Nemont
Well-known member
This is a front page article in our local paper. I don't know if I remember 150 + antelope getting whacked by the train in a single accident.
Severe Winter Taking Toll On Antelope
Food Hidden Buried Under Snow; Train Hits Herd Of 150 Near Vandalia Dam
By Samar Fay Courier Editor
Published: Wednesday, January 26th, 2011
With snow levels inching up on another record year, local wildlife is struggling to survive.
Birds are huddled under bushes. Hay yards are swarming with deer. Antelope that normally feed on sagebrush and other prairie plants are getting hungry and moving south to find food. Unfortunately, their instinctive migration is as difficult and dangerous as the winter weather.
They follow roads and tracks because it’s much easier than the exhausting slog through deep snow. But it can be deadly. Last week, there were two reports of trains hitting groups of antelope west of Glasgow and some were hit by a car on a county road.
On Sunday morning, there was a particularly disastrous event. A train hit a large herd of antelope west of Vandalia Dam. A game warden got a ride on a track truck to the site and found more than 150 animals hit. His painful duty was to shoot them.“It’s a tough winter for them and the other wildlife migrating,” said Mark Sullivan, the Fish, Wildlife & Parks wildlife program manager for Region 6. “It’s triggered by winter conditions back to November, the first snowfall. The lucky ones have made it further south. There a lot of roadblocks on the migration routes that never existed 200 years ago.”
Sullivan said he doesn’t blame the trains, which can’t possibly stop in time. The accidental slaughter is a horrible experience for the engineers, too.
Highways and subdivisions are additional modern problems for the herds to deal with, but the worst obstacle may be fences, Sullivan said. Antelope have evolved as the fastest land animals in the Americas, but they don’t jump very well. They crawl under fences, unless the bottom wire is set low or snow piles up and there is no way under.
Sullivan said there are definitely a lot of Canadian antelope moving south and the animals stack up on the Milk River bottom, because of the highway and a lot of fences. Even if they get down to Fort Peck Lake, it is not a particularly good wintering area. If the ice is hard, they can cross the lake and perhaps do better on the other side. A few years ago, scores of antelope drowned near Duck Creek when the ice broke under them.
Like deer and cattle, antelope are ruminants. Their four-part stomachs contain bacteria that break down plant matter. Unfortunately for winter-stressed antelope, their particular bacteria are not geared to hay. When they are in poor condition and are forced to eat hay, many can’t make the switch and they die.
There is not much that people can do to help, Sullivan said. One suggestion is for ranchers to leave gates open on empty pastures. This allows the antelope to find their way through and continue their migration. Another long-term suggestion is to place the lowest fence wire 18 inches or more above the ground, so antelope can more easily wiggle under.
Sullivan said FWP will probably cut back on hunting licenses for antelope next year. They do aerial surveys in mid-summer, in time to change the license quota in mid-July if needed.
You can’t stockpile wildlife population, Sullivan said. You can try bringing back a population by not hunting them and you get a winter like this. He said the resiliency of the antelope will depend on weather conditions for the next few years. If the summer has good growing conditions and is followed by an easy winter, there will be good fawn production.
“If there is a drought and a hard winter, they are just going to be hanging in there,” Sullivan said.
