Two pictures competing for my attention are locked in battle. I am trying to
reconcile them but it’s a struggle. Their pitched dissonance stays with me.
The first image is spurred by a sweet memory of springtime sounds and sightings near East Canyon Creek a decade ago. The narrow path of ground under foot was moist with winter’s runoff.
Rivulets of snowmelt slipped under the rubber souls of my LL Beans as I headed down river along the freshly infused waterway. Tumbling beyond its banks to pool in low lying meadows, it is the only time of year the stream carries enough water to gush with authority.
Cloudy vapors of moisture clung to western blue violets and emerging bunch grass. I listened for the first yips of newborn coyotes and in short order was rewarded with a wild chorus. Aroused and awakened in a native landscape, their primal song rang loud and clear. Exuberant, high-pitched cries trailed the sound of running water. Their voices lifted the morning air and my heart with abandon and joy.
A few months later in mid-summer, I accidentally met what looked to be two young members from that den of song. Gangly, long-legged and skinny, the pair of coyotes sprinted over the gravel road a few yards ahead. Like domestic pups the wild canines were full of play.
I stood to watch the twins leap across the county road where they stopped briefly to look in my direction. After a short time they darted up Big Bear Canyon, but not before our gaze locked in mutual curiosity and wonder, a moment that stays with me to this day.
Late last summer, nearly a decade after the coyote pups rollicked in an uninterrupted open landscape, a new sight stole my gaze. Instead of seeing wildlife at the mouth of Big Bear Canyon, I saw a man-made, wide-based buck and rail (jackleg) fence. It lined the canyon’s dry side for miles. A spring-fed seep, trying but failing to find its way to East Canyon Creek, was cordoned off.
On the opposite side of the mini-creek, extremely steep, pine-covered slopes with meandering game trails were anchored by new smooth wire and barbwire fencing.
Now, I pictured wild animals sliding or jumping to their death, cruelly entangled in dangerous strings of wire. Elk, mule deer and their young calves or fawns going up and down the mountain wouldn’t see the fence line, unless properly tagged, which it was not.
Impalement on barbs or death resulting from entanglement are threats to birds, too. The property known as the 910 has resident turkeys, waterfowl, owls and hawks that can have deadly collisions with near-invisible wire, victims of hazardous fencing installed on the ranch by the private property’s lessee, Summit County.
Fencing across Western landscapes serves a variety of needed purposes, including exclusion fencing that keeps cattle (or elk) away from damaged or sensitive habitat.
But careless fencing fragments wildlife habitat. It can restrict access to water, forage, fawning grounds and grassy cover. Special considerations for topography and wildlife’s seasonal movements on existing game trails were overlooked by Summit County without explanation.
“Big game animals get caught by their hooves in fence wire,” says Kerry Murphy, a wildlife biologist with the Shoshone National Forest. Furthermore, according to Oregon’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, pregnant and winter-stressed animals are particularly vulnerable due to their difficulty clearing fences.
In Montana, the Absaroka Fence Initiative aims to “insure fences are functional for livestock management and wildlife movement across the landscape.” The group partners with expert resource agencies to reduce wildlife mortality by getting rid of barbwire.
Fence related wild-animal injuries and deaths can be reduced by adjusting the height of a fence, spacing dropped top rails on jackleg fences, modifying wire with visibly reflective tags and providing appropriate openings and/or gates for wildlife access.
The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources offers detailed specifications for wildlife friendly fencing. Other federal and state agencies can properly inform and reform Summit County’s approach to wildlife fencing.
Answers regarding the county’s expensive fence operation are critical and past due. An unencumbered, natural landscape free of unsafe, restrictive fencing is simply good stewardship.
More than anything I want to stay on that spring day of coyote song. But for now, the visage of a wild animal — elk, fox, deer, great horned owl, sage hen or a young coyote — cruelly entangled in a careless web of barb wire or rail, continues to haunt me.
Leslie Miller is the co-editor of “Reimagining A Place for the Wild” and a former, long-time resident of Park City who now lives in Midway.