Elk Exclosure Explores Part 9

Good News Not Just About Elk Exclosures

Mt. St. Helens Elk Exclosure Repair

Here’s a short blurb about a Mt. St. Helens elk exclosure fence repair that will take place June 2007. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is announcing this forest service volunteer project. It sounds like it is hard work as it involves:

packing 12 foot 4x4’s and fence wire to the exclosure and replacing weak posts and fence wire.

I wonder if Bandelier, Santa Fe National Forest, and the Valles Caldera National Preserve ever use volunteers to repair exclosures?

Does Lepidoptera Like Elk Exclosures

Within this website page , Bandelier National Monument Unfunded Research Needs, is a description of a proposed project, Ungulate Browsing and Prescribed Burning; Effects on Lepidoptera Diversity, no date, to be done using 10 elk exclosures that were constructed in Bandelier National Monument (BNM) in 1998 as part of a plan to monitor elk impacts upon vegetation and soils in BNM. The research was to describe how the diversity of lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) was affected by prescribed burning and heavy elk browsing on vegetation by comparing the abundance of moths and butterflies and the number of species inside the exclosures with the corresponding control plot outside the exclosure. Butterflies and moths were chosen for this study because they are sensitive to changes in the environment. The project was to have been completed in December 2000 but I could not find the research paper when I Googled the title. I wonder if the project was ever funded and completed.

NM Meadow Jumping Mouse Digs Livestock Exclosures

This abstract, within this pdf download Biological Invasions and Conservation Challenges in the Natural Resources, of a 2006 paper titled, Decline of montane populations of the threatened meadow jumping mouse (Zapus hudsonius luteus) in New Mexico, concludes that the New Mexico meadow jumping mouse--found only in 6 sites in the Jemez Mountains and 2 in the Sacramento Mountains--thrives only in areas where livestock grazing exclosures allow riparian vegetation to grow tall, unbrowsed by cattle.

Yellowstone Aspen Exclosures

A 2001 paper, (pdf download), Long-Term Aspen Exclosures in the Yellowstone Ecosystem, finds that exclosures help aspen stands to regenerate. There are 14 long term aspen exclosures in Yellowstone. The researcher observed that aspens stands within exclosures easily produced new growth taller than 6 1/2 feet, but outside the exclosures, few aspen stands regenerated because the shoots were browsed off repeatedly. The author concludes that aspen numbers in Yellowstone have declined mainly because of elk repeatedly browsing off new growth.