Wild About Utah Archives - Page 86 of 221

October 7, 2019March 4, 2026

Cougars in Utah

Cougars are more widely distributed in Utah than many residents realize. These shy cats are found across the state. They roam from the high Uinta Mountains to the dry southern deserts.

David Stoner, assistant professor in the Department of Wildland Resources in the Quinney College of Natural Resources who has studied cougars for the past two decades said, “[Cougars] are common in terms of their distribution, but are rare in terms of their numbers. They live in many places but there are never a lot of them, typically occurring at densities of 1 adult per 20 square miles.

Stoner continues, “They’re just a big cat. Most of us are familiar with a house cats, and know how they behave, their movements, and idiosyncrasies. The main difference is their size. Cougars can be as large as humans [males usually range between 110 to 180 lbs.] They have evolved to take prey larger than themselves. You see this in the size of their muzzle – the mouth, nose and jaw. All of that is much larger in a cougar relative to its own body than a house cat. This becomes even more dramatic in the really big cats like tigers and lions with very large muzzles.

Stoner partnered with Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) to study cougars in two Utah areas, one of which was Monroe Mountain in Fishlake National Forest.

Mother named F61 (face showing), daughter (F58c) (facing away) Approx 1.5 yrs old in January 2011. Location: Kennecott mine, Bingham Canyon in the Oquirrh Mountains, Utah Courtesy and Copyright McLain Mecham, Photographer — Mother named F61 (face showing), daughter (F58c) (facing away) Approx 1.5 yrs old in January 2011. Location: Kennecott mine, Bingham Canyon in the Oquirrh Mountains, Utah
Courtesy and Copyright McLain Mecham, Photographer

The researchers noticed an unusual movement pattern of juveniles on the mountain. When the young were ready to leave their mothers they could have migrated in any direction to find good habitat but they disproportionately chose to go either NE or SE. This perplexed the researchers.

At about the same time the cougar research was winding down, DWR was starting a mule deer monitoring program.

Stoner said, “We were very fortunate. What DWR found was the Monroe Mountain deer herd were mostly migrating NE and SE. I looked back at our data and found the cougars who were leaving Monroe were going in the same direction as the deer migrations, the young cougars were tracking the deer herds.

Due to their hunting methods and nutritional needs, cougars require large home ranges. Researchers gathered data from NV, UT and AZ to represent a wide range of environmental conditions from very dry systems close to Las Vegas to relatively wet systems along Wasatch front.

Stoner explains, “We found the size of the home ranges…varied with precipitation. The wettest areas the cougars had the smallest home ranges, because of the abundance of prey in these highly productive systems. Females tend to have ranges strictly based on the food they need. The male’s range is much larger because they are looking for breeding opportunities, so they overlap numerous females. These ranges can be quite large. One collared male had a home range of over 2,500 square miles, which was visible on maps at the scale of the entire western United States.”

When it comes to human interactions with cougars, Utah has been very fortunate. In the past 100 years, no humans have been killed by a cougar. In hopes of maintaining this record, DWR keeps safety tips on its website. The most important tip is to never run from a cougar, this will cause them to instinctively think you are prey and begin the chase. If you have a child with you pick them up. Stand firm and look intimidating, let it know you’ll fight back. Your goal is to scare them off.

With the wise actions of humans, Stoner and DWR hope this majestic cat will continue to flourish in Utah.

This is Shauna Leavitt and I’m Wild About Utah.

Credits:
Photos: Courtesy & Copyright © David Stoner
Audio: Courtesy
Principal Investigator: David Stoner, https://qcnr.usu.edu/directory_cv/D.Stoner_CV_10-2016.pdf
Text: Shauna Leavitt, Utah Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Quinney College of Natural Resources, Utah State University

Sources & Additional Reading

Greene, Jack, My Cougar Encounter, Wild About Utah, January 16, 2017, https://wildaboututah.org/my-cougar-encounter/

Strand, Holly, Mountain Lion, Wild About Utah, March 4, 2010, https://wildaboututah.org/mountain-lion/

Boling, Josh, Wild Cats, Wild About Utah, December 10, 2018, https://wildaboututah.org/wild-cats/

Löe J. and E. Röskaft. 2004. Large Carnivores and Human Safety: A Review. AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment Aug 2004 : Vol. 33, Issue 6, pg(s) 283-288 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8328070_Large_Carnivores_and_Human_Safety_A_Review

Larese-Casanova, Mark, Mountain Wildlife Field Book, Utah Master Naturalists, https://extension.usu.edu/utahmasternaturalist/files/UMNP_Mountains_Wildlife_Book_booklet.pdf

Rice, Andy, Voices: Cougars have cost me thousands. That doesn’t mean I want them all killed., The Salt Lake Tribune, Jan. 20, 2026, https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2026/01/19/voices-cougars-have-cost-me/

September 16, 2019March 4, 2026

Rock Art

What did we do before radio—before cell phones, television, newspapers, and books? How did we tell stories, share news, warn of danger, or otherwise communicate with anyone beyond those around us? What did we do with words and thoughts when there was no one with whom we could immediately share them? The wilds of southern Utah can provide one answer—if you’re willing to look.

Rock Art: The Great Gallery Pictograph Panel in Horseshoe Canyon, UT; Courtesy & Copyright Josh Boling, Photographer — The Great Gallery Pictograph Panel in Horseshoe Canyon, UT; Courtesy & Copyright Josh Boling, Photographer

As far as pictograph panels go, Horseshoe Canyon’s Great Gallery isn’t terribly difficult to find. It’s also one of the most spectacular and well preserved panels of rock art in the state. Naturally, then, it’s fairly well-known and has seen an increasing number of visitors in recent years despite its remote location. Incidentally, I happened upon it by accident—had no idea it was there and would have passed right by if not for a chance glimpse of a ghostly set of eyes peering at me through cottonwood boughs. The Great Gallery’s ‘Barrier Canyon’ style of rock art is characterized by haunting silhouettes of human, semi-human, and animal figures painted on and pecked into the canyon walls of the Colorado Plateau. They are surviving remnants of an unnamed and unknown culture of hunter/gatherers that roamed Utah’s canyon country between 7,000 and 1,500 years ago—pieces of information whose meaning is lost to us now. We may never know why these people painted the “Holy Ghost”—the 8-foot-tall figure with empty, gaping eyes that startled me out of my hiking stupor.

Newer panels of rock art produced by more familiar cultures are a bit more discernible, though. The nameless wanderers who produced the Barrier Canyon style were followed first by the Fremont whose artwork appeared around 1,500 and 2,000 years ago and then by the Pueblo peoples we now refer to as the Anasazi. Both the Fremont and Pueblo styles portray relatively clearer themes—stories of hunting parties and the game to which they gave chase; spirals and directional glyphs which indicate water; people, animals, and the elements whose interactions are now carved into the canyon walls for us to find, decipher, and celebrate.

The author, adventurer, and local rock art expert Jonathan Bailey refers to rock art as “a vision of a…cultural landscape”—a story continuously told by people who lived close to the land long after they’ve passed. Some stories are secret, hidden away in forgotten crevices of the Colorado Plateau, meant only for those who already knew their meaning. Others are more democratic: a water glyph is meant for me as much as the hunter/gatherer that pecked it into the sandstone. It beckons every traveler to come and sate his or her thirst.
Einstein said time is relative. Looking up at the Holy Ghost, the artistic center of the Great Gallery, I felt I could reach through time and connect with the people who wandered this landscape before me—to see it and experience it the way they did.

I’m Josh Boling, and I’m Wild About Utah.

Credits:
Photos: Courtesy & Copyright Josh Boling
Sound: Courtesy & Copyright Kevin Colver
Text: Josh Boling, 2018

Sources & Additional Reading

Mozdy, Michael, Bold Figures, Blurred History: The Great Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon, Natural History Museum of Utah, October 2, 2016, https://nhmu.utah.edu/blog/2016/09/29/bold-figures-blurred-history-great-gallery-horseshoe-canyon

Nine Mile Canyon, Natural History Museum of Utah, https://nhmu.utah.edu/places/nine-mile-canyon

September 9, 2019July 18, 2020

Before Trees, We Had Giant Mushrooms

Mushrooms in the Grass Courtesy MW at Pixabay — Mushrooms in the Grass
Courtesy MW at Pixabay

Yes, trees are the answer. But they owe their magnificence to a less known life form that has long intrigued me. Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by giant mushrooms 24 feet tall and three feet wide. And consider Utah’s Pando aspen clone, one of the largest and oldest, mycorrhizal-dependent, living organisms

Mushrooms are actually the reproductive manifestation of a much larger organism, a brief glimpse of the wonders that reside beneath the ground. Called mycorrhizal fungi, they form a mutually beneficial relationship with tree roots and other plants. They vastly increase the absorption capacity for water and minerals. Many trees and other plants cannot live without these fungal partners. It also makes the plant less susceptible to soil borne pathogens and other environmental stresses such as drought and salinity.

Regarding climate protection, mycelium make up the bulk of carbon storage in forests. Scientists in Sweden were surprised by this; they were expecting dead tree matter to shoulder the carbon burden. But as mycologist Paul Stamets states, “dead mycelium can store carbon for hundreds of thousands of years.

Remarkably, recent research has shown that plants connected by mycorrihzal fungi can use these underground connections to produce and receive warning signals. When a host plant is attacked, the plant signals surrounding plants of its condition. The host plant releases volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that attract the insect’s predators, as do the plants connected by the fungi network.

Further, fungi have been found to have a protective role for plants rooted in soils with high toxic metal concentrations. This is likely due to the metal binding to fungal mycelium.

Taking a broader view, recent research indicates mushrooms possess curative properties for many diseases, including neurological. Add to this bioremediation through cleaning up industrial waste and oil spills, and applications for reducing loss of our pollinators. Critical to soil function as decomposers and providing nutrients, mushrooms also play a major role in soil structure through hyphae networking and glomalin (that is biological glue) production.

The idea that a universal web of dark matter, plus our more familiar World Wide Web, plus the neurological networking in the human brain, all mimicking the mycelial networks of mushrooms under our feet that bind and feed all of Earth’s soil. The idea that this network, an enormous mass of fungus that branches and communicates underground, is in some way sentient. The idea that human brains went through an evolutionary growth spurt after we encountered “magic” mushrooms on the savannah of Africa- all worthy of serious rumination.
Fall has arrived, and with it mushrooms to titillate the imagination- and gastric juices.

This is Jack Greene and boy am I wild about Utah and Pando’s mycelium!

Credits:

Pictures: M W from Pixabay
Sound: Courtesy Kevin Colver
Text: Jack Greene, Bridgerland Audubon Society

Additional Reading:

Pace, Matthew, (Intern, NYBG), Hidden Partners: Mycorrhizal Fungi and Plants, New York Botanical Garden, https://sciweb.nybg.org/science2/hcol/mycorrhizae.asp.html

Chadwick, Douglas H., Mycorrhizal Fungi: The Amazing Underground Secret to a Better Garden. Mother Earth News, August/September 2014, https://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/gardening-techniques/mycorrhizal-fungi-zm0z14aszkin

See “Mushrooms” in the following:
Cumo, Christopher, Encyclopedia of Cultivated Plants: From Acacia to Zinnia [3 volumes]: From Acacia to Zinnia, Amazon Digital Services LLC, April 25, 2013, https://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Cultivated-Plants-Acacia-volumes-ebook/dp/B00ODJN5BU
See also: https://books.google.com/books?id=Ja7WAQAAQBAJ&q=mushrooms#v=snippet&q=mushrooms&f=false

September 2, 2019May 4, 2020

POCKING: Potentially the “best” technique for restoring remote canyon landscapes during mine reclamations

Pocking for Cottonwood-Wilberg mine reclamation Courtesy & Copyright Chris Brown — Pocking for Cottonwood-Wilberg mine reclamation
Courtesy & Copyright Chris Brown

In Utah, when a coal mine closes, the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining (OGM) is the agency responsible for overseeing the reclamation.

PacifiCorp is a mining company that provides electrical utility to one million customers in Utah, Idaho and Wyoming via Rocky Mountain Power. When it submitted the Cottonwood-Wilberg mine reclamation proposal, it claimed a sedimentation pond which catches run off, would not be needed. OGM was skeptical and initially rejected the plan.
Dennis Oakley, senior mine engineer at PacifiCorp said, “We explored the state and federal regulations and found there was some latitude if we could show we were using the best technology currently available.”

Tom Thompson, GIS Manager at OGM said, “Technology has come a long way, if we leverage it correctly we could do a lot better for our environment.”

The method PacifiCorp claimed as the best technology available was deep gouging, or “pocking”; a technique used to prevent erosion and stimulate vegetation growth on steep sloped landscapes.

To use pocking, the natural canyon slopes are first restored, then pocks three feet in diameter and one-and-a-half feet deep are dug into the slopes next to each other in a random and discontinuous fashion. The landscape soon resembles the surface of a golf ball with thousands of dimples.

Green dyed hydro-mulching, which contains native seeds, moisture and a protective layer of mulch is then sprayed over the entire pocked landscape.

When it rains the pocks capture the water, forming mini ponds. The moisture is slowly absorbed into the ground, preventing run off and giving the seeds a moist environment for growth.

Each year the sides of the pocks slowly erode into themselves, and the vegetation becomes established and spreads. Eventually the pocks fill with sediment and fade into a natural looking stable slope.

If pocking is the best technology currently available – then OGM wanted to know.

With the help of PacifiCorp, OGM set up the Cottonwood-Wilberg mine as a research site to determine the efficiency of pocking.

To add additional expertise to the research, OGM applied for Utah Legislature appropriated funds, to access to the knowledge of Doug Ramsey, the director of the Remote Sensing and GIS Laboratory, in the Quinney College of Natural Resources at Utah State University, and his graduate student Chris Brown.

Ramsey and Brown explain, The RS/GIS lab is evaluating the pocks by using drone imagery of the entire landscape to create 3D models and topographic maps that identify where the vegetation is growing, and the depth of each pock across multiple seasons and years to show if the pocks are eroding as expected.

PacifiCorp installed monitoring devices around the reclaimed site so it could measure the amount of precipitation, the vegetation growth over time, and the sediment load of the runoff above and below the disturbed areas.

Oakley explains, “It’s our theory that the sediment levels of the background runoff will be equal to, or less than the runoff at the bottom of the disturbed area.”

Ramsey visited the site in June 2019 and found vegetation was already growing in the bottom of the pocks.

Data from the site will be gathered and analyzed over the next few years. A key part of this monitoring work will be a manual describing the drone data collection and analysis methods so OGM can establish a monitoring protocol for other reclamation sites.

Keenan Storrar, hydrologist from OGM, said, “We hope this research on the pocking technique, which PacifiCorp helped develop, will be published for future operators use.”

This is Shauna Leavitt and I’m Wild About Utah.

Credits:
Photos: Courtesy & Copyright © Chris Brown
Audio: Courtesy
Text: Shauna Leavitt, Utah Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Quinney College of Natural Resources, Utah State University

Sources & Additional Reading

Cottonwood-Wilberg Mine, Emery County, Utah Reclamation, US Department of the Interior, https://eros.usgs.gov/doi-remote-sensing-activities/2018/osm/cottonwood-wilberg-mine-emery-county-utah-reclamation

Cottonwood-Wilberg Mine, Utah Division of Oil, Gas & Mining, Utah Department of Natural Resources, https://www.ogm.utah.gov/coal/minedetail.php?C0150019