wonder how many people who take these short hikes even know who Lilly was and the devastation he caused to our wildlife.

Lilly’s lack of true reverence for life is the antithesis of our values of ethical hunting and wildlife conservation—a misguided, warped sense of nature that viewed large predators as “endowed by their very nature with a capacity to wreak evil…and should be destroyed.” A misshapen, exaggerated product of his era, one could consider Lilly a vessel—a queer, half-crazed man who performed his executions as a service for others, for the government, and in his own mind, for God. Genocidal war on predators had been codified as our nation’s God-given right, and Lilly was their proxy.

If you are in Tucson on March 15th, come to the Tucson Book Fair. It’s huge with a wide variety of authors and speakers. I’ll be speaking at 10am at the Western National Parks Association Stage

Filed under: New ideas | Tagged: animals, hiking, history, travel, Wildlife | 2 Comments »

Trail Cameras

Posted on November 25, 2024 by Leslie

Trail cameras for wildlife spying have become a popular pastime. Not only has the video and photo quality improved, but the price point for high quality cameras is lower every year. I’ve been using trail cameras since around 2010. I thought it would be interesting to do a short post on my personal evolution of my use and what I’ve discovered.

Professional photographers and folks that are handy with manual camera adjustments have switched from store-bought trail cams to DSLR cameras. Using a DSLR camera trap requires a lot of knowledge of not just wildlife tracking but lighting positioning and camera settings, but the payoff is great. For my expanded Ghostwalker book out this year from University of Nebraska, even though I have thousands of great mountain lion photos and video, I needed to engage these experts for high quality photos that would reproduce in print. I’ve never been great with manual adjustments so point/shoot cameras, like trail cams, are my go-to.

Amazing capture by Jeff Wirth using a DSLR. Wirth graciously consented to let me use some of his photos in *Ghostwalker: Tracking a Mountain Lion’s Soul through Science and Story*

When I first started using trail cameras their quality was very poor, but I was mainly interested in who was visiting the nearby forest. I caught grizzly and black bears on the animal trails, along with deer, coyotes, and wolves. I was anxious to catch martens who don’t follow trails. To that end I built a box trappers use, baited it, and put a camera on it (of course I didn’t put a trap inside!). Bobcats also don’t follow trails very much and since I do have bobcat trapping in my area in winter, the animals were rare on the landscape. I hung shiny objects to attract the cats with a camera positioned on it. Still, I almost never captured a photo of a bobcat.

After two years of camera trapping, I had several epiphanies that changed the course my experiments. First, after watching trapping in my area, I became aware that my baiting was contributing to these animals becoming less wary of actual kill traps. Therefore I stopped all baiting and scenting. But the biggest revelation was how to reliably capture animals on camera.

Elk on frozen river at a crossing point. I could see the crossing using track I.D.

I had been lucky to capture several mountain lions, and found lion tracks in different areas. That piqued my interest so I attended a class on mountain lions by researcher Toni Ruth in Yellowstone. During that class I watched a video of wildlife on a mountain lion scrape site. I knew about scrapes but had never seen one nor did I know how to find them. A scrape is made by a male lion with his back feet, usually urinated on, to mark territory. Lion scrapes apparently are big attractants for all sorts of wildlife. Once I learned where to find scrapes, I sought these out and placed cameras on them. Scrapes draw almost all the prey and predators in an ecosystem. By continuing to use these same locations for over 15 years, I’ve captured amazing photos, but the real gold here is monitoring sites for so long that you get a read on the ebb and flow of wildlife activity.

(ABOVE VIDEO OF WOLVES HAD CAMERA PLACED ON A TRAIL HEAVY WITH SCRAPE SITES)

A friend who is a feline researcher told me keeping cameras at the same location for many years provides a good indication of the health of the local mountain lion population. Houndsmen and researchers use dogs to find lions, which gives a good clue to the waxing and waning of lions in a designated area. Would monitoring scrape sites alone give me a general idea of lion health?

Lions are impossible to identify. Puma concolor, their latin name, means cat of one color. Unless they have scars such as nicks in an ear, etc. they look alike. And in a hunted area, males usually don’t last long; but another young male will come to fill the void. I did get an indication that I could monitor lions this way a few years ago. In 2015-2016 we had record snows. Our mule deer population crashed. By early spring when the first grass emerged, the landscape was littered with dead deer. Predator populations lag behind prey drop, but it wasn’t long before I noticed I wasn’t catching females with kittens on my camera. Without sufficient prey, females will have smaller litters or none at all. 2017 was the last photo of a mom with young kittens. Although I did catch young dispersers, there seemed to be a dearth of females in my area until 2021. coinciding with a rebound in the mule deer population.

Additionally, the same thing was going on with cottontails and bobcats. Bobcats also visit lion scrape sites, and male bobcats like to scrape over lion scrapes. Rabbits go through seven year cycles and sometime around 2014 I noticed fewer and fewer rabbit tracks in my study area. I also stopped picking up bobcats on my cameras. The rabbit population had crashed and with it bobcat food. Then around 2020 a rabbit took up residence at one of my camera sites. Within a year, more rabbits at other sites, and soon there were rabbits everywhere. The bobcat population rebounded. Now I was catching bobcats with kittens frequently. An indication of how keeping cameras in situ for an extended period can tell the story of the land’s health.

In summary, there are many ways to use trail cams. Research, exploration, pleasure. For me it’s become a tool not just to see who is visiting, but to monitor over time the swings of the ecosystem: how weather patterns, food availability, habitat health, and natural cycles affect the wildlife in my study area.

For more videos from my trail camera captures, see my YouTube site

Filed under: Bobcats, Cougars | Tagged: animals, bobcat, Cougars, mountain lions, nature, photography, scrapes, trail-cameras, Wildlife | 3 Comments »