my goal with this project was to make
five or ten really beautiful pictures
essentially giving a voice to these
animals of visual voice and it was this
picture right here that I think gets out
the essence of this migration she is on
the move
Yellowstone was created 144 years ago
and it was created originally to protect
these incredible geological wonders the
geysers the canyons the waterfalls the
hot springs but since then we’ve come to
value Yellowstone just as much for its
incredible ecology these large mammals
in particular that roam widely across
the landscape they’re now virtually
synonymous with the word Yellowstone but
at the same time a look back at these
ancient sites in the Greater Yellowstone
Ecosystem suggests another important
untold story and that’s what we’re here
to talk to you about tonight this right
here is a drawing of an elk made
thousands of years ago by Native
Americans at a site called legend Rock
south of the town of Cody Wyoming
there’s over 300 petroglyphs at the site
and most of which are the hoofed animals
the pronghorn the help the deer the
moose the Sheep and some of the tribes
didn’t call it Yellowstone after the
rocks they actually called it Elk River
after these hooved animals they knew
something that has taken us a long time
to figure out and it’s these animals
that Arthur and I have been focusing on
for about about a decade
for me this journey started on the Great
Plains in South Dakota where I grew up
and it was those geese right there that
really picked my interest in migration
fast forward till my early 20s there was
a pronghorn migration that had just been
mapped there were over 400 pronghorn
that were moving about a hundred miles
from the Upper Green River Basin into
Grand Teton National Park so of course I
was interested and I
got on my computer and google it it’s
you know pronghorn migration I wanted to
see what it looked like well it hadn’t
been photographed so I thought you know
wow this is this might be my chance to
be a photographer or at least to act
like a photographer and I applied for a
grant so I could follow this migration
make the first photographs of it and I
was awarded 3,000 bucks and I was set so
so for two years I lived in the back of
my pickup and my goal was to show the
beauty of this migration show people
what it looked like what it was like to
be a migrating animal I started to get
some of the first photographs of
pronghorn migration showing them in
places where they can’t see far where
they can’t run fast this picture right
here is from mid-january and they were
stopped by deep snow and it was around
this time that I realized that wow if
I’m there the pronghorn aren’t and I
need to start using camera traps and it
was a way for me to document it without
disturbing them this migration corridor
there’s evidence they’ve been doing this
for 6,000 years and I had to figure out
exactly the trails they were using you
know down to a couple feet so that was I
was backpacking hundreds of miles trying
to figure out where I was going to put
my camera trap so I spent most of my
time you know putting cameras at river
crossings and deep snow that type of
thing this is a pronghorn buck that
didn’t make it for me migration equals
wildness and I think this photograph
gets at that my goal with this project
was to make five or ten really beautiful
pictures essentially giving a voice to
these animals a visual voice and over
the course of those two years I felt
like I got that done and it was this
picture right here that really opened
that up for me the shadow on the rock
the passing storm that entire two years
was worth this single moment in time she
is on the move and so during that two
years I was realizing that we’re having
an impact and this needs to be
documented so the housing developments
the fences that are associated with them
they burn up energy every time they have
to cross something like a fence and some
of them don’t make it this fence has
been retrofitted
since that picture was made this is a
famous place called trappers point in
2008 and this is the most dangerous
place along this pronghorn migration
corridor there was over a hundred
collisions every year it’s a dangerous
place for both people and for wildlife
but in in 2012 the Wyoming Department of
Transportation completed the first
pronghorn wildlife overpass this group a
pronghorn right here is the first group
to cross it in 2012 you can see 120
pronghorn and then you can see one mule
deer right there that thinks it’s a
prowler and I’d like to think that I had
some small part in in getting that done
and that’s really when I started to
believe in the power of conservation
photography and luckily out of the blue
I get a call from Hall Sawyer who is a
researcher who’s the first guy to study
the pronghorn migration corridor in the
late 90s and he called me up and said
Joe I just made a discovery on these
mule deer i collared a small group of
mule deer he thought they were resident
deer into a surprise they actually moved
150 miles to the north
essentially linking southern Wyoming to
the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem this
is an incredible discovery said why
don’t you come back and photograph it
thought well sure
and the thing I realized with these deer
is that the pronghorn was just the tip
of the iceberg there was so much more
potential in this world of migration and
of course it’s longer than the pronghorn
corridor so of course they’re crossing
highways over a hundred fences and some
of them don’t make it
so during that whole time I kept hearing
about this guy doing elk migration work
and and studying elk and wolf
interaction up in Cody I heard that even
the game wardens in the Cody office were
calling him the elk hippie
and out of the blue he called me and he
said hey Joe do you want to do a project
on Hulk migration and it brought us to
right here all right so I’m sure most of
you know this but doesn’t take much in a
way I’m gonna get called a hippie I had
never seen a wolf or an elk when I
started this work I actually took me a
long time to admit that because you know
showing up in Cody Wyoming and saying
I’m here to help with your wolves and up
but I’ve never seen them it’s not not a
good thing you tell them that after you
get the job and so one of the things I
learned is why these animals migrate
this is a very important thing why do
they migrate is to get fresh green grass
grass is hard to digest you want the
fresh green stuff and it stays green
longer up in the high mountains and so
this is the only chart you will see in
this entire talk but it’s a very
important one and what you’re seeing on
the bottom on the x-axis is the number
of days those animals are off of the
peak green and so as you go to the left
they get to be batter and there’s a lot
of fat involved here we’re going from 10
percent all the way up to 20 percent
body fat
one of the first things to notice is if
they’re resident and blue if they don’t
migrate they don’t get as fat if they’re
migratory they get fat and so what does
that fat mean it means calves
it means productivity this is what
allows the wolf to recover in the
Greater Yellowstone this is what
sustains that creature allows us to
sustain a cut recovery of grizzly bears
wildlife watching in tourism these
migratory ungulates by sustaining all
this are a huge part of that
economy there is a enormous economy for
the communities outside the Greater
Yellowstone when these animals are out
there of hunting whether it be for meat
or for trophies and that feeds enormous
Lee in tens and tens of millions of
dollars annually into these communities
so these migrations are really important
and so these these barriers that Joe
introduced you to like these fences
these are things that constrain the
ability of these animals to gain that
fat and so that made me want to know
about it my equivalent of wanting to
google the program and not finding
pictures was wanting to see a map of it
and there wasn’t one that used the new
technology and so my part of this work
was to set about doing that and and so
we want to show you the cody herd and
take you on that journey that we took to
understand and document this migration
this is a population about six thousand
elk winners and enormous groups out on
the foothills and often on these private
lands and these private lands are
managed for many different uses as well
as adjacent public lands and so there
are some conflicts here for these
wildlife whether it be a risk of disease
that they pose to livestock or
developments like residential and energy
developments that impact the habitats of
these wintering animals so as we move
from the ranches up into the mountains
12,000 feet peaks and these elk are
going over the top of them so my job is
to show what that looks like so here’s
one of our first flights actually this
from a helicopter just showing how truly
incredible that these elk are these
Mountain elk
this is at 11,500 feet and you can see
the lead cow in this group of 12 is
trying to figure out where they took a
wrong turn
so right here in the middle there’s
eight elk that just gives you an idea of
the scale of some of the mountains that
these elk are going on so my job is to
get a camera within two feet of those
elk so here we’re going to walk on that
same path and try to figure out where
these trails really are as you can see
in this video there’s actually a cut in
the rock that these elk have cut over
the thousands of years they’ve been on
this trail I work on these animals with
these collars from a distance a lot of
the time and one of the things I wanted
to do just experience this same
migration myself and so that’s what we
did so showing these elk on these high
mountain passes the only problem is
there’s a lot of bears on these high
mountain passes as well so a lot of my
work was repairing cameras that were
pushed down and demolished by bear cubs
like these guys
so here’s Arthur and I at that last spot
elk calf that’s only a couple weeks old
and then she shows up
that’s not a good thing but me with
months of work and years of work on this
project I started to get some some video
footage that actually captured you know
the numbers that these elk are moving in
I mean this is hot these are hundreds of
elk moving over one pass together this
is almost 12,000 feet so as we move from
the mountain passes down to the river
crossing the South Fork of the Shoshone
River it’s a place I spent a lot of time
at so this is a river that’s raging the
snowmelt super cold water
so the next part of this migration the
challenge is to get up into the high
country where these Oaks bend the summer
and it’s very distant and hard to get to
and so you cannot do this without people
who know this landscape intimately and
have been in it since they were kids
this is the place where the snow and the
rain and the Sun come together to make
the grass that feeds this creature and
feeds all this abundance and so that’s
what we encounter and spend time with up
in that high country is these great big
summering groups of elk what I set out
to do in the course of this work was to
create this map a fuller picture of the
elk migrations of the Greater
Yellowstone and I want to show you the
completed product from that effort all
these herds making that movement from
winter ranges in outlying areas of the
system up into the heart of it so what I
see here is the veins and arteries of
this landscape what you can imagine as
you think of these animals moving in and
out and and back out year after year is
the pulse of this landscape so for me as
a photographer how do you show that
pulse or that heartbeat of a system in a
photograph
I found this spot early in 2014 this
like 10 foot by 10 foot chunk of dirt I
knew all the elk crossed through and I
worked it hard in 2014 and went back in
2015 and was gifted with an amazing
picture and that one picture took 375
miles on horseback 240 days that that
camera was out there and I got one split
second this picture right here that I
think gets out the essence of this
migration that calf is learning the
migration for the first time it’s only a
couple weeks old
and I feel like this picture is worth
this entire project for me yeah
you
five or ten really beautiful pictures
essentially giving a voice to these
animals of visual voice and it was this
picture right here that I think gets out
the essence of this migration she is on
the move
Yellowstone was created 144 years ago
and it was created originally to protect
these incredible geological wonders the
geysers the canyons the waterfalls the
hot springs but since then we’ve come to
value Yellowstone just as much for its
incredible ecology these large mammals
in particular that roam widely across
the landscape they’re now virtually
synonymous with the word Yellowstone but
at the same time a look back at these
ancient sites in the Greater Yellowstone
Ecosystem suggests another important
untold story and that’s what we’re here
to talk to you about tonight this right
here is a drawing of an elk made
thousands of years ago by Native
Americans at a site called legend Rock
south of the town of Cody Wyoming
there’s over 300 petroglyphs at the site
and most of which are the hoofed animals
the pronghorn the help the deer the
moose the Sheep and some of the tribes
didn’t call it Yellowstone after the
rocks they actually called it Elk River
after these hooved animals they knew
something that has taken us a long time
to figure out and it’s these animals
that Arthur and I have been focusing on
for about about a decade
for me this journey started on the Great
Plains in South Dakota where I grew up
and it was those geese right there that
really picked my interest in migration
fast forward till my early 20s there was
a pronghorn migration that had just been
mapped there were over 400 pronghorn
that were moving about a hundred miles
from the Upper Green River Basin into
Grand Teton National Park so of course I
was interested and I
got on my computer and google it it’s
you know pronghorn migration I wanted to
see what it looked like well it hadn’t
been photographed so I thought you know
wow this is this might be my chance to
be a photographer or at least to act
like a photographer and I applied for a
grant so I could follow this migration
make the first photographs of it and I
was awarded 3,000 bucks and I was set so
so for two years I lived in the back of
my pickup and my goal was to show the
beauty of this migration show people
what it looked like what it was like to
be a migrating animal I started to get
some of the first photographs of
pronghorn migration showing them in
places where they can’t see far where
they can’t run fast this picture right
here is from mid-january and they were
stopped by deep snow and it was around
this time that I realized that wow if
I’m there the pronghorn aren’t and I
need to start using camera traps and it
was a way for me to document it without
disturbing them this migration corridor
there’s evidence they’ve been doing this
for 6,000 years and I had to figure out
exactly the trails they were using you
know down to a couple feet so that was I
was backpacking hundreds of miles trying
to figure out where I was going to put
my camera trap so I spent most of my
time you know putting cameras at river
crossings and deep snow that type of
thing this is a pronghorn buck that
didn’t make it for me migration equals
wildness and I think this photograph
gets at that my goal with this project
was to make five or ten really beautiful
pictures essentially giving a voice to
these animals a visual voice and over
the course of those two years I felt
like I got that done and it was this
picture right here that really opened
that up for me the shadow on the rock
the passing storm that entire two years
was worth this single moment in time she
is on the move and so during that two
years I was realizing that we’re having
an impact and this needs to be
documented so the housing developments
the fences that are associated with them
they burn up energy every time they have
to cross something like a fence and some
of them don’t make it this fence has
been retrofitted
since that picture was made this is a
famous place called trappers point in
2008 and this is the most dangerous
place along this pronghorn migration
corridor there was over a hundred
collisions every year it’s a dangerous
place for both people and for wildlife
but in in 2012 the Wyoming Department of
Transportation completed the first
pronghorn wildlife overpass this group a
pronghorn right here is the first group
to cross it in 2012 you can see 120
pronghorn and then you can see one mule
deer right there that thinks it’s a
prowler and I’d like to think that I had
some small part in in getting that done
and that’s really when I started to
believe in the power of conservation
photography and luckily out of the blue
I get a call from Hall Sawyer who is a
researcher who’s the first guy to study
the pronghorn migration corridor in the
late 90s and he called me up and said
Joe I just made a discovery on these
mule deer i collared a small group of
mule deer he thought they were resident
deer into a surprise they actually moved
150 miles to the north
essentially linking southern Wyoming to
the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem this
is an incredible discovery said why
don’t you come back and photograph it
thought well sure
and the thing I realized with these deer
is that the pronghorn was just the tip
of the iceberg there was so much more
potential in this world of migration and
of course it’s longer than the pronghorn
corridor so of course they’re crossing
highways over a hundred fences and some
of them don’t make it
so during that whole time I kept hearing
about this guy doing elk migration work
and and studying elk and wolf
interaction up in Cody I heard that even
the game wardens in the Cody office were
calling him the elk hippie
and out of the blue he called me and he
said hey Joe do you want to do a project
on Hulk migration and it brought us to
right here all right so I’m sure most of
you know this but doesn’t take much in a
way I’m gonna get called a hippie I had
never seen a wolf or an elk when I
started this work I actually took me a
long time to admit that because you know
showing up in Cody Wyoming and saying
I’m here to help with your wolves and up
but I’ve never seen them it’s not not a
good thing you tell them that after you
get the job and so one of the things I
learned is why these animals migrate
this is a very important thing why do
they migrate is to get fresh green grass
grass is hard to digest you want the
fresh green stuff and it stays green
longer up in the high mountains and so
this is the only chart you will see in
this entire talk but it’s a very
important one and what you’re seeing on
the bottom on the x-axis is the number
of days those animals are off of the
peak green and so as you go to the left
they get to be batter and there’s a lot
of fat involved here we’re going from 10
percent all the way up to 20 percent
body fat
one of the first things to notice is if
they’re resident and blue if they don’t
migrate they don’t get as fat if they’re
migratory they get fat and so what does
that fat mean it means calves
it means productivity this is what
allows the wolf to recover in the
Greater Yellowstone this is what
sustains that creature allows us to
sustain a cut recovery of grizzly bears
wildlife watching in tourism these
migratory ungulates by sustaining all
this are a huge part of that
economy there is a enormous economy for
the communities outside the Greater
Yellowstone when these animals are out
there of hunting whether it be for meat
or for trophies and that feeds enormous
Lee in tens and tens of millions of
dollars annually into these communities
so these migrations are really important
and so these these barriers that Joe
introduced you to like these fences
these are things that constrain the
ability of these animals to gain that
fat and so that made me want to know
about it my equivalent of wanting to
google the program and not finding
pictures was wanting to see a map of it
and there wasn’t one that used the new
technology and so my part of this work
was to set about doing that and and so
we want to show you the cody herd and
take you on that journey that we took to
understand and document this migration
this is a population about six thousand
elk winners and enormous groups out on
the foothills and often on these private
lands and these private lands are
managed for many different uses as well
as adjacent public lands and so there
are some conflicts here for these
wildlife whether it be a risk of disease
that they pose to livestock or
developments like residential and energy
developments that impact the habitats of
these wintering animals so as we move
from the ranches up into the mountains
12,000 feet peaks and these elk are
going over the top of them so my job is
to show what that looks like so here’s
one of our first flights actually this
from a helicopter just showing how truly
incredible that these elk are these
Mountain elk
this is at 11,500 feet and you can see
the lead cow in this group of 12 is
trying to figure out where they took a
wrong turn
so right here in the middle there’s
eight elk that just gives you an idea of
the scale of some of the mountains that
these elk are going on so my job is to
get a camera within two feet of those
elk so here we’re going to walk on that
same path and try to figure out where
these trails really are as you can see
in this video there’s actually a cut in
the rock that these elk have cut over
the thousands of years they’ve been on
this trail I work on these animals with
these collars from a distance a lot of
the time and one of the things I wanted
to do just experience this same
migration myself and so that’s what we
did so showing these elk on these high
mountain passes the only problem is
there’s a lot of bears on these high
mountain passes as well so a lot of my
work was repairing cameras that were
pushed down and demolished by bear cubs
like these guys
so here’s Arthur and I at that last spot
elk calf that’s only a couple weeks old
and then she shows up
that’s not a good thing but me with
months of work and years of work on this
project I started to get some some video
footage that actually captured you know
the numbers that these elk are moving in
I mean this is hot these are hundreds of
elk moving over one pass together this
is almost 12,000 feet so as we move from
the mountain passes down to the river
crossing the South Fork of the Shoshone
River it’s a place I spent a lot of time
at so this is a river that’s raging the
snowmelt super cold water
so the next part of this migration the
challenge is to get up into the high
country where these Oaks bend the summer
and it’s very distant and hard to get to
and so you cannot do this without people
who know this landscape intimately and
have been in it since they were kids
this is the place where the snow and the
rain and the Sun come together to make
the grass that feeds this creature and
feeds all this abundance and so that’s
what we encounter and spend time with up
in that high country is these great big
summering groups of elk what I set out
to do in the course of this work was to
create this map a fuller picture of the
elk migrations of the Greater
Yellowstone and I want to show you the
completed product from that effort all
these herds making that movement from
winter ranges in outlying areas of the
system up into the heart of it so what I
see here is the veins and arteries of
this landscape what you can imagine as
you think of these animals moving in and
out and and back out year after year is
the pulse of this landscape so for me as
a photographer how do you show that
pulse or that heartbeat of a system in a
photograph
I found this spot early in 2014 this
like 10 foot by 10 foot chunk of dirt I
knew all the elk crossed through and I
worked it hard in 2014 and went back in
2015 and was gifted with an amazing
picture and that one picture took 375
miles on horseback 240 days that that
camera was out there and I got one split
second this picture right here that I
think gets out the essence of this
migration that calf is learning the
migration for the first time it’s only a
couple weeks old
and I feel like this picture is worth
this entire project for me yeah
you
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