The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014 (42 page)

 

Finding a slight depression at the edge [of a canyon that separated him from the sheep] I crept into it and lay on my back. Then slowly revolving to a position with my feet forward, I waited a few moments to steady my nerves. My two-hundred-yard sight had been pushed up, and watching my opportunity, I slowly rose to a sitting position, elbows on knees. Not a ram had seen or suspected me. I carefully aimed at a ram standing broadside near the edge of the canyon, realizing that the success of my long arduous trip would be determined the next moment. I pulled the trigger and as the shot echoed from the rocky walls, the ram fell and tried to rise, but could not. His back was broken. The others sprang into alert attitudes and looked in all directions. I fired at another standing on the brink, apparently looking directly at me. At the shot he fell and rolled into the canyon. Then a ram with big massive wrinkled horns dashed out from the band and, heading in my direction, ran down into the canyon. The others immediately followed, but one paused at the brink and, as I fired, dropped and rolled below.

 

A few hundred more words follow, describing Sheldon's continued killing spree. Then this:

 

Seven fine rams had been killed by eight shots—and by one who is an indifferent marksman! My trip had quickly turned from disappointment to success.

The U.S. Biological Survey had entrusted me with the mission of securing the skulls of at least four adult rams, with some of their skins, for the study collection in the National Museum, and I desired four reasonably good trophies (the legal limit) for myself. Most of these were now before me.

The rain had stopped. I sat there smoking my pipe, enjoying the exhilaration following the stalk, while the beauty of the landscape about me was intensified by my wrought-up senses.

 

6.

 

Given what I knew of Charles Sheldon—legendary champion of Alaska's wild sheep and Denali's wilderness—his account of the killing spree stunned me when I first read it.

I understand the unfairness of using contemporary standards to judge people who lived in other eras, under different value systems and moral codes. In his time, Sheldon was considered a consummate conservationist. And by most accounts, he worked harder than anyone to get the homeland of these sheep protected. He is celebrated for his wilderness advocacy, especially his role in getting the federal government to establish Mount McKinley National Park, later to become Denali National Park and Preserve. Still, both the actions and the attitude he exhibited that long-ago day disturb me.

Except for catching and killing fish (and I don't do much of even that these days), I am what's called a nonhunter. I don't directly kill other animals for food, or clothing, or other reasons. But contrary to what some of my Alaskan critics say, I am not an “anti.” I do not oppose the respectful and humane hunting and killing of animals for food or other subsistence purposes. It seems more honest, in a way, and arguably more ethical than buying meat at the store, especially given what we know about the awful lives of most farm animals that become our food. But as I've noted elsewhere, over the years I've become intolerant of trophy hunting. To me such blood sport is unacceptable, a selfish and harmful act fed by pride and ego.

Can I accept Sheldon's behavior? Given the context, I suppose. Yet I'm bothered by his excitement and self-congratulatory tone (I read false humility in the comments about his marksmanship) and especially his cavalier attitude toward the sheep he killed. Sheldon suggests no sense of regret or sadness that he took their lives. Yes, he obeyed the hunting laws. But to kill seven rams for science and personal satisfaction seems the epitome of overkill, no matter how healthy the local sheep population may have been.

End of commentary, back to Sheldon's story.

 

7.

 

To his credit, Sheldon painstakingly recovered the animals he'd killed. One by one he butchered the sheep and hauled their meat, skins, and skulls down the mountain, then treated them for preservation, took measurements, and studied the stomach contents. Once reunited with his companions, he packed his specimens out and returned east. His trip had been a resounding success.

Sheldon's main work was now complete. Several of the sheep he'd killed and collected would be studied by scientists and displayed in the American Museum of Natural History. But he recognized the need for a longer stay, to better understand the sheep's life history. So before leaving, he built a cabin along the Toklat River.

The following August, Sheldon returned for a ten-month stay. Besides studying sheep, he gathered facts on other species, large and small. He paid close attention to the landscape, the wildlife habitat, and the changing weather and seasons, and he made friends with many year-round residents. He was astounded by the abundant wildlife, but feared that the uncontrolled hunting done by “market hunters” who supplied wild meat to the region's towns and mining camps would someday threaten Denali's wildlife riches.

Along the way, Sheldon fell in love with the Denali region and began to envision a plan for its preservation as a park and game preserve. In a journal entry dated January 12, 1908, he even named this park-refuge: Denali National Park. Though he never again returned to Denali country, it remained an inspiration for this dream.

Back in New York, Sheldon shared his Denali vision with fellow members of the Boone and Crockett Club, an influential group of big-game hunters and conservationists. His colleagues responded enthusiastically, but momentum for the new park-refuge lagged until 1914, when Congress mandated construction of a railroad from Seward to Fairbanks. The preferred route would pass through the heart of the Denali region.

Sheldon pursued his dream with new urgency. Joined by equally enthusiastic allies—the newly appointed Park Service director Stephen Mather and the prominent artist-explorer-hunter Belmore Browne among them—Sheldon helped draft legislation establishing Mount McKinley National Park. He also won the backing of Alaska's lone delegate to Congress, James Wickersham, who realized that such a park could be a major tourist attraction, boosting the territory's economy.

With new momentum and little opposition, Congress passed legislation creating the park in February 1917. Later that month, President Woodrow Wilson signed it into law. The original Mount McKinley Park protected 2,200 square miles of prime wildlife habitat, primarily north of the Alaska Range, where Sheldon had met the Dall sheep that would help to define his life and conservation legacy.

 

8.

 

Traffic slows to a standstill. Cars, pickups, and RVs begin pulling over to the side of the highway. Binoculars and cameras (and, by the second decade of the twenty-first century, smartphones) are grabbed. And a crowd begins to gather, as both tourists and Alaskans maneuver for a better look at the Dall sheep that feed less than 100 feet away.

The sheep pay little attention to the human spectators. Continuing to feed on grass and willows, they sometimes wander close to the road and show no outward signs of fear, even when people approach to within 30 feet or less. It's a scene that's repeated dozens of times each summer, along one of Alaska's busiest stretches of highway.

Tens of thousands of Dall sheep inhabit the state's mountain ranges, from Southcentral Alaska to the Arctic. They're prized wildlife symbols of three national parks: Denali, Wrangell–St. Elias, and Gates of the Arctic. But nowhere are they so accessible to the public as the Windy Corner area of Chugach State Park, a half-hour's drive from downtown Anchorage and the only place in the world that people can watch Dall sheep while both are standing near sea level.

Ewes, lambs, adolescents, and young adult sheep inhabit steep cliffs and grassy meadows above the Seward Highway for much of the year, coming closest to the road between mileposts 106 and 107. Peak viewing occurs in summer, after the ewes have given birth. The best time to see the sheep is usually early morning, though they're sometimes visible throughout the day. As many as fifty have been spotted from the highway, but twenty or fewer is more the norm. Only rarely are the older, big-curl rams present; they seem to prefer backcountry solitude to busy highway corridors.

While the sheep's high visibility is a guaranteed treat for wildlife lovers, it has proved a management headache for Chugach State Park personnel and state troopers. Drivers who slow down or stop to watch and photograph the sheep may ignore designated turnouts and park instead along narrow highway shoulders, despite
NO PARKING
signs. Or, even worse, they'll slow almost to a stop on the highway itself. And as crowds gather, people pay less attention to traffic patterns.

As a former Chugach superintendent, Al Meiners, once described it to me, “When people see wild sheep three feet from the road, they just go nuts. Other senses tend to shut down and you get people doing foolish things, like slamming on their brakes right on the highway. It's real dangerous, because you have other drivers coming screaming around that curve at fifty, sixty miles an hour, and here's a traffic jam. I went down there once to study the problem and ended up directing traffic.”

State officials have talked for years about ways to better address the Seward Highway's “sheep jams.” Some improvements have been made, but the problems persist. Now I've learned that a major highway redesign is in the works. Plans for Windy Corner include a widened road with passing lanes, parking lots on both sides of the highway, informational signs that present responsible wildlife viewing behavior, a pedestrian tunnel, and perhaps some sort of barrier to better separate people and sheep.

 

9.

 

A few years after becoming the
Anchorage Times'
s outdoors writer in 1984, I met with Dave Harkness, the state biologist responsible for managing the Anchorage area's wildlife, to learn more about Windy Corner's sheep. Dave told me that biologists weren't absolutely certain why sheep would congregate in such large numbers along a busy highway, but suspected a mineral lick, where they were likely getting salt and other essential minerals from the soil (those suspicions have since been confirmed). He also believed that the cliffs contribute to their tolerance of human traffic: “The sheep know they have an easy escape route if they need it. In a few minutes, or even seconds, they can be out of view.”

Harkness further noted that the Windy Corner sheep frequent an area that is off-limits to hunting, which would help to account for their “tame” behavior: lambs learn early that people don't pose a threat. Yet, he added, “Come August and September, the sheep are vastly different creatures; they're not as accessible or visible. It's hard to say whether they equate danger with different times of the year.”

Neither Harkness's successor, Rick Sinnott, nor the Anchorage area's current wildlife manager, Jessy Coltrane, have noticed such a seasonal shift in the sheep's behavior. And in a conversation with me, Coltrane questioned why the animals would suddenly become more wary. I can offer one possibility: sport hunters.

The one obvious danger that Alaska's Dall sheep face in late summer and fall is human hunting. Of course it's difficult, if not impossible, to know whether sheep make that seasonal connection. But if Harkness was right, it's telling that they become “different creatures” when the killing season begins, or at least did so during his watch. Yes, sheep are protected at Windy Corner and on neighboring terrain. But parts of Chugach State Park's backcountry are open to sheep hunting from early August through early October, including one area less than 5 miles away, as a sheep rambles. Could the skittish behavior that Harkness observed be mere coincidence? I, for one, can imagine that sheep might somehow “learn” to associate that time of year with a need for greater caution.

On the other hand, it's curious that neither Sinnott nor Coltrane has witnessed such behavioral changes in the two decades or so since Harkness retired. And there's this to consider: as Coltrane points out, the great majority of Chugach hunters have always targeted full-curl rams. Why would the killing of rams make ewes and young sheep more cautious, especially since mature males generally keep to themselves?

Any permitted hunter could kill ewes in Chugach State Park from the mid-1990s into the 2000s, though since 2009 only archers have been allowed to take them. (Coltrane says that the hunting season begins after lambs have been weaned.) Between 2010 and 2012, hunters killed thirty-nine full-curl rams and only three ewes in the park and some adjacent lands. The paradox is that no ewes could be hunted when Harkness was manager, yet that's when Windy Corner's sheep apparently were most guarded during the hunting season. Could he have misread their actions? Could Sinnott and Coltrane simply have missed the seasonal shift? Or perhaps some other circumstance has changed. Such enigmas reflect how little we actually know about Dall sheep (and other animals), including—and especially—their inner lives and communication with each other.

A few additional observations about Chugach State Park's sheep and the hunting of them seem appropriate. More than two thousand sheep were annually counted from the late 1980s through the 1990s, about double their number in the early 1980s. Wildlife managers correctly suspected that was more than the sheep's habitat could indefinitely sustain, and Sinnott added new hunts in the mid-1990s to trim their numbers. The park's sheep population plummeted in the early 2000s, perhaps because of overgrazing and severe winters, though no one knows for certain. By 2007 about nine hundred sheep remained. Since then the population has rebounded slightly, to about a thousand animals.

Because, in Coltrane's words, “We micromanage the hell out of 14C [the unit that includes Chugach State Park],” managers are confident that the human kill didn't contribute in any substantial way to the sheep decline. And the allowable harvest has been lowered as sheep numbers dropped. For now the park's population seems stable.