Podcast: Wild About Utah

Wild About Utah is a Utah Public Radio production featuring contributors who share a love of nature, preservation and education. Contributors include Bridgerland Audubon Society, Utah Public Radio, Stokes Nature Center, the Edith Bowen Laboratory School (EBLS) at USU and many other nature-related individuals and institutions. See WildAboutUtah.org for a list of authors, voices and contributors.

Posted on

April Light by May Swenson

May Swenson, 1965 in Tucson
Copyright © L.H. Clark
Courtesy Utah State University Press

Hi, I’m Holly Strand from Stokes Nature Center in beautiful Logan Canyon.

In Logan Cemetery a granite bench marks the grave of May Swenson, a native Utahn and eminent poet. She was born in Logan in 1913 and attended Utah State University where she published her first poem. She moved east in 1936, and eventually, she became one of America’s most inventive and recognized poets, She won many awards including Guggenheim and Rockefeller grants, the Yale Bollingen Prize, and the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Utah State University conferred an honorary doctorate on Swenson in 1987. Despite her many achievements and her years living away from Utah, Swenson never forgot her Mormon heritage or her identity as a Westerner.

Nature played a prominent role in Swenson’s work. In fact, she published a collection of poetry called Nature: Poems Old and New which is brimming with imagery that evokes the beauty and complexity of the natural world.

An example is a poem called April Light. Here it is read by Dr. Paul Crumbley, a professor of English at Utah State University.

April light

Lined with light
the twigs are stubby arrows.
A gilded trunk writhes
Upward from the roots,
from the pit of the black tentacles.
In the book of spring
a bare-limbed torso
is the first illustration.
Light teaches the tree
to beget leaves,
to embroider itself all over
with green reality,
until summer becomes
its steady portrait
and birds bring their lifetime
to the boughs.
Then even the corpse
light copies from below
may shimmer, dreaming it feels
the cheeks of blossom.

To learn more about May Swenson and her work, come to Stokes Nature Center on May 1st at 10 AM. Paul Crumbley will present a program entitled “May Swenson’s Poetics of Natural Selection.” For more information, see www.wildaboututah.org

For Wild About Utah and Stokes Nature Center, I’m Holly Strand.

Credits:

Readings: Paul Crumbley, English Department, Utah State University, April Light by May Swenson

Text: Stokes Nature Center: Holly Strand

Sources & Additional Reading

Knudson, R.R. and Suzzanne Bigelow. 1996. May Swenson: A Poet’s Life in Photos. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43021931

Swenson, May, Nature: Poems Old and New, Mariner Books (fmr: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), April 19, 2000, https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Poems-Old-May-Swenson/dp/0618064087

The life of Utah poet May Swenson, with Margaret Brucia, Access Utah with Tom Williams, https://www.upr.org/show/access-utah/2025-07-14/the-life-of-utah-poet-may-swenson-on-access-utah

Posted on

American Pronghorn

American Pronghorn Buck
Courtesy US FWS Digital Library
Photographer: James C. Leopold

Hi, I’m Holly Strand from Stokes Nature Center in beautiful Logan Canyon.

The American pronghorn has an identity problem. It’s Latin name Antilocapra Americana means “American antelope goat.” But the fleet-footed animal of the American West is neither an antelope nor a goat. It is the sole survivor of a family of hooved animals that flourished in the Miocene, from 7-25 million years ago. More than 13 species of that family have been found in the fossil record, but only one pronghorn survived to modern times. 
 

American Pronghorn DoePhotographer: James C. Leopold Courtesy US FWS Digital Library

Many consider the pronghorn to be the fastest land animal in the world. Certain individuals have been clocked up to 60 miles an hour. It’s true that cheetah can go 70 miles per hour,–but only for several hundred yards. The pronghorn on the other hand, can go for great distances at high speed without breaking a sweat, leaving pursuers such as coyotes and wolves in the dust. Mountain lions occasionally creep up behind them, but that’s tricky in the open grasslands and shrub steppe that pronghorns prefer. Simply put, no land mammal on earth can keep up with the pronghorn over a significant distance.

Pronghorn Herd RunningCourtesy US FWS Digital Library
Photographer: Jack Woody

So why is this animal so implausibly fast? John Byers of the University of Idaho believes that the pronghorn and its relatives evolved traits to enhance speed under the influence of ghost predators. These predators are now extinct but their existence is memorialized through the adapted traits of their prey.

Before the late Pleistocene extinction, a variety of carnivorous megafauna filled grasslands often referred to as the American Serengeti. The giant short-faced bear, the American lion, a jaguar, a form of hyena and the saber-toothed cat were likely ambush predators of the pronghorn. But the most compelling reason for the pronghorn’s improbable speed is the presence of the North American cheetah. This long -limbed cat with powerful heart and lung capacity set off an evolutionary arms race with the pronghorn. Natural selection favored speed since slow cats went hungry and slow pronghorns were devoured.

American Pronghorn BuckCourtesy US FWS Digital Library
Photographer: Harvey Doerksen[/caption]

Nowadays, lacking the need for such swift getaways, it’s possible that the pronghorn has slowed down. But if slowing down is 60 miles an hour, imagine what a high speed chase with the powerful prehistoric cheetah must have been like!

For Wild About Utah and Stokes Nature Center, I’m Holly Strand.
Credits:
Images: Courtesy US FWS Digital Library
Text:     Holly Strand, Stokes Nature Center
Sources & Additional Reading:

Adams, Daniel B. 1979, “The Cheetah: Native American” Science 205 (4411): 1155–1158. https://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/205/4411/1155

John A. Byers, American Pronghorn: Social Adaptations and the Ghosts of Predators Past, University of Chicago Press, 1998, https://www.amazon.com/American-Pronghorn-Social-Adaptations-Predators/dp/0226086992

John A. Byers, Built for Speed: A Year in the Life of Pronghorn, Harvard University Press, 2003, https://www.amazon.com/Built-Speed-Year-Life-Pronghorn/dp/0674011422

Pronghorn, ANTILOCAPRA AMERICANA, Utah Conservation Data Center, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, https://dwrcdc.nr.utah.gov/rsgis2/Search/Display.asp?FlNm=antiamer

Pronghorn, Wildlife Library, National Wildlife Foundation, https://www.nwf.org/Wildlife/Wildlife-Library/Mammals/Pronghorn.aspx

Antilocapra americana, Pronghorn, Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Antilocapra_americana/

 

Posted on

Censuses and Surveys

Wolf with Radio Collar watches biologists FWS Digital Library, Photo by William Campbell
Wolf with Radio Collar
Photographer: William Campbell
US FWS

Hi, I’m Holly Strand from Stokes Nature Center in beautiful Logan Canyon.

This year’s Census is the 23rd national headcount in United States history.

Census results affect the allocation of all kinds of government financial and program resources. The Census also determines the distribution of seats in
the state and federal House of Representatives.

It is also important to know the number and whereabouts of different wildlife species. This information is used for a number of management purposes– for instance, monitoring the status of endangered species or determining hunting or fishing quotas.

Mountain Lion with Radio Collar
Photographer: Claire Dobert
Courtesy US FWS

Counting wildlife isn’t as easy as counting people. You can’t mail
animals a survey with a self-addressed stamped envelope and you don’t necessarily know where to find them at any given point in time.

True censuses of animals are rare for in most cases a complete count is either too expensive or too difficult to undertake. Only animals conveniently and visibly grouped in a particular location can be censused– such as fish in a fish hatchery, or large animals along a certain migration route.

Setting a waterfowl capture net
Courtesy US FWS

Instead, biologists define an area of interest, then sample at random locations within that area. Samples usually consist of a number of transects or randomly selected quadrants. Counts from these samples are then extrapolated to an entire habitat or study area.

Along with selecting a sampling method, you have to figure out how you are going to effectively count an individual occurrence. This can be extremely tricky. Especially if your animal is reclusive or nocturnal. According to Dr. Eric Gese, a specialist in predator ecology at Utah State University, biologists use tracks, scats, scratches, burrows, hair samples –even roadkill counts as proxies for individual animals.

FWS Biologist Tracking a Black Bear
Photo by John & Karen Hollingsworth,
Courtesy US FWS

Capturing, marking and recapturing animals is one of the most reliable–albeit expensive– ways to do a direct count of animals. Captured animals are marked with ear tags, radio collars, dyes or even radioactive isotopes. In a future program I’ll describe an example of how one scientist tracks and counts large and elusive predators in the wild.

Thanks to Utah State University’s College of Natural Resources for supporting the development of this Wild About Utah topic.

For Wild About Utah and Stokes Nature Center, I’m Holly Strand.
Credits:
Images: Courtesy US FWS Digital Library
Text:     Holly Strand, Stokes Nature Center
Sources & Additional Reading:

Gese, E. M. 2001. Monitoring of terrestrial carnivore populations. Pages 372–396 in J. L. Gittleman, S. M. Funk, D. Macdonald, and R. K. Wayne, editors., Carnivore conservation. Cambridge University, Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Video: Biologists track hibernating bears for research, KSL Broadcasting Salt Lake City UT, 27 March 2010, https://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=647&sid=10166167

American Black Bear, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, wildlife.utah.gov/publications/pdf/bearnew.pdf

(tracking) Black-footed Ferrets, Wildlife Review Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, wildlife.utah.gov/wr/0804ferrets/0804ferrets.pdf

 

Posted on

Blue Orchard Bee

Blue Orchard Bee
Copyright Jim Cane

It’s early spring, the time of fruit tree bloom. Apricots, apples, plums, cherries, and pears will all need bees to pollinate their flowers. Traditionally, we’ve used the European honey bee, but now we know how to pollinate our fruit trees using one of our native bees, the blue orchard bee (Osmia lignaria). These bees fly nationwide.

In Utah they occupy many foothill and lower montane habitats. They aren’t social; every female is fertile and tends to her own tiny nest. Adults are active and nesting for only 3-4 weeks in the spring. These bees naturally nest in the tunnels chewed by large wood-boring beetles in tree trunks. Each female partitions the tunnel into a series of little bee-sized rooms. Each room is stocked with a bee-sized provision of pollen moistened with nectar, followed by a single egg. Nest cells are partitioned, and ultimately capped, with mud, a trait shared with other so-called “mason bees”.

Drill Log with 5/16 holes
5 to 6 inches deep
Copyright Jim Cane

You can have your own backyard population of blue orchard bees. One easy way to start is with a short fat log that is seasoned and dry. Take a 5/16 bit and drill 20 or more holes 5 to 6 inches deep. Stand the log on end, facing the holes towards the southeast.

On cold mornings, females bask in the sun before taking flight. If your log is colonized, then you’ll see steely blue bees busily coming and going all day long during fruit tree bloom. They tote their loads of dry yellow pollen in a brush of hair beneath the abdomen. Unloading that pollen at the nest necessitates some charming acrobatics, part of their undeniable entertainment value. Successive generations will nest for you every spring, but you’ll want to switch to better nesting materials to practice good bee hygiene.

A Colonized log
Copyright Jim Cane

Details and links can be found at our Wild About Utah website.

This is Linda Kervin for Bridgerland Audubon Society.

Credits:
Pictures: Courtesy and Copyright Jim Cane
Text: Jim Cane, Bridgerland Audubon Society

Additional Reading:

https://www.sare.org/publications/bob.htm

https://www.ars.usda.gov/Research/docs.htm?docid=18333

https://www.pollinatorparadise.com/Binderboards
/Hornfaced_Bees.htm

Blue Orchard Bee eggs
on pollen provision mass
in nest
Copyright Jim Cane