A Place To Call Home

By Dayna Gross, Silver Creek Preserve Manager

When you live in a climate where winter dominates much of the year, the first signs of spring are enough to get your blood flowing and optimism churning. In February, the Red-winged Blackbirds return and mark my favorite day of the year- when I first hear them singing. Like many things that are ‘common’ it may not be the most newsworthy event. The Sibley bird guide states, “common; our most widespread blackbird,” but to me their song is the best sound of the year as it marks the beginning of the snow melting, longer days, and warm sunshine on my face. The year is marked by the movement of animals and birds to and from the preserve. And there is no better way to watch the birds than to put up a birdhouse and give them a place to nest. Thanks to our wonderful volunteers last year, Pete Martin who built the houses, and Doug and Nan Little who put them up, this year the preserve is covered with great nesting boxes for swallows, wrens, kestrels, owls, and ducks.

If you build it, they will come. Photo ©Dayna Gross/The Nature Conservancy

How hard is it to build a birdhouse? Not that hard- four sides, a roof, and a base with a hole of some sort. At least that’s what I thought; in actuality, in order to get the ‘right bird’ to the ‘right box,’ it is important to be a little more detailed than that. For instance, you need the right size hole—having a hole too big will bring in the starlings or magpies. And you need to mount them at the right height. Put a kestrel box at 8 feet instead of 15 feet and you may end up with a Saw-whet Owl (maybe not such a bad thing). And maintenance is necessary too. Boxes must be cleaned annually. For nest-building birds, last year's nest materials must be removed as well as leftover food remnants and droppings. Nest materials left to accumulate put young birds closer to the box hole and make them easier prey for squirrels, raccoons, and other opportunistic predators.

Pete Martin, the visitor center host in September at the Silver Creek Preserve, took my suggestion to build a few birdhouses to the extreme last year. He researched, scrambled for the least expensive materials, and $300 and six months later, delivered over sixty birdhouses to the preserve.

This is important because many bird species have suffered from dramatic population declines due to loss of habitat and nesting structures (tree cavities in many cases). Loss of habitat is often a result of logging, industrial and residential development, cultivation of land for agriculture, and other influences. Providing suitable nest boxes can have a very positive impact on bird populations in rich settings like the Silver Creek Preserve.

Pete displays his work. Photo ©Dayna Gross/The Nature Conservancy

Each species requires a different maintenance and mounting plan, but the birdhouses themselves are relatively simple to build. Click here for a nest box spec sheet.  Don’t worry about making them beautiful- we found that the most simple and boring birdhouse, if designed and mounted correctly, attracted exactly the right birds. 

It’s spring—and there are birds out there looking for a place to nest!

Are You Going to the Dance?

By Art Talsma, Director of Stewardship and Restoration

Thank goodness sage grouse like to dance. Male sage grouse "strut their stuff" by puffing up, creating one of the most memorable spring spectacles out there. Combined with deep music tones, their display is designed to attract females to the dancing ground. The males gather in remote sagebrush country throughout their native range in the western states. These gathering grounds are called leks. Just like the prom, the dance is occurring now. In Idaho’s good sage grouse range you may find 8-20 male sage grouse displaying to attract the sage hens to the dancing grounds.  If you are going to the dance, plan to get up at 4:00 a.m. and expect a long drive to arrive near the lek before sunrise. Bring a warm jacket, good field glasses and your camera. Soon the historic dance will begin.
 

Here they come! Sage grouse in flight. Photo ©Ken Miracle

So why are wildlife biologists and conservationists drawn to this spectacle and why are we so focused on the historical location of sage grouse leks? The birds are telling us where they want to be and where safe haven is found year after year for the mating dance. Leks are where they will begin their annual reproductive cycle. Hens nest nearby in the best available habitat to be successful. They hope to find safe brood habitat with an abundance of insects, forbs, and native grasses to hide their young while feeding. Most importantly the lek locations tell us where to focus our conservation work.    

In the Owyhee uplands we have learned that sage grouse avoid areas that are encroached by juniper trees. Juniper trees provide perches for predators like ravens, so grouse will not nest near them. Ideal habitat is a place where they can hide their nest under sage with tall native grasses. They need a wet meadow nearby to get their broods to water and feed. To restore sage grouse habitat, ranchers, land managers, biologists and volunteers are all working together to focus our conservation work in CORE areas where leks are concentrated in the landscape. These priority areas allow us to team together as partners in conservation. We do conservation practices that benefit both the birds and improve range conditions for all wildlife. We remove young junipers by a process called mastication—chomping up junipers and turning them into mulch-- or simply cutting the invading trees.

Art presenting juniper mastication at Josephine Creek. Photo ©Art Talsma/The Nature Conservancy

We protect and enhance wet meadows for brood habitat.  We mark fences that are close to leks so grouse are less likely to hit fences. We plant native seed and sage after summer wildfires. We control weeds and are working on innovative methods to control annual grasses.

Method to mastication. Art with Dave Bunker, designer of machine's cutting teeth. Photo ©Art Talsma/The Nature Conservancy

If you would like to learn more about these conservation practices there are a number of good web sites like the Sage Grouse Initiative (SGI). You can even click on a lek and "like" it.

The Wheels on the Bus

By Justin Petty, Associate Director of Philanthropy

The snow around town is all but gone, and the 5 day weather forecast is predicting highs in the low 60’s. Trout have been on the rise, a few low elevation trails close to home have dried out enough to hike, and I find myself staring out my office window wishing I was spending more time outdoors. Before moving to Idaho, I would tell folks that my favorite season was fall, but these days I find the first of the warm months – the first green growth, bird song, sun you can feel in your bones – to be as good as it gets.

I have worked for the Conservancy in Idaho for close to 8 years now, the last 3 in the philanthropy department. The best days on the job are those spent in the field with the individuals that support our work. As the largest conservation organization in the world, The Nature Conservancy is addressing the biggest conservation threats at the largest scale – 119 million acres of land protected globally, thousands of miles of rivers, and over 100 marine programs. From humble beginnings in 1951, today’s Conservancy is a force that I am humbled to be a part of. And none of it would be possible without the commitment of those that donate to fund the work. 

Conservation outing with donors Jane and Tom Oliver.  
Photo ©Clark Shafer/The Nature Conservancy

When the days grow longer, the snow falls less frequent, and I start feeling restless, I know that I have another season in the field with our donors to look forward to. Time spent standing in a creek with a fly rod discussing an important restoration project, floating a river canyon that demonstrates what successful conservation looks like, or hiking a trail with binoculars at the ready. It is during these moments that I hear what others appreciate about the work of the Conservancy, why they invest in protecting lands and waters of ecological and human importance. It’s an opportunity for me to listen and learn. These supporters do not stumble on to the Conservancy, they seek it out because the mission aligns with their values. 

In a couple of weeks I’ll be at The Crooked Creek Preserve with someone who has been a good friend to the Conservancy for decades, viewing Sage Grouse strutting on their leks. His support for the Conservancy, and his interests in conservation, extends well beyond Idaho. We will make our way through the sage brush predawn with stars still in the sky, to shiver in the cold, and wait for the grouse show to begin. And while we wait, Bob will tell me about his travels, his health, and his commitment to places that are important to people and where Sage Grouse dance.

Sage grouse strut. Photo ©Bob Griffith

Sharing Idaho's Natural Heritage

By Nathan Welch, GIS Analyst

So, you're backpacking in the Pioneer Mountains of south-central Idaho and you have a close encounter with a wolverine...

Wolverine photo-op, courtesy of the National Park Service

You immediately want to share this thrilling sighting with the world… but how? A post on Facebook might get lost among posts on the relatively mundane eating habits of your friends. Perhaps you’d like your observation to be useful, to make a difference. Where can amateur and professional naturalists alike go to report these rare observations?

In Idaho, go to the web site for the Idaho Fish and Wildlife Information System, or IFWIS: https://fishandgame.idaho.gov/ifwis/portal/page/report-information. Here you can document your observation and provide lots of detail, including pinpointing the location on a map or providing GPS coordinates. The site also provides lists of rare plant and animal species, including species of greatest conservation need: https://fishandgame.idaho.gov/ifwis/portal/page/species-status-lists

Castilleja christii (Christ's Indian paintbrush) - 
Photo courtesy of the US Forest Service /Teresa Prendusi

The Idaho Fish and Wildlife Information System is a small team within the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, responsible for compiling, managing, and sharing data about the state’s natural heritage. It is the primary source for detailed information about the distribution of rare plants and animals in Idaho. IFWIS does not receive direct funding from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. It depends on support from partnering agencies, businesses, and organizations.

The Idaho Fish and Wildlife Information System is one of 82 natural heritage programs in the Western Hemisphere. The Nature Conservancy started the first program in 1974 in the United States. Today, local fish and wildlife agencies and universities manage most of these programs.

The Nature Conservancy in Idaho uses the information about rare and threatened plants and animals to guide its conservation work in identifying critical habitat, protecting and managing lands for key species, and prioritizing areas where we focus our protection efforts.

Good Fire, Bad Fire

By Ryan Haugo, PhD; Forest Ecologist

The 2012 Pacific Northwest wildfire season was one for the record books. In Idaho, the Mustang Complex alone burned 300,000 acres. In my home state of Washington, over 350,000 total acres burned and fire suppression costs alone totaled more than $70 million dollars. Not exactly chump change in this time of fiscal cliffs and sequestration. Yet, fire always has been and always will be an integral part of our western forests. Fire is both inevitable and is the ultimate contradiction; often beautiful, terrifying, destructive, renewing and life-giving, all at the same time.   

In my role as a forest ecologist I spend a lot of time talking about the risks of “uncharacteristic fire” (bad!) and the importance of “prescribed fire” (good!) in restoring healthy and resilient forests. Our official tagline is “The Nature Conservancy works to maintain fire’s role where it benefits people and nature, and keep fire out of places where it is destructive.” An excellent sentiment, but the line between fire that “benefits people and nature” and fire that is “destructive” is often quite blurry.

Last September I was in Lewiston and Orofino about 2 weeks after an intense late summer lightning storm had rolled across Northwest. The weather was funneling smoke from the Wenatchee, Table Mountain, and Yakima Complex fires in the eastern Cascades directly into the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley and the Clearwater Basin, where it mixed with smoke from the fires within the basin itself. During the day visibility was terrible and at night my eyes stung and my throat hurt even when holed up in my hotel room. No fun – that much smoke must certainly indicate a “bad fire,” right? 

Table Mountain Fire, September 2012

Not necessarily. This winter we were finally able to get out and take a look at some of the newly burned forests that had smoked-in my September travels. Matt Dahlgreen, TNC forester and intrepid explorer, shot a beautiful series of photos from one section of the Wenatchee Complex fires. His photos show rejuvenation and restoration, not death and destruction. These fires had burned with relatively low severity during a time of moderate weather conditions, and the net result were thinned forest stands that will be even more resilient to the next fire. There were other patches with nearly all of the trees killed, but this occurred in areas where the forest is adapted to “high severity fire” and the bear, elk and other wildlife will greatly benefit.

A winter look over the Peavine and Klone Peak fires. Mt. Rainier in the background. Photos ©Matt Dahlgreen/The Nature Conservancy

What determines if a wildfire is good or bad? Suppression costs? Property destruction? Air quality? Impacts on wildlife habitat? Can a fire be good and bad at the same time? I don’t think there are any easy answers to these questions. Even a small, seemingly benign prescribed fire produces smoke that can be hazardous to sensitive populations. Even a massive “mega-fire” leaves behind habitat for a number of different wildlife species.  

The one thing that we know for certain is that in forests across the west there will be more wildfire in the coming years. In the face of this inevitability, our focus at the Conservancy is on promoting resilient natural and human communities. In the forests that have traditionally supported timber economies, we focus on smart restoration using tools such as mechanical harvests and prescribed fire. In other forests, we advocate letting wildfires burn when the conditions are right.  Just as there is often not a simple answer as to whether a fire is good or bad, there is no one single approach to conserving our forested landscapes.

Sustaining Our Global Food Supply

By Bas Hargrove, Senior Policy Representative

About 10,000,000,000. That will be the population on earth in 2050. How do we feed 10 billion people? How do we conserve the lands and waters on which all life depends while feeding all these folks? These questions have been on my mind lately as the Conservancy has taken an increasingly hard look at the role of agriculture and conservation. As part of that increased emphasis on sustainable agriculture, I’ve begun leading the Conservancy’s Grasslands Conservation Network in addition to my policy work in Idaho.

Gary and Sue Price of the 77 Ranch accept the 2013 NCBA Environmental 
Stewardship Award.  Photo ©NCBA

Earlier this month I joined several thousand ranchers and others involved in the beef industry at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) annual convention. In many ways, I was a stranger in a strange land. Hundreds of booths on the trade show floor touted specialized products ranging from new-fangled hay balers to portable ultrasounds that identify sex of fetal calves.

I was there representing the Conservancy on NCBA’s Environmental Stewardship Award selection committee, comprised of representatives from industry, US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Natural Resource Conservation Service, and conservation. Each year the committee selects seven regional winners and a single national winner from hundreds of nominated cattle operations.

Coming from Idaho – a battlefront for decades-long range wars – it was refreshing to meet the Environmental Stewardship Award winners. These seven operators from across the U.S. impressed me with their dedication to stewarding the land, pragmatic approach to conservation, and pride in winning the award. And no one impressed me more than the 2013 national award winners, Gary and Sue Price of Blooming Grove, Texas.

While conservationists and cattlemen may not always agree about land and water management, I am certain we won’t solve our global challenges without working together.

Let’s face it – hunger trumps nature for most people. If we conservationists are going to succeed in sustaining the natural systems that sustain humanity, our solutions will involve people, and particularly the people who live on the land and produce our food.

How do we conserve the lands and waters on which all life depends while feeding all 10 billion people?  That’s a work in progress. I do know that we’re not going to get there without working with folks like Gary and Sue Price who are doing their level best to produce the food we eat and take care of the land and water that sustains us.

A logger, a forester, an ATV enthusiast, and an environmentalist walk into a bar…

By Will Whelan, Director of Government Relations

This isn’t the set-up for yet another version of the old joke formula. It is what actually happened last week in Boise at the annual conference of the Idaho Forest Restoration Partnership.

A remarkable trend has emerged in recent years in the much fought-over national forests of Idaho. People with very different viewpoints are working together to support active land management that provides jobs and wood products while improving the ecological health of the forests. Once a year, citizen-driven forest restoration groups meet in Boise to trade stories, receiving training, and network with each other. Last week’s event drew eighty participants from across Idaho. They represented seven separate efforts in the Clearwater, Nez Perce, Payette, Boise, Panhandle, and Salmon-Challis national forests.

2013 Idaho Forest Restoration Partnership conference. Photo ©Will Whelan/The Nature Conservancy

The Nature Conservancy is a founding member of the Idaho Forest Restoration Partnership and participates in groups in the Clearwater and Panhandle national forests.

Each collaborative group is distinct in its origins, make-up, and focus. But, all are finding ways to overcome a pattern of conflict and gridlock that has beset national forest management for most of the last two decades. Conservation groups, such as the Idaho Conservation League and The Wilderness Society, have been willing to promote logging projects that thin small diameter trees and seek to make forests more resilient to fire. The timber industry and the Forest Service have been willing to adopt new, more ecologically-based forestry techniques and to focus timber harvest in the already roaded “front country” of the national forests. All parties are working to integrate watershed restoration– such as decommissioning old, unneeded roads that bleed sediment into local streams – into logging projects.

Right to left: Faye Krueger, Region 1 USFS Forester; David New, timber industry consultant; Gregg Servheen, IDFG biologist. Photo ©Will Whelan/The Nature Conservancy

Everyone who participated in the conference had a compelling story to tell. Here are a few highlights:

The Clearwater Basin Collaborative is helping the Forest Service carry out a ten-year project in the 1.4 million acre Middle Fork Clearwater-Selway River landscape. The plan includes carefully crafted logging, retirement of old roads, weed treatments, recreational improvements, and a wide range of other actions. The project is expected to create 127 jobs in economically depressed Clearwater and Idaho counties. The collaboration has been so effective that the Forest Service recently boosted its projections of future timber harvest in the Clearwater and Nez Perce National Forests by 50%, with the support of key environmental groups.

The Payette Forest Coalition’s project in the upper Weiser River Basin is moving forward without appeals or litigation – a remarkable achievement for a large-scale project to treat 24,000 acres with a combination of thinning, logging, prescribed fire, and watershed restoration. The Coalition won the U.S. Forest Service’s regional award for best public-private partnership and is now designing a new project northwest of McCall.

Last summer, the vast Mustang Complex Fire burned 300,000 acres near Salmon. Nothing seemed to slow the fire down during the hottest weeks of the summer. But, the fire calmed down when it encountered tree stands that had been thinned by the Hughes Creek Project championed by the Lemhi Forest Group.

None of this progress has come easily. Each group has endured through countless meetings and struggled through innumerable arguments. The long-term success of these efforts is hardly assured. But, the hardy band of unlikely allies that gathered in the bar last week will tell you that bridging the divides between environmentalist, logger, recreationist, and land manager offers the best hope for the future for the communities and the wildlife that depend on Idaho’s forests.

For more information, visit the Idaho Forest Restoration Partnership website:  idahoforestpartners.org.

The Hemingway House Preserve In Fall

By Caroline Clawson, Philanthropy Assistant

Ernest Hemingway wrote a eulogy for a Sun Valley friend, Gene Van Guilder, who died in a tragic bird hunting accident on an autumn day in 1939.  It reads in part:

“Best of all he loved the fall … the fall with the tawny and grey, the leaves yellow on the cottonwoods, leaves floating on the trout streams and above the hills the high blue windless skies. He loved to shoot, he loved to ride and he loved to fish.”

For three days this past October I spent time at the Hemingway House in Ketchum with artist Matthew Barney and his crew of a videographer, a producer, a tech and an actor.  I arrived early, before sunrise on the second morning to open the shades and meet the crew while Matthew and his photographer filmed the sun coming up over the hills across the river from the house on a ridge far away in the trails around the White Clouds above Sun Valley Resort.  I stood on the front lawn above the river bed and I also watched the sun come up.  While I sipped my coffee and waited in the chill, the grass, covered in a layer of thick frost, began to thaw as the sun settled over it.

Later in the day the filming continued in the bedroom upstairs; shots of Hemingway’s trunk brought back with him on his last voyage from Cuba, and video of his boots, and the view from the window.  While the crew worked, I was looking through the picture window down at the river bank, at the trees on the flood plain.  For a long while I watched a moose cow and calf moving through the woods.

During the three day filming I was able to see the Preserve in every possible light and it reminded me of the quote above.  There is something indescribable about how beautiful the light is, and the reflections on the water, something that we enjoy every fall all around Idaho. 

Mary Hemingway bequeathed the property to The Nature Conservancy after becoming familiar with the organization’s work at nearby Silver Creek Preserve, which Jack Hemingway helped create.  Today, thanks to Mary Hemingway’s bequest, The Nature Conservancy protects 12 acres of Big Wood River frontage just 2 miles north of Ketchum.   

Photos ©Caroline Clawson/The Nature Conservancy

Life Without Winter

By Lou Lunte, Associate State Director

Okay, like many people I can get pretty grumpy about winter. I’ll admit it, come mid-January, the darkness, bitter cold and icy roads get to me. Sure, I ski and like the view of a beautiful winter day, but that’s just not always enough to contain the grumpiness.  Sometimes my wife can hear me muttering about “Why is it so cold and dark? Couldn’t we just go from fall to spring and avoid winter?” She smiles and consoles me with a reminder to never move to Alaska.

Who would have guessed that an added benefit of hosting foreign exchange students would be a renewed enthusiasm for winter? Over the last few years my family has been lucky enough to host high school students from Thailand and Colombia. Though they both had long lists of experiences they hoped to have as part of their year in Idaho, near the top of both lists was winter and snow. They had never experienced four seasons and had never been in the snow.

Suddenly, everything about winter became exciting. There was so much to see and do and explain and photograph. First the leaves changed colors and fell. Then there were ice crystals in the crisp air, the colors of the winter sky and the clarity of the winter nights. Of course, we spent lots of time getting out to explore and enjoy winter. Walks along the Boise River, its side channels frozen into exquisite ice sculptures, always seeing fox, squirrel, weasel and geese prints in the snow. Many trips to Bogus Basin as they learned to ski and snowboard. Snow angels, snowmen, icicles and snowball throwing. How can you not sigh with pleasure as you settle down into Kirkham hot springs with light snow falling from the sky, watch the elk on the hillside near Tollgate or enjoy a snowy walk along the Oregon coast?

Wow, I remembered how fun and beautiful winter could be. How great it is to have four seasons, particularly when you live in Idaho and can so easily get outdoors and enjoy nature’s dramatic changes. Thanks to Daniela and Fa for reminding me how lucky I am to have fresh fallen snow. I’m thinking of you now as my wife, daughters and I grab our skis and head for a crisp but sunny day on Bogus – my daughters flying down Wildcat, while my wife and I swish along beneath the snow laden ponderosa pine.

Okay, maybe not Alaska yet, but I’m loving January in Idaho!

Photos ©Lou Lunte/The Nature Conservancy

Christmas Bird Count

By Marilynne Manguba, Idaho Protection Specialist

Maybe you read the news in October - “Most of Idaho town destroyed by fire - six buildings burn in Howe.” I thought of the Little Lost Store and the restaurant next door, a traditional stop on the way out of camping trips into the Little Lost Valley or the west side of the Lemhi mountains. Both closed the last few times I’d been through Howe and at the time of the fire. Howe is a tiny little town between Arco and Mud Lake, essentially where three roads meet at the bottom of the Little Lost Valley. The last time I was there was in December 2011 for the Christmas Bird Count. Every year in December and early January, thousands of volunteers count birds on established routes all over North and South America. Historic data and information on how the data is used can be found on the Audubon website. In Idaho there are over forty routes, including one centered near Howe. So, if the town was essentially burned down, what happened to all those trees where a pair of Great horned owls have been spotted for many years?

2012 Christmas Bird Count in Howe, Idaho. Photo ©Marilynne Manguba/The Nature Conservancy.

This past Saturday, on January 5th, I left Idaho Falls at 7:30 a.m. with two Snake River Audubon Society members to do the 2012 Christmas Bird Count. The sun was just starting to come up behind the Tetons. As we drove across the desert, places where normally you’d see hawks hanging out on fence posts and utility poles were empty, we were the only ones crazy enough to be out moving around in -3°.

In Howe, the store and restaurant and other buildings are just piles of rubble except for some scorched bark on the bottom of a few trees - they survived. The only birds around were a flock of Eurasian collared doves, and an American kestrel just warming up in the sun near the Howe Community Center, where we met to warm up and discuss routes with the rest of the crew.

We searched the farmyards, fields and skies for birds as we drove up the Little Lost Valley to a little warm oasis in the cold desert, an open water pond where a bunch of mallards were hanging out. Just up the road a golden eagle perched on a pole and was soon joined by a second eagle. Song sparrows, marsh wrens, and as the veterans knew, Virginia rails who have been found hanging out in the cattails, reeds, and grasses of freshwater marshes. We then headed over to a farm pond where a bald eagle was keeping an eye on a bunch of mallards and green-winged teals. Checking the temperature it finally got up to 14° midday but the birds still seemed to be hunkered down with just a few songbirds, a great blue heron, and a Townsend’s solitaire spotted along the river road.

Volunteers at 2012 Christmas Bird Count. Photo ©Marilynne MangubaThe Nature Conservancy.

We spent the afternoon driving the farm roads between Howe and the mountains where we found rough-legged hawks, a Northern harrier, and a few prairie falcons. Then just as we were ready to head in we spotted a flock of bohemian waxwings and to cap the day off, about 150 common redpolls alternately swirling around and perching in a big cottonwood, bringing our species total to 28, not bad for a very cold day.

Red polls at 2012 Christmas Bird Count. Photo ©Marilynne Marilynne Manguba/The Nature Conservancy.

And the great horned owls, we finally spotted them perched in the cottonwoods behind what was left of the store and all breathed a sigh of relief to see them.

Great horned owl at 2012 Christmas Bird Count. Photo ©Marilynne Manguba/The Nature Conservancy.