By Michael Howell
For over a hundred years, a large ranch at the north end of the valley was in the hands of the Schroeder family and run as a cattle and sheep operation. The Schroeder family homesteaded the area in 1881 when Montana was a territory of the U.S. and much of the Bitterroot Valley area was open range for livestock. Over the course of many generations and a series of boom and bust economic cycles, the family acquired more land which they used to raise both sheep and cattle.
But that changed in 2009 when the ranch was sold and combined with some additional acreages in the area and began operation under a new owner as the 10,000-acre MPG Ranch. The MPG Ranch is not your typical cattle and sheep operation. In fact, it does not run any cattle or sheep. It is more of a huge, ongoing, restoration project and experimental learning and education center. Its mission is to promote conservation through restoration, research, education and information sharing.
“MPG Ranch stewards large, undeveloped landscapes for wildlife habitat and the enjoyment of future generations and conducts research specializing in restoration and ecology,” it states on the ranch’s website www.mpgranch.com.
Conservation goals of the ranch include the description of ecological roles of species; the development of strategies to decrease invasive species, and conducting an inventory of flora and fauna present on the ranch.
The ranch also collaborates with other local organizations and researchers that design and implement outreach and public education events. MPG works closely with local conservation groups and researchers to offer educational opportunities to students of all ages. From educational tours of the ranch, to teaching college courses in genetics and hiring interns, it seeks to “inspire and train the next generation of scientists to protect landscapes.”
MPG Ranch sponsors over 20 scientists who guide restoration efforts and seek to understand the ecology of organisms present in the area from microbes to mammals and trees. These scientists have published 34 peer reviewed scientific publications in the past five years.
The list of scientists is too long to reproduce but includes everything from forest ecologists, to microbiologists, to wildlife biologists, to soil specialists to zoologists, and geographers and….
The Bitterroot Star interviewed MPG Ranch Avian Scientist Kate Stone who coordinates bird-related research. She is involved in both original research and facilitating the use of the ranch as a study site for outside researchers. She is also the field trip coordinator and website manager for the Bitterroot Audubon Society.
Stone said that one hundred years of cattle and sheep grazing has left some things such as degraded soils and loss of woody vegetation.
“What would have been a native plant community was turned into a forage crop, like crested wheatgrass,” said Stone. “So if the goal is to transition back to a native system then we want to be able to tell if our efforts are doing any good.” That’s where some of her bird research comes in. The birds can be used as a response variable. The number of birds, the variety of species, and the composition of those species speaks volumes about the habitat.
Birds aren’t the only creatures being studied on the ranch. Even though the cattle and sheep have been removed, the ranch land is still being impacted by large mammals. According to Stone, since the removal of the cattle and sheep five years ago the resident elk herd has doubled in numbers. MPG Ranch, along with many other organizations, is participating in the North Valley Elk Study being spearheaded by Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
Stone said that the ranch was doing longterm studies on various aspects of restoration to document changes over a long period of time.
“Our mandate is to look at ten to thirty years, which is pretty unusual for scientific research,” said Stone. She said that most folks who work for a university or an agency have very limited and often undependable funding.
“It’s neat when you are told to plan your projects for the long term, because that’s kind of what it takes to actually re-establish vegetation and see some response,” said Stone. She said that MPG Ranch has studies dedicated to longterm changes in songbirds. She called them “primary indicator variables” that require years of study if you are looking to detect patterns.
Another mandate of the ranch, according to Stone, is to look at species that are little studied, like the little brown bird that no one pays any attention to. Or, phenomena that are under-studied, like migration.
A final mandate at the ranch, she said, is using and applying the latest technology. She said that so many advances have been made in how we can study things now with satellite transmitters and geo-locators. But these things cost money, she said, and are often cost prohibitive to ordinary researchers.
“It’s like the difference between being able to get one Golden Eagle transmitter or twenty,” said Stone. She said MPG’s benefactor was willing to invest in things like that in order to get the sample sizes needed to draw meaningful results.
Stone said that with a crew of three full-time, well-trained employees in the field, a lot of birds have been documented that have not previously been documented in the valley. She said they were also pushing the limits on knowledge about some common species like the Saw-whet Owl.
“One of them flew 26 miles in a single night during migration,” said Stone. “They are not built for long distance flying if you look at them.”
She said the more you come to know about birds the more amazing things you come to notice. Like the Brambling that was spotted at the feeder in December. It is a Eurasian bird that must have crossed the Bering Sea. Only four or five have ever been documented in Montana.
“The thing is,” said Stone, “the ordinary person could see a Brambling and not know what they were looking at. It’s a kind of finch. A person has to recognize how amazing it is and report it or it goes undocumented,” said Stone. Stone believes that because of this some “species of concern” may be more plentiful than we think.
Stone said the ranch turned out to be an incredible place for raptor migration studies and MPG Ranch works with and partially funds Raptor Research Institute, out of Missoula, to do raptor counts. She said the Bitterroot is a major flyway for migrating raptors. She said very few sites were good in both fall and spring, but the Baldy Mountain site on the ranch was good both seasons.
One thing that makes it different is that it is in the foothills, whereas most counting sites are in the higher mountains. She said it is one of the lowest sites in the state and gets a very different species combination than other places in Montana.
“They get lots of eagles,” said Stone. “We get lots of Red Tails and tons of Turkey Vultures, something like 1,800 passing over.”
Stone said that research done recently with radio telemetry on Saw-whet Owls showed that many of them left the valley but she does not know where they went. One owl which they had banded was identified in Chico, California.
She said migration studies showed that our osprey go all over, into Vera Cruz, Mexico and Galveston Bay, Texas. One went all the way to the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. She said two Long Billed Curlews from the Bitterroot were spotted, one in the Sea of Cortes, the other in San Francisco, in Candlestick Park, named after the birds known locally as Candlesticks. She said that Catbirds from the Bitterroot have been spotted in Texas.
“Our birds are going all over the place,” said Stone. She said you can monitor populations locally, but because of all this migration, if a species starts to decline in number it may have nothing to do with anything in the local environment. It may have more to do with the rain forest where they spend half their time each year. She said this makes studying migration even more important. You can track the problem to its source.
Stone also serves on the Board of Directors of the Bitterroot Audubon Society. A former field trip coordinator for the organization, she is now doing the “citizen science” programs and working on the group’s website. The aim of the citizen science program is to provide ordinary people with the training and support that would allow them to collect and document all sorts of information that could be used by the scientific community.
Anyone wanting to report a bird sighting can do it online at bitterrootaudoban.org.