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00:00You know, there is nothing like being on the back of a horse in open country, sleeping out
00:21under the canopy of the starry skies. Makes you think of what it was like when mountain men like
00:28Jim Bridger came up the Yellowstone River Valley for the first time. You know, as a kid, most
00:36of my heroes were cowboys. And I spent a lot of time with my childhood playing cowboy. And
00:42in my years of Hollywood, I played my share of ranchers and gunslingers too. But here
00:48in the Yellowstone, I've known some real cowboys. Now, these are men and women whose very lives
00:56depend on this land. And it's an intense and close relationship with the earth. You know,
01:03every time I come back up here, I'm reminded that life here in the Yellowstone ecosystem
01:09is hard for both humans and animals. I used to say it's nine months a winter and three
01:15months a house guest. But it means blistering cold winters and intense drought in the summer.
01:21And for God's creatures, it's a struggle just to find your next meal. Down in these prairies,
01:28humans and animals have to find ways to coexist and thrive. And it's never easy. But scientists
01:36from the University of Wyoming are learning how predators and humans can coexist so we can all
01:43live in a 21st century Yellowstone. Two million years ago,
02:01the American West was in turmoil.
02:13A thousand-year period of volcanic eruptions erased its past
02:25and created a bowl or caldera covering some 1,350 square miles.
02:37A sprawling, fertile valley and stepland now sits atop the site of that prehistoric devastation.
02:49This is the Yellowstone ecosystem. The world's largest intact temperate zone ecosystem encompassing
02:59two national parks, five national forests, cities, towns, and wilderness across Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming.
03:10From the ancient eruption of earth and fire, an explosion of life.
03:17A place under threat by dangers both natural and man-made.
03:23A place under threat by predators, wolves, coyotes, and foxes have fiercely held onto its home
03:48through resilience, creativity, and adaptation. Just like man.
04:02It's the end of summer. The days grow shorter. Temperatures begin to drop,
04:23signaling that winter will soon be here.
04:26A deep freeze will descend upon Yellowstone and its surroundings. For most of the creatures in this
04:38ecosystem, the harsh winters trigger an urge to hibernate or move.
04:48For the bison and elk, it's time to begin their grueling annual winter migration.
04:56Their journey will take them from the drainage area around the Gibbon River,
05:02north some 60 miles, to the warmer grasslands near the Gardner Basin.
05:08A small red fox spies on a herd of congregating elk. Just eight months old,
05:20he's already on his own. And he is already on the prowl. Like the migrating ungulates,
05:30he must feed or die.
05:41This season, sunlight grows more scarce by the day and temperatures drop.
05:43But some handle it better than others.
05:58Winter is when the fox and its two canid cousins, the coyote and the wolf, thrive.
06:05Their ability to withstand the blistering temperatures and adapt as humanity sprawls further and further
06:16into their territory, makes this trio an example of toughness.
06:21In an era when the natural world faces the twin challenges of climate change and development,
06:29understanding how these canids survive and how they do it in parallel with each other
06:36nature, had become critical questions for scientists.
06:40Over three decades ago, scientists embarked on a mission to revive the wild and create a healthier and more robust ecosystem.
06:51A key element is balancing the relationship between predators and prey.
06:57Biologist Doug Smith was a part of the team that released 30 wolves into Yellowstone National Park.
07:11From the start, this bold endeavor invited controversy.
07:16Doug Smith So the West was kind of one on wolf eradication.
07:21Doug Smith Settlers came out this way and they wanted to ranch and mine and
07:28make this a place that's habitable and wolves really kind of got in the way.
07:34And no one really questioned that idea for a few hundred years.
07:41People adapted very, very quickly and got used to not having them around.
07:47Doug Smith But for scientists, this status quo was not normal.
07:58Doug Smith But yet bringing them back was contrary to many people's idea of what living here was like.
08:07It was the right thing to do to keep kind of these mountains and forests and streams and meadows
08:12Doug Smith And it was shockwaves, I was all in on it.
08:27Doug Smith I think the biggest finding has been is they're not that bad.
08:31Doug Smith I mean we have more elk now in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming than we did when wolves were reintroduced.
08:38Doug Smith Hunting as we know it is unchanged.
08:41Doug Smith In a lot of ways it's better.
08:43Doug Smith Livestock Depredations aren't out of control.
08:47Doug Smith There's still a rarity.
08:49Doug Smith And you know this is with a fully restored wolf population.
08:52Doug Smith Restoration means creating a robust,
08:57healthy landscape that can withstand threats like climate change and population growth.
09:04Doug Smith Scientists are now determined to understand how predators, specifically canids,
09:11interact with one another and what those relationships mean for the ecosystem.
09:17Doug Smith And so what we want to learn is how do wolves impact coyotes?
09:22Doug Smith How do coyotes impact foxes?
09:25Doug Smith How does all of that work together on the different prey communities,
09:29rodent communities?
09:31Doug Smith And that's a key question that is being studied right now.
09:53Doug Smith 1.668 29 now.
09:59Doug Doug Smith Joe Holbrook and Emily Davis from the University of Wyoming and park biologist
10:08John Stephenson are searching for a needle in a haystack, an abandoned collar.
10:14Doug Smith We're at a time now where we can look at wolves are fully recovered on the landscape and to
10:22look at some of those interactions between the canids. What is the effect of wolves on both coyotes and
10:28foxes? Doug Smith Mesocarnivores or medium-sized carnivores have tended to receive less attention in
10:35terms of both research and interest, but they are one of the more connected pieces within a food web and so
10:42Doug Smith They're particularly interesting to ask questions about.
10:48Doug Smith A lot of the research understanding the interactions between an apex predator as well
10:54as a meso predator have been done in Yellowstone and so Grand Teton really allows us to ask these
10:59questions in this semi-new location just a bit south of Yellowstone National Park but still in the greater
11:05Yellowstone ecosystem.
11:09Doug Smith Last year we collared
11:10six coyotes to collect some pilot data to try to ask the questions of how these different dog
11:18species partition space, time, food, as well as habitat resources. Probably another couple hundred yards
11:26or so. How long ago did this collar drop off? Like two to three weeks ago I think. Yeah. Okay. So there's
11:32definitely a little bit of snow since it fell off but not a ton. And enough battery to keep it going for a
11:37little bit. Yeah. Sure. Great. Reintroducing wolves into this habitat restored not just any species
11:48but a keystone species. Like the words suggest, a keystone species supports the entire ecosystem. Remove this
11:58species. And the whole ecosystem suffers. Including rival predators.
12:07Oh, that's loud. I think I found it. Oh, wow. But I'm used to doing it this way.
12:14Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, that's for sure. I mean, I can, I can see it and hear it without the wire, so. Awesome.
12:26Nice. Oh, yeah. There she is. There it is. Sweet. Excellent. That's great.
12:37I love finding collars. Uh-huh. It's fun. GPS monitors are an excellent tool for tracking a coyote's
12:45movement. For tracking its diet, the scientists rely on something a little more organic.
12:51There we go. Poop. Yay. I never thought I would study poop ever. I always thought I'd be a spatial
12:59ecologist, but I am now studying canid poop. I mean, this would be perfect to collect. I know.
13:06Anywhere there's a scat, we'll collect that sample, send it off to the lab for metabarcoding. And what we
13:11receive back is species understandings of what's in that scat. So if a coyote has just eaten a bunch of
13:16rodents, we'll understand that that animal is primarily eating rodents, or it could be a mixture of things.
13:24Perhaps they can use this data to explain how this population of coyotes can survive with wolves
13:33that lurking in the valley. February.
13:52The snowpack piles higher as nighttime temperatures stubbornly remain in the single digits.
13:59In the exposed valley, sick and older animals won't make it to spring. A harsh reality of life in the wild?
14:13Those that survive the winter will do so just barely. The bison and elk forage for whatever grass
14:21remains beneath the snow. They supplement this thin harvest with fat reserves that they have built up
14:29since last year. The less energy the elk expends, the longer reserves will last.
14:37For Yellowstone's predators, the hunt never stops, even in the depths of winter.
15:00A wolf is unlikely to launch an attack on a herd of full-grown, healthy elk.
15:17The odds aren't in the wolf's favor.
15:30But when an elk is separated from the herd...
15:49The struggle is brief.
16:10Wolves are responsible for approximately 85% of elk kills inside the park's boundaries.
16:19But this carcass is not for the hunters alone.
16:27A coyote is sitting in the distance.
16:31He knows that his turn at the table will be next.
16:37In the meantime, he'll watch the wolves closely.
16:41They've finished their meal, for now.
16:58The coyote waste no time approaching the carcass.
17:09He knows it's only a matter of time before the wolves return.
17:25Kills feed more than just the victor.
17:28After the wolves and coyotes, the birds, rodents, bugs, and other creatures will have their turn.
17:39Yellowstone's animals seem to understand the rules of the valley.
17:44A wolf will attack a coyote.
17:52The coyote has had his fill.
17:55It's best to leave now and stay out of the wolf's sight.
17:58It's been two months since Joe Holbrook and Emily Davis retrieved the coyote collars.
18:11One of the unique properties of Grand Teton relative to these canid species is the dichotomy that has been observed across all of them.
18:25So wolves were gone, they were reintroduced and then restored, coyotes were extremely abundant given previous work, but red foxes were difficult to find.
18:46They recently put data transmitters on a pair of red foxes.
18:54That was largely motivated from a human fox conflict perspective.
19:00We covered a gradient in terms of human activity, but we definitely focused in areas where we expected sort of the problem foxes or the foxes that are likely to be in human fox conflict.
19:13Collar data is kind of the gold standard in our world, and luckily we finally have GPS collars that are small enough to work on red foxes.
19:24Where was this location last?
19:26I think it was right in here, but let me check.
19:30Yeah, we're super close.
19:33Maybe just a little more this way.
19:35Maybe through the trees?
19:36Yeah.
19:37Okay.
19:37Okay.
19:40So what GPS collars give us is a very exact location at certain times of the day, and so all of our collars will be paired up time-wise.
19:49And so we can monitor, okay, there's a wolf here, which is probably near a pack, because that's socially how they work.
19:55But, oh, look, there's a coyote like half a mile away, and how do foxes interact with that?
20:00So it really gives us kind of a visual of how these animals interact with the landscape.
20:05Oh, I think I see some tracks now.
20:12Sweet.
20:13Oh, and a little bit of brown stuff.
20:15Oh, perfect.
20:16Yep.
20:16Some more poop under the snow there.
20:22Some of the main questions we want to address is, you know, what do they eat during the winter months?
20:27How diverse is that?
20:29What we'll look for is anything inside of that genetically, and it can help us identify multiple prey items that might be contained in that.
20:38And so it could be a mole, it could be a new snowshoe hare, a red squirrel.
20:43So in other words, there's lots of information contained in there, and we can use cool new genetic tools to try to disentangle that a bit.
20:50Okay. Let's keep on going.
20:54Joe and Emily plan to return to the field in the springtime.
20:59And if their assumptions are correct, discover evidence of how foxes' movements influence prey,
21:08but are also influenced by their canid cousins.
21:21You know, all lives are marked and defined by challenges and hardships.
21:28But whenever I come back here to this place, I find a genuine sense of peace, knowing that even in the hardest of times, nature has a way of renewing itself.
21:40The passing of winter up here marks the beginning of a new cycle of life and rebirth in Yellowstone.
21:47Rivers run high with snowmelt, and the river valleys are lush and the grasses seem greener here than just about any place on Earth.
21:58For the wildlife of this region, spring also marks the end of one period of survival,
22:05and the start of another for both predator and prey alike.
22:13Springtime.
22:14Springtime.
22:15While snow still freckles the ground, the dominant color in Yellowstone's valleys is green.
22:26The bison and elk herds have made it through another season, though not without loss.
22:34For some older and weaker members of the herd, winter's grip was just too tight.
22:39For the coyote, a free meal may require stealth tactics against a much larger opponent.
22:51There is power in numbers.
22:54The coyotes form a pack to distract the grizzly.
22:58In the Yellowstone ecosystem, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
23:09For the elk who survived the winter, the time has come to return to the south.
23:26Their life on the hoof is not merely a matter of finding the best feeding grounds.
23:45It's a matter of survival.
23:48With mountain lions, grizzly bears, and wolves haunting this land, elk can never feel too settled.
24:15In our world, predators are an essential part of every ecosystem.
24:28And vigilance is the key to avoiding conflict.
24:45It's a few generations of very hard work that's
24:49the foundation of the agriculture in this part of the state.
24:52And for that earlier community, wolves, coyotes, foxes, that was all part of the furniture.
25:03Becky Weed owns a small ranch near Bozeman, Montana.
25:08On it, she tends more than 50 sheep.
25:11She knows full well what it means to live among predators.
25:17My husband Dave Tyler and I have been here a little over 35 years.
25:20We came to this spot primarily because we both had this
25:27notion that we wanted to see if we could make small-scale agriculture work.
25:31Ranchers face challenges from every direction.
25:34Viruses, feed cost, an unpredictable climate, and predators.
25:41Within two weeks of bringing sheep on this place, we had a flock of a dozen.
25:45We lost two of those sheep to coyotes very quickly after we started.
25:51And it really wasn't until then that Dave and I began to be more educated about the nature of
25:58carnivore control in the whole region.
26:01Becky runs her ranch with an eye on how best to live side by side with predators.
26:07You have a very intimate relationship with the natural world, but it can be really challenging.
26:14The single most effective tool we had was a guard dog.
26:18And it took us a couple before we really learned what we were doing and he developed the right habits.
26:24And dogs aren't the only animal allies humans could turn to.
26:29Meet Ruby.
26:39A guard burrow.
26:41We inherited from a friend.
26:44She was an orphan burrow, raised with sheep.
26:46She has natural protective instincts against things like foxes and coyotes.
26:53There have been times where I'll come out towards the field and I can see her
26:58look a half mile away and there's something down in the southeast corner of the ranch.
27:05She's very tuned in to when strange people, strange animals, anything unusual shows up.
27:11She's usually the first one to have her antenna up.
27:18Livestock ranchers across the west are innovating new ways to live with predators.
27:24While some programs teach cows defensive behavior or provide electric fencing,
27:30others focus on reimbursements for lost animals.
27:33Each ranch is a test case for a new solution to an age-old debate.
27:39The adaptation is the name of the game.
27:42There is no silver bullet.
27:44And the people who are most committed to try to find ways to live alongside carnivores
27:51are the people who are usually the most successful living on the land.
27:55Becky hopes this approach will reduce the impact of predators,
28:00allowing her ranch and the surrounding valley to thrive.
28:06The struggles for ranchers are real.
28:09And predator management is a constant issue, no matter the size of the herd.
28:20This is a rural landscape, a working landscape, which is kind of an area of conflict.
28:30And up over here is public land, the mountains.
28:33And that's kind of a conflict-free zone for carnivores.
28:38As they blend into this landscape, issues arise.
28:42And that's something I'm really interested in and have been thinking about for many years,
28:47of how you live right next to great carnivore habitat.
28:57Hidden cameras are an important tool used by scientists and game managers today.
29:03This is good placement for a game camera to try and capture what's moving through here.
29:10With these fences, all the wildlife traffic is going to move through this gap.
29:16Wolves and coyotes and foxes have been studied for decades, but that doesn't mean we know everything.
29:23With the reintroduction of wolves to this ecosystem, we weren't really sure what was going to happen.
29:29And one of the flashpoints was the wolf-coyote relationship.
29:33Wolves kill coyotes, keeping their numbers lower, which allows foxes to increase.
29:40Without the wolves, the coyotes kill the foxes.
29:44And what that does is it has ripple effects throughout the whole system.
29:49Because foxes prey on things like mice and voles.
29:54Coyotes prey on things like rabbits and ground squirrels.
29:57And wolves eat elk and deer.
29:59And it all kind of clicks together nicely.
30:02But when you take the wolves out, that relationship below between coyotes and foxes changes.
30:10And so this needs to be studied so we can concretely document how these spin-off effects
30:17between wolves and coyotes impact other animals.
30:22For example, red foxes and what they eat.
30:26Yeah, this will work great.
30:32Yeah, this will work great.
30:36Summer.
30:40The landscape is full of blooms.
30:47The river's full of meltwater.
30:56Yellowstone's valleys are alive.
31:02Not far from the grazing elk and bison, a coyote pup,
31:13just three weeks old, is already patrolling the valley.
31:23And he's not alone.
31:26Two other pups entered this world alongside him.
31:30Even at this age, they are already curious and daring.
31:36But until they are fully weaned, they still depend on their mother for milk.
31:42Coyotes and foxes mate for life and will raise litters together.
31:48Both parents are excellent caregivers.
31:51They take turns hunting so that one parent can watch the den.
31:55They're used to watching their pups play fight.
32:01It's actually important training for their lives in the wild.
32:06The parents realize that at this young age, their pups are easy prey for owls, bears, wolves,
32:13and golden eagles.
32:16Until they are old enough, the pups will remain under the parents' watchful eyes.
32:24Over in another den, a set of fox kits have begun exploring on their own as well.
32:30They share their canid cousin's bravado and curiosity.
32:39But mom is not amused.
32:41A magpie has caught the attention of the kit.
32:54Playmate?
32:56Toy?
32:58Like puppies, the fox kit will learn to decipher life's little riddles from his parents.
33:04Meanwhile, dad has gone in search of food.
33:26His keen sense of smell guides him past an entrance to Yellowstone National Park.
33:34The trail then continues through the trees and into an open meadow.
33:44There, he discovers a vole's hiding place.
33:53And his family's next meal.
33:58Foxes have little fear of humans.
34:04They've learned that where we are, there is often food.
34:12Whether that's in campsites, farms, backyards, or trash bins.
34:18Yellowstone's canids have adapted to the natural and human-induced stresses of the 21st century life.
34:26But scientists know their successes cannot be taken for granted.
34:30It's been six months since the team of researchers collared the red foxes inside Grand Teton National Park.
34:59We're like a hundred meters from where the cluster location is.
35:04They've been tracking the foxes' movements and comparing its data to the other canids in the park.
35:10So we put collars out about six months ago and we're currently getting our arms around the
35:16understanding of what denning might look like in Grand Teton for these three different species.
35:22Now going forward, we're going to be asking a whole series of questions about how these species engage with
35:28different habitat gradients, habitat resources, food.
35:35We're going to that tree.
35:37Perfect.
35:38I'll get updates every four to five days on where the dogs are.
35:42I check them, I map them, and I've also been using a clustering algorithm to find out where all the dens are.
35:48The use of collars, trail cams, and other tools helps researchers chip away at the mysteries of survival in the Yellowstone region.
35:59Oh, I think I might have the den.
36:01Oh, wow.
36:02Right up in the sagebrush, huh?
36:04Yeah, right under the sagebrush.
36:08Hopefully we get some kits on camera.
36:10We have a fox that went up to Yellowstone.
36:13It's now in Idaho.
36:14That was kind of a shock because, you know, these animals are pretty tiny, but they're able to travel so far.
36:19Hold it up a little bit.
36:21Yeah, that's good.
36:22Yeah, okay.
36:24Yeah, I don't want to disturb this anymore.
36:26Yeah, that looks good.
36:27Great.
36:28Let's go.
36:29At this stage, we're still just starting to get an idea about where these species are
36:34placing their dens in space.
36:36And so that'll allow us to ask questions about how all three carnivores maybe partitioned denning habitat.
36:44Grand Teton Park has proven to be an excellent study area.
36:49So this is a coyote den, right?
36:50Yeah, so I set this up a week ago.
36:53And I spooked what I think was the female because it was uncollared off the den.
36:58And two of our males are clustering here.
37:02We have two male coyotes interacting with one female at a den.
37:07And so we have a camera up there.
37:09We don't know a lot about like denning behavior and how males and females allocate that.
37:13And also, if there are family groups, we know that about wolves.
37:17It's not really a known thing with coyotes.
37:19Usually it's a male and a female, maybe a yearling as well as some pups.
37:22But we don't know how they're balancing out all on the landscape.
37:26Joe and Emily's study will continue for another full season.
37:33Another opportunity to discover new insights from this secretive landscape.
37:39There's a ton of people here.
37:40And, you know, a lot of coyote sightings have been seen recently.
37:43Interactions between coyotes and wolves have been seen recently by the public.
37:47And so I think being able to provide the public as well as just other researchers answers
37:52of how these animals are interacting on the landscape is really important.
37:56All right, let's see what we have on these things.
38:06Humans have been using this landscape for thousands of years.
38:12Valleys like this have riches of resources that people can use.
38:17Settlers came here hundreds of years ago and found equal resources
38:23to allow their communities to thrive as well.
38:27In a lot of ways, this is our identity.
38:30These are cherished landscapes, the wildlife, and now the predators are back.
38:36It's a wonderful thing.
38:41Okay, it's been a little while.
38:44See what information this thing has here.
38:47Doug's trail cam gives him insights into the wildlife that lives in and passes through the valley area.
38:56Look at that.
38:57That's a fox.
38:59Classic behavior.
39:00Looks like she or he's hunting.
39:04She's out doing her thing.
39:06Wow, that was cool.
39:07This has trickle-down impacts throughout the entire system because coyotes impact foxes.
39:19Foxes impact small mammals.
39:22And of course, in every place, it can be subtly different.
39:27And that's key to understanding how these different systems work.
39:32And this system here is heavily impacted by humans.
39:35So it's going to favor coyotes and foxes a little bit.
39:39And that's what we're in here trying to get data on.
39:42There's a coyote.
39:45A lot of places where wolves have come in, you see coyote behavior change.
39:50You actually see coyote numbers drop.
39:56The beauty of studying wildlife like wolves, and I've been studying them for over four decades,
40:03is there's still new things to learn.
40:16Living in country like this, it brings a person closer to something that's truly spiritual.
40:22I know that when I come back to this valley, I feel closer to God.
40:31And when you're in a place like this, I think we're reminded that we're all a part
40:37of a delicate system that requires a kind of harmony.
40:42But sometimes I wonder, can we save it?
40:46It's their hope.
40:49For those of us who love this country, this land, these are the things that we think about every day.
40:57Life up here isn't without its challenges, but we're adjusting to them.
41:01And the animals are adjusting to them too.
41:04I think that's how we find a way to be more ecologically whole,
41:08and help save this beautiful place for everyone.
41:14The Yellowstone Ecosystem.
41:16A rugged, iconic, one-of-a-kind place.
41:19But this landscape is under threat.
41:22The fight is on to protect it.
41:24Find out more at SavingYellowstone.org.
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