June 1st - 15th, 2024 Range Rider Update
The 2024 Range Riding season is off to a great start. CVA is happy to welcome back Taylor Jackson as a Range Rider for her third season and Erika Nunlist as Program Coordinator for her fifth season. We also welcome Joe Zecher to the program and Valley for his first season range riding. Joe is joining the Team from Missoula where he just finished up a degree in Fish and Wildlife Management. He has worked with several ranches and outfits over the years, and we are excited to have him on the Team this year!
Herds are just starting to show up to the Valley and the Team will be riding daily soon. Without herds to ride full time, the past several weeks have been full of orientation, camera deployment, trainings, and general season preparations. The Team has also been out on numerous rides looking for wildlife and predator activity in areas with cattle showing up shortly. Range riders have documented black bear, grizzly, and wolf activity throughout the Centennial Valley during these rides. Community reports have also been helpful to understanding wildlife activity.
May and June brought a solid Montana spring. The Centennial Vally received snow, rain, mud, dust, and a range in temperatures of 20-80 degrees. All in all, moisture levels seem to be decent, and the valley is greening up nicely. As the landscape greens-up, range riders have been keeping an eye on larkspur since there seems to be annual cattle losses due to this poisonous plant. Short larkspur has been blooming for several weeks and tall larkspur is somewhat delayed, although depending on where you are at in the Valley, it ranges from just showing up to nearly blooming.
CVA placed 22 game cameras out across the landscape that are checked biweekly throughout the season. There are an additional 10 cameras that the Team helped deploy across the north part of the Centennial Valley for a grizzly bear-livestock game camera study run by Stewart Breck, USDA-Wildlife Services.
There have been three grizzly bear observations since the beginning of May. This included one sighting from a community member and two track observations. With so many young ungulates around the valley and fresh green plant growth, grizzly bears may be primarily focused on those food sources which occur throughout the whole Valley.
Four black bear observations were documented in the last several weeks. Observations included one sighting, two game camera observations, and one set of tracks. Based on distribution and timing, the Team believes these observations represented 3 different individuals.
There were four wolf observations in early June. Observations included one game camera event, one howling observation, and scat and tracks observed by range riders.
Ungulates are abundant throughout the valley, many now with fawns in tow. Range riders have documented moose, pronghorn, deer, and elk fawns this season. Males of all the ungulates are well into antler growth for this season, and it has been fun to see the fuzzy antler growth in CVA game camera photos.
The Team and the cameras cannot capture the entire Valley each day, so community reports are extremely valuable to understand how wildlife use the Valley. If you have any wildlife reports to share (big or small!) please contact Erika Nunlist, Wildlife Program Coordinator, at wildlife@centennialvalleyassociation.org. We look forward to hearing from you!
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